ever lose a save far into a game?

[Soviet Conscript]

i did a search but didn't really find a thread on this.

well acually the topic came to mind because of my tragic incident last night. so i've been getting back into snes rpgs lately but didn't feel like battery changing so i hooked my snes up to a gd7 (a copier you can save to). anyways i was playing robotrek (its internal save battery was working). everytime i would save i would save in the game and onto the gd7. anyways i was about half way through the game and turned it on last night only to find my file was completely and utterly GONE. acually earlier that day a friend was over and wanted to check out my gd7 so i unplugged everything and pulled it out for him to examine completly forgeting that disconnection from the power grid would erase internal memory. but after i realized i figured "not a problem, the internal battery is still working (i had taken the gd7 off prior to clean connections and lost my save then to). well as i stated before to my horror upon fireing the game up that night the internal battery must have finally given up the ghost because the file on the cart was gone. needless to say i lost hours of gameing and can't stomach going though it all again....*sign* so i suppose beating robotrek is going on the backburner for a few years now.

for those of you familiar with the GD7 and say "hey why didn't you save the save to a disk" well i did, but i can't get it to work. its a way older save anyways.

other then this the only other story i have is when i accidently erased my symphony of the night save near the end of the game. that wasn't such a huge deal though as that game is so replayable and can be done in a night.

soo...anyone else have a lost save horror story to cheer me up?

[KeyserSoze61]

I was playing the bleemcast! version of Metal Gear Solid about 4 years ago.(never owned a PS, first time playing through it). Bleemcast took up all 200 blocks of a standard dreamcast VMU. So I was pretty much to the last level of MGS, and I think i had just gotten back from class, and I felt like playing some stupid little game. I popped in Tetris Worlds, and at startup, it created a new profile. When I saw that autosave screen, I knew I was screwed.

About a year later, I finally beat the game, but damn that was disheartening.

[PSXferrari]

Wow, that sucks. Especially since you were double-saving.

Years ago I remember playing Zelda: Link's Awakening. I was about 1 or 2 dungeons from the end. My brother decided to be a douchebag and was flipping the Game Boy swtiched on and off over and over again. I didn't know it at the time, but I found out the hard way that this is a pretty good way to delete the saved data on a catridge.

[PsychedelicShaman]

I'm pretty sure my NES toploader overheats. So after about 2-3 hours gameplay, any slight bump to the toploader will freeze it. Anyway, about 20 hours into final fantasy 1, it freezes and I lose my save. The next tim you hear the old dragon warrior saying "Make sure you hold reset while pressing the power button...otherwise you may lose your imperial scrolls of honor", you better listen to it:)

Someday I will go back to it, someday...

[TurboGenesis]

I was far into Cosmic Fantasy 2 back in 1993 and then I got my Turbo Duo. Well I held on to my CD player becasue I had my save game on that unit. Well since it wasn't hooked up for about 4-5 months I hooked it up and all my saves were gone. I was ok with my Y's saves becasue I had wrote the passwords down but Cosmic Fantasy 2 didn't offer this. I was so upset I sold the Turbo Grafx and CD player. I still have not competed the game to this day :(

[heybtbm]

Is there anyone here who was screwed by the infamous Playstation 2 Viewtiful Joe demo glitch? For those that don't remember, OPM sent out their monthly magazine/demo disc with several game demos in late 2004 (I think). When you went to play the Viewtiful Joe demo...it automatically erased everything on your PS2 memory card.

There were people just utterly destroyed who had lost 300-400 hours on Disgaea, 200 hours on FFX, etc.

Now that is crushing.

[goemon]

Here's a big one: how about spending nine months (999+ hours) on an RPG Maker game and having two of the three memory cards it's saved on go bad. That happened to me many years ago. My backups were so far behind that I just gave up. I'm just now starting to piece it back together using ePSXe and saving to my hard drive.

