Lost or Deleted Save File stories

[The Biznut]

I was about to respond to some devastating stories of lost save files on the "ever cried at a video game?" thread, but I think I'll start a new thread.

Backstory: I was the kid who for years didn't have a game system because my parents didn't want us to have one. My grandparents went behind their back to get us a Nintendo, and then afterwards, it was always a struggle to get a new system. Usually they were inherited from friends who were upgrading to the next gen. Needless to say all my gaming happened at friends houses.

I played the FFVII demo and was immediately obsessed, I needed to play this game. So once my best friend got it, I was over at his house all the time, playing whenever I could. I would save to his memory card, and continue when I came back. The problem was, he would buy more games and need more save space, so my files would be the ones to go, and he wouldn't tell me or try to back them up.

I had just gotten out of Midgar when this happened the first time.

I had just gotten a chocobo when it happened the second time.

I got to the last boss before leaving Midgar the third time.

I had just gotten out of Midgar again when it happened the fourth time.

I got to the save right before the crazy motorcycle minigame the fifth time it happened.

It happened two more times before I got my own memory card and started the save file that I eventually finished the game with.

I would have gotten my own memory card faster if hadn't been promised it would never happen again. EVERY TIME! How naive I was.

It didn't bother me the first two times because I seem to enjoy the beginnings of RPG's the most. It's the knowledge that you have a lot of game ahead of you. The excitement of beginnings. After the 4th time, it was getting a bit tedious though. I started carrying my Playstation memory card in my wallet cause I still didn't have one. I did the same with a PS2 memcard, had one before I ever had the system.

I accidentally paid it forward by deleting another friends FFVIII file with 80 hours on it a few years later. He was devastated, and even though it was 8 years ago, he still manages to bring it up, lol.

SOOOOO That's the story of how I got through Midgar 7 times before really ever touching Disc II.

There's better stories out there, lets hear em!

[Emunator]

My younger brother used to compulsively delete all of our game files. Invariably, if we let him play anything, it would end up deleted the next day. Almost everything I played during the SNES or N64 era was affected at one point or another, and no amount of scolding or yelling stopped him until he finally got a clue on his own.

This is tangentially related, but on another instance, he woke up in the middle of the night and apparently didn't feel like walking to the bathroom, so he pissed right onto our Nintendo 64, with Diddy Kong Racing inserted I think it caused the game to temporarily glitch up (don't ask why I was still playing it after that incident, it was sufficiently cleaned up) because when we started the game later it had unlocked a bunch of characters and tracks that we'd never had before. They went away after we shut down the game, but it was probably the only good that could ever come from taking a leak onto a gaming system

I also had a few carts (DKC2, for example) that would automatically delete themselves after beating them. I've run through the game about 5 times and every time I'll find the file slot empty when I return a week later.

[nrich]

i felt justified in this thread to be finally bitching about the time i got the hilda garde in ffix for the first time after slaving hours and hours into the game only to have my entire memory card /quit on me. sure i lost a ton of other game files but it was ffix that mattered the most. i still haven't beaten the game to this day even after that incident years ago :\

...then i read the biznut's post and felt like a puss. your friend was such a blowhard

[Zup]

I am, was, is an idiot.

My freshman year of college, I had brought my gamecube games to college with me, but forgot my memory card with all my save data. I had an old gray one with 59 blocks and no save data, so we just started a new save in order to play some multiplayer. Smash Bros. Melee was a gaming event and we played it for the first few weeks of the term.

I still didn't know my housemates too well. One of them was an incredibly good Melee player, beating my butt up and down the floor everytime we played. My card was normally plugged into the machine. So when I fired up a new game (Baten Kaitos Origins) I had to delete a few save games to make up room for it. I chose smash, thinking my friends wouldn't mind now that I had my real card.

Without my knowing it, the guy who rocked at Smash had gone home and gotten his memory card, with eveything unlocked on it. I deleted his smash save, thinking it was mine.

Needless to say, when he confronted me about it, I was quaking with fear. He was angry, but surprisingly forgiving. While he could never get his hours back or his entire collection of trophies (yeah, he had all of them), he did beat and unlock everything within two days and then for good measure, unlocked a few things on my melee save file on my actual memory card.

And surprisingly, he and I became quite good friends.

