Why did this happen? :(

[Aussie2B]

I got my boyfriend the Japanese King's Field 1 (never came out in the US) for Christmas, and I let him have the present early. He makes space on one of our memory cards, and he starts playing. When he trys to save, he sees that in the third spot (since it takes 5 blocks, 3 files at the most are possible) there's some goofed up file. The HP reads something like "3/ ", just like that with no number on the right like there should be. The MP reads like "0/255", and other spots where a normal file would say something are blank. Like idiots, we don't take this as a warning sign, and we experiment with the options and pick option 4 which we still don't know what it does (but we fear that maybe it was "format card" or something). The messed up data didn't go away, so he just saved in the first spot and continued with the game.

So later, I start to think about that messed up file, and I get worried... On the same card, I have my Tactics Ogre file. It's the first time I'm ever playing through the game, and I had about 100 hours put into it. I was at the last chapter, and over half way through the insanely long 100 floor bonus dungeon. I put two cards into my PlayStation, thinking I'll switch my Tactics Ogre files over to another card just in case. My fears were true, though... EVERYTHING on the card was gone, except that one King's Field file...

This has basically ruined my mood for the last couple days. :( I put SO much work into that game, and now I don't even get to beat it or reach the end of the bonus dungeon... It's an extremely hard game too, so it's not as if I could easily do it over nor would I be in the mood for that. It's just really, REALLY fucking depressing. I have never in my life lost a file this important (the closest thing was losing a 20 hour Final Fantasy Tactics file, coincidentally by the same developers, because I accidentally saved over it).

I just can't stop thinking about why this happened. Maybe because I was playing on a PS2? It's a perfect, unmodified Japanese PS2, though. Maybe because it was a US memory card? All my memory cards are official Sony ones in good condition, and they all have a mixture of Japanese and US files. Not once have we seen any problems from mixing the regions. I know it can be an issue with GameCube, but I never heard that be the case with PlayStation. Maybe because there were US King's Field 2 and 3 (technically called 1 and 2 in the US) files on the card? Maybe because the game is from 1994, so they didn't know what they were doing in those early days of PlayStation or its files are incompatible with these files from much later released US games?

The oddest thing of all is that after all this happened, my boyfriend played some more of King's Field, and that weirdo file showed up AGAIN despite the fact there was NOTHING else on the card.

Can anyone make sense of this unfortunate situation? I don't even know what to do with the card in the future. Is there a possibility that it could be permanently corrupt? I'm definitely not going to save anything else on it while the King's Field file is there (not that I'm in the mood to play Tactics Ogre or anything else at the moment), but should it be okay once we erase everything off the card?

[Crush Crawfish]

If it's anything like a gamecube memory card, saving a JP region file will reformat it to japanese, erasing all US files. That's why I use a separate memory card for all import games. Very sorry about your file, though. I can't imagine how much it must suck to lose 100 hours of progress. :(

[Kroogah]

I play PS and PS2 imports on an unmodified Japanese PS2, and I swap memory cards around all the time. Haven't had one formatted yet. Got to be King's Field, but I have no idea why. I also don't have any PS imports that use multiple blocks of memory.

[sharc]

i can't offer any explanation as to why that happened, but i also have some files that i've put serious amounts of time and effort into. i'd be very pissed if i ever lost my four ff tactics save files, and fear of the memory degrading or the card getting overwritten led me to purchase a dex drive. it's a great little device that gives you some semi-permenant backup for your saves, and i'd highly recommend it. can't fix what happened, but it can prevent it from happening again. :/

-sharc

[UndeadKing]

I haven't played it in a while, but I'm pretty sure you formated your card. Don't feel bad, I did the same thing, sucks, doesn't it? I did the same exact thing as you, I saw the gibberish file and messed around a bit. After trying one of the options I thought to myself "Oh no, what if I chose format?" Sure enough, the card was wiped.

So, to answer your questions, I'm not sure what the gibberish file is, but it appeared for me as well. It's not your Ps2 because it happened to me on a regular old Playstation. I'm pretty sure you just selected the format option. That's all I can figure anyway. Like you, I was so depressed afterwards that I just wasn't in the mood. Consequently, I haven't touched the game since, despite being a big fan of the series.

EDIT:Ok I popped it back in to see if I could figure it out. Got to a save point and checked it out. The first three options in the save menu are to save to, not sure what the gibberish save data is, but I imagine you can save over it. If you are worried about it, only save on the first two. The fourth option says Card and then some Japanese that I can't read. This is the offending option, so I'd imagine it says Card Format or something along those lines. The fifth option is Cancel without Saving. So, as long as you avoid that fourth option you should be good to go. It doesn't bring your saves back, but hopefully it'll make you feel a little better knowing you aren't alone.