[starfox316]

Goemon: Same thing man! I was about 2 or 3 months into RPG Maker for psx and had my files mysteriously corrupted. That sux for you, man, that's alot of time lost. Luckily I didnt have that much worked out, but still a devastating loss. To this day, I have yet to pop that game in and start again, just too much anger....grrrrr.....

[Daria]

Here's a big one: how about spending nine months (999+ hours) on an RPG Maker game and having two of the three memory cards it's saved on go bad. That happened to me many years ago. My backups were so far behind that I just gave up. I'm just now starting to piece it back together using ePSXe and saving to my hard drive.


... so you're using your PC as an emulator for RPG Maker? Why not just use the more advanced PC version? o.O

As for devestating save losses. Amazingly as much as I play RPGs it hasn't really happened to me. At least not in years. When I was six I was on the last dungeon of Legend of Zelda only to have my save wipe. I gave up on the game for years until a months ago when I replayed and beat it.

Around the same time I was also into Ultima Exodus when my game glitched and gave me every item in the game. Every armour, every weapon, and all the special quest items. Pretty awesome. But then my save was so unmanagable I deleted it. Big mistake, but then I was only a kid.

And again a few years ago I was playing Sword of Hajya on my gamegear. I was on a marathon session attempting to beat the game in a single sitting. Don't remember what battle I was on but I was laying in bed, sat up get a drink of water without looking away from the screen. WHen I brought the glass to my mouth I missed and smacked my gamegear with it. The game glitched and when I turned it back on I had no save file. Suck. But I've since beat the game.... so again wasn't that dire.

[goemon]

... so you're using your PC as an emulator for RPG Maker? Why not just use the more advanced PC version? o.O

Because I like the simplicity of the PS version, and I just want to finish it.

[CosmicMonkey]

About 10 years ago I let my Nephew play on Pilotwings 64. He was 8 at the time and decided he wanted to see what the 'Erase' function did in the memory manager. I didn't actually realize until the next time I turned the system on. Everything, the extra events and all unlocked with golds completely gone.

Then there was the saga of Burning Rangers, CR2032s, Saturn save carts and the Saturn's internal memory. To cut a long story short, I swore lots and finally after 3 days managed to keep a save file and play through the game.

[Daria]

Because I like the simplicity of the PS version, and I just want to finish it.

Fair enough. I was just curious. (:

[cyberfluxor]

I've lost a few games to bad batteries.

I had beaten EVERYTHING but the last two "Inhuman" levels in Unreal Tournament (DC) while on vacation and when I got home it was cleared. I've yet to actually go back and re-beat all of the difficulties again and tackle Inhuman. I'd prefer doing it on the PC version anyhow.

For Final Fantasy VII, the farthest I've gotten is to the meteor crater (or was it a volcano?) and kept dying from death spells. So I left the area and decided to keep leveling up on one of the islands and raise my materia more. I eventually got too busy and forgot about the game and apparently I lost it somehow because it wasn't on the memory card I saved it on, which still had other saves on it (ie. Diablo, Reboot, Breath of Fire III) that worked just fine. I'm a slow person with RPGs since I visit every possible element in the game and fark around so much, but I believe I put a 40ish hour dent into it.

A huge crush that doesn't involve losing to a dead battery or misuse of data through saves but rather playing hardcore on B.net. Since I find the softcore Diablo 2 games to be boring as hell after a month of playing online I went to hardcore; of course in there you're game over once your character dies and must restart over. I lost a few higher levels (high 80's and low 90's) that must have taken combined hundreds, if not a thousand hours of gameplay. Although it seems very odd to constantly replay something that'll end up being a complete waste if you die was just addictive and fun to talk with so many others. I would play almost every night for 4+ hrs (more on weekends) and did this for over a year...

[XianXi]

I was playing FF7 and was laying the 2nd disc and didnt save and got all the way to red ruby or whatever in the desert or something on the 3rd disc and right when I did the KOTR and mimiced it 2 or 3 times we got a blackout.