[Doulifée]

two come into mind:

Ace combat 5, i was talking with a friend on the phone and instead of loadind i saved a starting game over my save. i was near the Ace completion. was forced to restart from the "i completed my first game in hard"

Mother 3, emulated on psp. i changed the memory stick to do something else (i use my psp as an ebook reader) only to realise afterward that the normal save was on the psp memory and are now gone.

[WillRock]

When I got my playstation 2, it came with a 16 mb memory card that needed a disc to run on the playstation everytime I started it up to make it work.

One day, the disc stopped working, and as a result lost EVERYTHING saved on all my games. boohiss.

[PROTO·DOME]

Not so much a frustrating story as a lucky one. I had a copy of Pokémanz FireRed (second hand Pokémon games are super unreliable) and I'd played for 150 hours or something stupid. So anyway I wanted to give my brother a battle on Colosseum but, of course, FireRed isn't compatible so I traded my whole team over to Ruby. Ruby was pretty much devoid of any good Pokémon as they'd all been traded over to FireRed...

As I turned on my GBA with FireRed in to trade my team back over, it gave me the lovely "Save file is corrupted" message. Whilst really really pissed off with the fact my Pokédex was wiped and I'd lost a bunch of AWESOME pokémon, I was super lucky in that my best six had been saved. They are still with me today, residing in Pokémon Diamond.

So yeah, moral of the story: every second hand Pokémanz game I have has corrupted at some point. Don't buy them second hand.

[Ray Falling]

This is why I hate sharing

I used to live at my mom's place for a while when in highschool, and I had all my consoles neatly set up in my own tiny room.

Then came my sister and her boyfriend, out of the blue, to visit my mom. I came home later, and noticed someone had been playing on my N64!

So I turn on my Ocarina of Time game, and to my horror I find my BEST savegame evah! to be deleted...gone...vanished ;_;

To make matters worse, it seems that the culprit got so bored with the opening cinematic, that he never got around to playing/saving the game.

So I'm sitting there, watching the darn opening cinematic, getting more angry with every second. T__T: WHY??????? Was it all for nothing???

u_u; to this day, I don't easily let people play my games and I OCD on saving games in multiple save slots

Still, even that won't keep me from making mistakes myself **accidentitly overwrites his best FF6 savefile**.

[Dj Mokram]

I imported Lufia Fortress of Doom on the SNES back in the days.

To play it, you had to use some sort of action replay thing, where you put one cartridge from your region on the back, and the imort game on top.

I started my game, and played until I could save, so that I could stop and get something to eat. When I loaded the file back... well, there was no file to load.

It acted as if it was saving, but then I realized when I came back to load next that the previous save wasn't there.

Unfortunately, the action replay was corrupting the save files for this particular game.

But here's the most epic part: the next day, I decided to finish the game in one sitting. How naive...

I probably played it for 10hrs non-stop, without eating, and still wasn't at the end of the walkthrough in the game manual.

Can you imagine that? The puny 'how to get started' guide took more than 10hrs to get done!!

Anyway, I played 2 more hours, and then exhausted, definitely gave up on the game.

Needless to say, I threw the dreaded device in the bin, but kept some fond memories of Lufia.

And since that time, I always make sure to save every 5 minutes on every game I play.

[Deathtank]

10hs non-stop playing?!?!? ZOMG! how did you survive?!?! didnt you read the manual, thats potentially dangerous!

[TheSnowStorm]

I'm the compete opposite of this. I'm the douchebag who usually deletes your save file because you're a freeloading S.O.B.

[EdgeCrusher]

A friend once bet me I couldn't play NBA Jam TE for SNES, set it to the max length quarter times on the highest setting, and go undefeated the max amount of games it would record. I did it for 255 games, undefeated. The game stopped counting wins after that. Then mysteriously a week later, the cart stopped working. I don't know if I overplayed it or what. But I lost all of that. Luckily I showed my friend that it stopped counting at 255 before it happened.

[LuketheXjesse]

I've had this happen to me plenty of times over the years, but I honestly can't remember any times other than Luigi's Mansion off the top of my head.

[Skummel Maske]

I was a real nut for Pokemon red/blue back in the days. I used to compete alot with my neighbour and cousin. There'd recently been a Nintendo event in Norway that gave us our first opportunity to get Mew without cheating. It wasn't anywhere nearby, so I had to send my cartridge by mail to actually get it.

