SAVA (File Format)

The SAVA format is the area-specific counterpart of the SAVW format. Although every Retro game up to DKCR seems to have some support for the format (judging by its appearance in the dol's cooked extension list going as far back as Prime 1), SAVA files are very rare; there is only one SAVA file that appears in any of the retail release builds of any of the games, which is used with the main menu in Metroid Prime 3 and Metroid Prime Trilogy. The Metroid Prime 3 E3 prototype has more; Metroid.pak contains a SAVA file for each area. The explanation for this is probably that SAVA files were used more extensively during development so that areas could each cook their save info separately, and then they were merged together into the SAVW file.

The structure of a SAVA file is the same as a SAVW file, except the data it contains applies to a particular area rather than the entire world. The  magic from SAVW is missing, along with the area count. The version is still present as the first value in the file but uses different version numbers than SAVW.