I have neve gone back to FF7 after that.

[Soviet Conscript]

this was acually my second attempt to beat Robotrek. i rented it back around when it came out some time ago and never was able to complete it before i had to return it. so this was my second failed attempt. next time i'm going to figure out how so save correctly to floppies and save religiously. oh well, i never have had troubles with memory cards for any of the playstations or the DC (except from my own stupidity in eraseing) and maybe i'm putting to much faith into them. but after hearing some stories here maybe i should save to 2 diffrent cards just in case.

[mEgAsHoT]

Years ago on my Pokemon Blue, I had gotten 149 out of the normally obtainable 150. (Nobody had discovered the Mew glitch yet.) The only one I was missing was Tauros. So, I'm at a friend's house, and I try to put in this rumble gadget for my Game Boy. Turned on the power, and the gadget didn't work. So, I turn off my system and remove the rumble thing. (It plugged into the bottom of the system.) When I turn it back on, my ENTIRE Pokemon Blue game got erased. (Somehow.) I was so mad. I have never gotten that close to 150 since then.

[Emuaust]

How about deleting my Soul calibur save? now ive got to sit down and do it all over :(

[Bronty-2]

I was nearing the end on earthbound when I lost my save :( Not a happy camper about that one.

[goemon]

Fair enough. I was just curious. (:

Yeah, I thought about using RPGM2K or XP, but that would involve doing all the custom graphics over again and redesigning all of the areas. Right now I re-entered all of the character, enemy, magic, and item data and I'm working on level design bit-by-bit.

[Steve W]

I lost a few TurboGrafx-16 CD save files back in the day, but those were mainly due to not using the console for months. The most annoying save loss I experienced was playing Atari Karts. I'd gotten to the last of the race difficulty track sets, and turned the Jaguar off for the night. The next day after coming home from a bad day at work, I fired it up to find that the internal memory had blanked out and I had to start the game over from the beginning.

[slip81]

happened to me three times so far; first with Yoshi's Island, I got all the way up to the last stage on the last level and the batter went dead, next, got about 2/3 way through Shining Force III on the Saturn and the battery died, and, most recently (though this is really my fault) Yoshi's Island DS, got up to level 5-7, took the game out, accidentally droped it, and while looking for it backed up and stepped on it.

The last one hurt the most cause I'm out the save and the game :(

[DefaultGen]

.....

[Xexyz]

I lost 20+ hours on one of my most enjoyable RPG experiences 3 months ago. The game was Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals. Great game, fun puzzles, decent storyline, one of the few cliche "explore the world" RPG's I actually enjoyed. But the save battery screwed me over.

The killer thing is I don't think the battery is dead. It did this to me once before, on the 2nd day after I started playing. Luckily, I only invested an hour into it so it wasn't a big deal that time. I still haven't gotten back to it yet. it's damn discouraging when a game from 96's backup battery is dying/dead considering I've got LoZ and DW carts from the late 80's whose batteries still work. I wish they could magically switch places.

Time to invest into a soldering iron!

[shoes23]

Yepp, a few times, the most notable being my 90% completion on Gran Turismo 2, a handful of RPG's, and some other goodness on my PSX memory card. It saved and the next time I turned it on, POOF everything was gone. This is the reason I refuse to buy ANY thrid party memory cards for ANY system.

[diskoboy]

Right after I got the Mirror Shield in Phantasy Star 1.

Everything.

Gone.

[Cinder6]

A couple nasty ones happened to me in the past. Nothing as bad as losing 400 hours of Disgaia, but still a few hundred hours spread over a couple games.

One of my PS1 memory cards went bad and wiped out all my data. I had a "perfect" SotN file (every item, level 99 everything, complete bestiary item drop entries, etc.) which took forever to get. I still haven't gotten back to that point; it's just not worth it. There were other saves on that card, of course, but that's the one that really sticks out to me. I still haven't even reformatted it; it will forever be a monument to my lost SotN file.