In other words, I finally had 151. I had a huge selection of lvl 100's as well.

One day, my little brother stole the game and brought it to school. I think he was about 8 at the time. Unlike the later games, the first games didn't have any safeguard for saving new games over old ones. I suppose you can all guess what happened.

It pissed me off immensely.

[Thalzon]

When I got my playstation 2, it came with a 16 mb memory card that needed a disc to run on the playstation everytime I started it up to make it work.

One day, the disc stopped working, and as a result lost EVERYTHING saved on all my games. boohiss.

I got one of those. Stopped using it when the disc got so cracked around the middle. Fortunately, I was able to back up everything.

Biggest loss for me was in college, when I had to hand in a maya project. It was a modeling project, and I got it done weeks in advance, and just for fun I put a rig on the thing so I could pose it a bit.

The dude date came. The file corrupted. I belted out a big no.

Fortunately, my professor allowed me to hand in my unreal 3 file which had the model completely viewable. Never again will I make only one save file.

[Sole Signal]

I had my Ocean Palace remix about 80% completed when it froze while trying to save. Somehow the .flp was corrupted and I lost everything. Thankfully, the recreation of the track still turned out great and became an OCRemix, Aqueous Transgression. Since then I always have multiple saves of significant tracks.

[BlackPanther]

I had my Ocean Palace remix about 80% completed when it froze while trying to save. Somehow the .flp was corrupted and I lost everything. Thankfully, the recreation of the track still turned out great and became an OCRemix, Aqueous Transgression. Since then I always have multiple saves of significant tracks.

I've had this problem before except it happens ALL the time which is why I save multiple instances of ALL of my projects now xD.

[JCvgluvr]

My story began when I first got Metroid Prime Trilogy. I was having a blast with it, yadda yadda. The problems began when I started turning my Wii on. It would go straight to a black screen with no text, and no sound. I'd turn the Wii off, then back on, same problem. Finally, after trying about 10 times or so, the Wii started working normally. That is, until Samus got her arm glitched into her beam cannon, mid-weapon-switch. I had read about these kind of hardware problems before, and decided that it was probably time to send my Wii to Nintendo (it is a launch Wii, after all). Besides, everyone says they've got great customer service and will send the system back really fast, so I figured, why not?

Got a box, contacted Nintendo, printed off the mailing label, sent them my corrupted system, and finally got my system back a little over a week later...or so I thought. I checked the piece of paper that came with the box, and the technicians indicated that this wasn't actually my original system. They decided to exchange my old system with a new one, and never bothered to tell me until afterwards! Okay, not a bad deal, right? $250.00 saved, yeah? Sure, that's all great...until I fired up "my" system.

Every bit of save data from every one of my games...was completely gone. Super Smash Bros. Brawl? Gone. Mariokart Wii? Gone. Twilight Princess? Gone. All the dozens of games I ever rented from Gamefly? Gone. These are all games that I'd completed 100%. But that wasn't all! Miis? Gone. All Virtual Console and Wiiware games? Gone.

RAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, naturally, I call them and politely inquire: "WTF IS GOING ON?!?!" After a lengthy, repetitive, hour-long conversation with both the tech rep and his supervisor, all they came up with was basically: "Sorry, sometimes it happens, we should have told you before we replaced your system, our bad, but you're out of luck." I even asked them, "Why didn't you guys bother to at least try and transfer some data with an SD card?" (And before you mention it, yes, I know that not all game's data can transer, like SSBB, for instance.) But they point is, they could've at least TRIED to transfer something! But no, I was left with a blank slate, and 3 years of Wii gaming sent down the crapper.So, I was forced to go thru Sub-space Emissary a third time, which felt more painful than sticking a toothpick under my fingernail. Then I had to race through a couple of MKWii's grand prixs, getting pelted with cpu's blue shells in every single race.

However, at least I was allowed to re-download every game from the Wii's store without any extra charge. Of course, all of each game's data stayed erased, but whatever.

[MaxFrost]

My brother and I would accidentally erase each others games all the time. Usually no hard feelings, as we're both pretty good gamers, and it wasn't too hard to get back to where the other person was. So there really wasn't any real raging until accidentally nuked his 100% FF6 save (everybody knew every spell, ever, and every single possible item gotten, all level 99. How he did that, I don't know.)