[jdc]

Get yourself the PS2 harddrive. It IS the greatest thing since sliced bread, I find it to be more useful than the XboX one. Never buy another PSX or PS2 memory card again. Just put the saves, PSX or PS2, onto the harddrive. I never have to worry about lost files and you can shuffle the files into different folders when ever and where ever you please.

It rocks and it'll solve your problem. 40 gigs is HUGE for a console.

[SoulBlazer]

Sorry to hear about the loss. I lost all the data on my PS2 card last month due to a glitch in my new Action Replay Max.....all my progress in games like Mega Man Collection, Gradius V, Front Mission 4, and others. :(

You might check GameFAQ's to see if there is a save for the game, even though it's Japanese. Maybe there's one at the end of the game. Then you can pick up a Dex Drive cheap, download the save, and not lose much of your progress.

[Psycho Mantis]

oh wow that sucks. i feel bad for you. :(

[Aussie2B]

I haven't played it in a while, but I'm pretty sure you formated your card. Don't feel bad, I did the same thing, sucks, doesn't it? I did the same exact thing as you, I saw the gibberish file and messed around a bit. After trying one of the options I thought to myself "Oh no, what if I chose format?" Sure enough, the card was wiped.

So, to answer your questions, I'm not sure what the gibberish file is, but it appeared for me as well. It's not your Ps2 because it happened to me on a regular old Playstation. I'm pretty sure you just selected the format option. That's all I can figure anyway. Like you, I was so depressed afterwards that I just wasn't in the mood. Consequently, I haven't touched the game since, despite being a big fan of the series.

EDIT:Ok I popped it back in to see if I could figure it out. Got to a save point and checked it out. The first three options in the save menu are to save to, not sure what the gibberish save data is, but I imagine you can save over it. If you are worried about it, only save on the first two. The fourth option says Card and then some Japanese that I can't read. This is the offending option, so I'd imagine it says Card Format or something along those lines. The fifth option is Cancel without Saving. So, as long as you avoid that fourth option you should be good to go. It doesn't bring your saves back, but hopefully it'll make you feel a little better knowing you aren't alone.

The best thing about Digital Press is that no matter how obscure a game is, there is pretty much always someone who has it. Thank you so much for the info. I suppose the one good thing is that my boyfriend picked the fourth option before saving his game, so at least he didn't lose his new King's Field file as well. Not that it makes a huge difference, though. His file was just at the very beginning, so it's nothing like a file with 100 hours of progress. He lost a bunch of good files too from US King's Field 1 and 2 and Breath of Fire 3 and such. He wasn't in the middle of them like my Tactics Ogre and he's already beaten those games before, but he was still planning on getting back to them eventually.

I think I'll probably experient with the card before I seriously use it for anything again. We definitely won't be selecting that fourth option anymore, but the weirdo file freaks me out. I'll try saving some Japanese and US files on it, and I'll see what happens after playing and saving with King's Field.

[Aussie2B]

Sorry to hear about the loss. I lost all the data on my PS2 card last month due to a glitch in my new Action Replay Max.....all my progress in games like Mega Man Collection, Gradius V, Front Mission 4, and others. :(

You might check GameFAQ's to see if there is a save for the game, even though it's Japanese. Maybe there's one at the end of the game. Then you can pick up a Dex Drive cheap, download the save, and not lose much of your progress.

It's the US version of Tactics Ogre, so region isn't an issue. There are some saves on GameFAQs, but none of them resemble my file. There's one at the very end of the game, but it's not the path I took and it's hacked to have nearly everything in the game. Plus I'm less concerned about the final battle and the ending than all the other battles in the final chapter that I'd be missing and the rest of the bonus dungeon. The closest normal file is the one at the beginning of the Lawful chapter 3, but that would leave me with well over a chapter to do plus the bonus dungeon. *sigh* I'm just not into using other people's files; it's not the same. :( My own personal character building and developing is what makes these types of games for me.

[slip81]

Sorry to hear about your bad luck :( I've lost many a save RPG to bad batteries and my own plain stupidity by just accidentally deleating saved games.

And I also had the same feeling of not wanting to play the games any more. But if you're anything like me you'll get the urge to play it again and then you'll have a bunch of fun spending another 100 hours on a game you love. Usually for me it takes about a year after something like that happens.