Another, which was in some ways more disheartening, was my save file for Summoner on the PS2 mysteriously deleting itself. I say mysterious, because everything else on the card was fine. Only Summoner was missing. Anyways, I was at the very end of the game with my only other save being at the halfway point. I haven't gone back. The game is just too tedious: it's fun the first time you play, but not really so a second time.

The nice thing is I won't have to worry about that anymore, thanks to the PS3's internal memory cards :)

[Lady Jaye]

Happened to me a couple of months ago (some of you guys already know my story...).

I've been playing Neverwinter Nights for nearly 3 years, but mostly on-and-off. I decided to finish the original offline campaign before installing the expansion packs. I had several dozens of play accumulated on that game.

One day, I was near the end of the game and got my ass kicked fighting some dragon. I saved my game, and quit. The next day, when I loaded my game, no savefile. It disappeared!

Fortunately for me, I found an older savefile from May 2005, so at least I wouldn't have to restart from scratch, but it's still frustrating that I had so much catching up to do.

Conclusion: make more than one savefile of your progress, just in case.

[heybtbm]

This is the reason I refuse to buy ANY thrid party memory cards for ANY system.

Very true.

It's been my experience that the only people who use third party memory cards are;

1.) Kids whose parents don't know any better.
2.) Moron's trying to save a buck who don't know any better.

Anyway, I'm so glad that the current generation of consoles has kicked the whole concept of memory cards to the curb.

[alec006]

Ow the saving blues,so much work yet,it dies. 4 Games have done it to me,one because of age and 3 cause the batterys just suck. Super Mario World,i spent hours getting everything,one day i turn it on and its gone,forever. And if your a Pokemon Fan you know about these next 3, Gold,Silver and Crystal Versions,all the batterys have depleted completely after only 5 Years,sad cause i had so much on those versions and want to play them over and over and SAVE. Funny thing is,Red,Blue and Yellow have a smaller battery,yet still save after 9 Years and Super Mario Land 2,made back in 1994,still saves after 13 years,and has the same small battery. Gold,Silver and Crystal have a larger battery,yet only lasted 5 years,i guess i could blame the little crystal oscillator that keeps the real time clock,but still,they should have at least lasted 10 Years,poor Pikachu,its depleted in RAM computer space.

[cyberfluxor]

2.) Moron's trying to save a buck who don't know any better.
Hey! That's rude. I bought one of those tripple memory packs like 5 years ago for my PS1 for $15 that were 3rd party and have worked just fine. They were the clear ones that came in blue, red and green. It's actually nifty because I put different game types on each and helps a bit with sorting. I guess I got lucky with those because they still work, can't remember the brand ATM.

[Soviet Conscript]

Anyway, I'm so glad that the current generation of consoles has kicked the whole concept of memory cards to the curb.

don't hard drives fail to? i can't count the times my various computers have had hard drives fail. although perhaps thats cause you have so many things on a computer HD doing so many things. i guess one dedicated to mostly just saves would be more stable?

i loved memory cards, thought it was a huge step up from battery backups. especially since you can just save to multiple cards pretty easily. what is the theoretical life of a memory card anyways? longer then a battery from a nes or snes game i would assume.

[CreamSoda]

Here are a few instances that really pissed me off...

-Super Mario World(SNES)

When I was 12 years old, I spent most of the summer playing though the game with my gf and my best friend. We had found all 96(I believe 96?) exits without the use of a guide. Needless to say I was proud of that file, not to mention it had countless memories tied to it. About a year or so later, I put the game in and it froze. So I took the cart out and blew into it, then I tried it again and the game worked... Only all of our files were long gone! :(

-Pokemon Blue(gb)

I had finally managed to catch 'em all! With over 100 hours on the clock. Soon after I learned about Mew, and decided to catch it with the help of a GameShark(you already know where this is going). Needless to say, within a day of owning a GameShark I had managed to delete my file. And then later on I cought MissingNO and corrupted the cart completely. Ah the fun of being a kid!