I don't think I ever quite lived that down until someone nuked my all gold tracks completed file on Diddy Kong Racing. I even had the extra backup saves done, but some scrubby kid (who shall remain unnamed) deleted all the files. I never played DKR again after that (that game was 2nd only to smash bros before that)

[SoloGamer]

My sister deleted my 120 hour FFX save once. Made me so mad, I punched her in the face.

Then I ditched my prom date (because real gamers don't have girlfriends) and started to rebuild.

[Brandon Strader]

My PSX memory card crapped out with my Final Fantasy 8 save, it wasn't even a particularly far along save, maybe disc 2. But I was a kid, and I think I had just gotten the game. I got so pissed that I chopped the hell out of the memory card with hedge clippers and threw "it" away. Or what counted as "it" by that point.

I was staying with my Grandma for a couple weeks at the time, she was mad when she found out I cut it up and threw it away, but then we ended up going out and buying a new one because the playstation was all I had to entertain me with while I was there.

[The Coop]

Sega Saturn battery back-up used for the in-system saves. Not having a back-up RAM cart for years. Battery dies. 'Nuff said.

I haven't had too many carts turn on me (knocks on wood like a mother fucker), save for the Performance back-up RAM carts for the Saturn. I went through four of those damn things in one year, because they kept dying (thankfully, I got free replacements... over and over). I lost so many saves because of that.

Cheap parts + compressed memory =

[JackKieser]

Oh, man. I'll never forget the most painful savegame loss in my life. The game was the GCN version of Phantasy Star Online, and I was absolutely addicted to it, as was my friend/neighbor/gaming buddy. We played the game almost non-stop; in fact, we played it so much that we decided to abuse a drop mechanic (drops get better the longer you play without turning the game off) by playing the game for 72 hours straight, which ended up frying my Gamecube's cooling and breaking my system.

We eventually got to around lvl 87 or so, almost 90. We both had AMAZING equips and could take out enemies and bosses in record time. We had logged in over 210 hours total into the game. So, when my family decided to make me take a break from gaming to take a trip to Florida with them in an RV, I brought my 'cube with me so I could still level. One day, we had parked in an RV park and got notice that a hurricane was heading for Florida, and so we were told to evacuate. While my parents were learning about this, I was inside playing PSO. My dad yelled to me the situation and told me to turn everything off, and I yelled to him to wait for a minute so I could save. I start saving... and all of the sudden, I lose power. I beg for him to turn the power back on for a second, and when I boot up, my save (as well as my friend's save) is corrupted.

Needless to say, I lost it. ...I haven't played that game since; it's been at least 5 years.

[Schwaltzvald]

Had all of my saved data on PCB inexplicably erased all because while I had it paused and tried to alt-tab so I could read a message sent to me, mid screen-switch I accidentally dropped my headset onto the keyboard. It pressed some keys and essentially frozed PCB, thus forcing me to quit it manually.

Next time I ran it, all of my records had disappeared. It didn't even remember me having access to extra and phantasm mode...

Was mad for a couple of minutes till I realized I could perfect my records.

Still... son of bitch...

[ZealPath]

I may not have any stories about "deleted" save files, since my brother and I always got along well enough to the point where we wouldn't delete each other's files, but lost files? Oh man, too many to count.

The thing I remember most distinctly was with the FF4 ("FF2") cartridge for SNES, I can think of at least 2, maybe 3 times where I'd turn the console on and bam, all 4 slots were that blue color and said "empty". Very depressing at the time, although I don't believe it happened until we had managed to finish the game a few times, still, losing save files with "everything" was pretty painful, I can definitely remember crying about it one time .

The other thing I remember about that happening is feeling the need to start a new game RIGHT NOW AND TRY TO GET EVERYTHING BACK AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE, as if it were my job or something. It kinda reminds me of how one might feel about MMORPG items now, like they're some sort of tangible possesion you're happy to own.

I don't believe I ever suffered though that with FF6 or Zelda ALttP, but I think it may have happened once with Super Metroid and another with Ogre Battle (ouch). It also happened several times with Zelda 1 for the NES, but that cartridge was pretty ancient and I almost didn't blame it (yeah don't worry, I held reset turning it off ).

Good thing we have memory cards now, I have yet to lose anything on those, but by the sounds of it, maybe I shouldn't be so cocky...