-Phantasy Star Online(DC)

I had a legit level 80 something character, with many hours into it leveling up and just chatting on the servers with various friends. My friend was over one night, and he decided to play some Crazy Taxi. he asked if I wanted to make a save file, and I said no take the memory card out. And before I could stop it, my friend did just that, he took the card out... while the system was on. So not only did I lose my PSO file, but I lost a completed Shenmue file and a few others.

[damerush]

Goldeneye: pretty much all the cheats gone after i lent the game to a friend, invisibility invincibility gone. i know there are cheats but it`s not the same.

[bangtango]

I have over 100 hours into Pokemon Silver and Crystal for Game Boy Color. Based on when I bought the two games and the trends I read about online, I know those saves will be gone sooner or later. I bought Pokemon Gold brand new several years ago and have yet to use it. So I imagine that one will be ok until I start saving with it and using the real-time clock.

I lost saved games in two different Maniac Mansion carts that the battery went dead in. Since I normally beat the game in one sitting, those saved games were mostly me experimenting with different characters, items and ultimately endings. No big loss.

I've lost saved games in both NES Zelda games, NES Dragon Warrior, NHL 95 for Genesis (which online user groups confirm shipped with a defective/poor battery from EA's factories) and Super Mario All Stars. But so has just about everyone else reading this who has logged hours on 8-bit/16-bit systems.

My most annoying lost save was for Super Mario Deluxe on Game Boy Color. I had the regular game beaten, which unlocked the Lost Levels game. Not a great deal of work. I also had the extra challenge mode just about completed, I was missing only 3-4 "challenges" total out of the 96 (?) that are spread across the 32 stages. One day the game got a little dirty because it was the ONE Game Boy title which I didn't have in a plastic case. I load the game and the screen is fuzzy upon turning on the unit. I power it off, take out the game, blow in it lightly and do the same to the GBC. I was worried when I put it back in and my fears were justified. The whole f**kin' thing was gone.

My Super Mario Deluxe battery proved to be alive and well when I saved with it again but my heart wasn't in it anymore since it'd taken me several weeks of 30 minute sessions at night to build up everything I'd accomplished. I was so disillusioned that I sold the game to my older brother last year. Since then, I've gotten the urge to try the game again so I am simply waiting for it to show up from a user I bought it off of in the forums here ;)

I don't mind playing 1-1 to 8-4 again to unlock Lost Levels but I hate the idea of having to replay the entire "challenge mode" to accomplish the same tasks I had already beaten, especially when I was so close to nailing it 100%.


To quote the great opening line voiced by Chaz From Phantasy Star 2 when he started a thread about old games having bad graphics:

"Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr..........."

[RugalSizzler]

Generally this is why I miss the days without save. We could just restart the game and it wil be fresh in the head. Like Super Mario bros for example.

Now it pretty much is just fro people who want to see the credits or so called ending.

[PentiumMMX]

I nearly lost my save in Kingdom Hearts (My PS2 memory card (Official, BTW) is nearly dead, and I'm about to go to the Hollow Bastion in KH).

I also lost my save in Mystical Ninja starring Goemon (Nintendo 64) because of a faulty 1st party memory card (And I was nearly at the end of the game).

[mailman187666]

I was playing final fantasy 3 for DS about 30 hours into it. Decided to get into a different game for a while, and now I can't find my FF3 cart for the life of me. They are so small it could be anywhere. Not only did I lose my save but I had to buy a new copy of the game all together.

[BydoEmpire]

I was on the Milkman level of Psychonauts when my ps2 save got garbled. Haven't picked it up since, but one of these days...

[Slate]

My most aggrivating game save loss would be in Jet Set Radio Future. I saved over my main save by accident, And I had so many graffiti souls In that save, I don't even know how I got some of them.