Tell us your game data loss stories

[Dio Brando]

Nothing is more frustrating than dedicating time and effort to some game, only to have your progress completely gone due to an overwrite, data corruption, or some bizarre act of god beyond your control.

I have had my fair share of game data losses, but probably my biggest one was about a year ago when I let a friend play my copy of Metal Slug 7 during a day trip, only to find my data completely gone the next time I played. I put about twenty hours into the combat school missions and had the third highest ranking, so I was pretty irritated.

 

[imsusan]

Sorry to hear that...
Game data loss is really annoying.

 

[Fritz]

Having my Diablo II account hacked about 10 years ago, had a level 96 character among others. Still pisses me off thinking about it. Thats one thing I really liked about the monthly fee services, your character can be recovered if that kind of shit goes down.

 

[K_K]

when gran turismo 4 came out i didn't have a PS2 to play it on, but i had a friend who did, and who quickly got bored with games. so he played it a while, got bored, and i would go over to his house and play it. well on his file i managed to get 98% completion. i only had a couple more races to go. mind you this meant i'd done some of the 8 hour, and even one of the two 24 hour, races in the game. i'd gotten gold on all the drivers license tests, beaten every race i could in first place, even the hardest one in the game the opel speedster race. i had nearly completed the game.

but one day i was over there playing it, when my friend's dad came in the room and told us to get out of the house he had people coming over. fine, makes sense, have company coming you want your unemployed son, and his employed but still lazy friends to go somewhere else for a while. we can do that. i exit the race i was in, go back to the main screen and the game starts automatically saving. when his dad goes "get a move on dammit" and turns off the PS2. i didn't say anything because he was already irate, i'd wager his girlfriend was coming over or something and he didn't want her to see us laying around making noise and being dumb. (we were all about 19 at the time so it would have been par for the course.) but so we get outside, and get into the car, and i tell my buddy what happened. he just goes "oh shit, are you serious. that games gone dude, sorry about my dad." and so for a few hours we hung out at the movies or something to kill some time. and i went back to my house as i had work the next day. i came back over a couple days later, turned on GT4, and found that the game had been completely wiped, nothing was there. it was a dark day indeed.

 

[Takumaji]

Last time I had this problem was when RE4 on GC was new. Played it like mad for weeks, had just finished Mercs and unlocked all extras when all of a sudden the memcard (original Nintendo) decidet to crap out on me. Pissed me off to no end.

 

[Xian Xi]

FF7, my card crapped out after I went from disc 2 to 3 and played disc 3 until I fought that ruby monster or whatever it was then, BLACKOUT. Fucking great.

 

[NebraskaDragon]

Worst one from recent memory was my fault. I was playing Twilight Princess when the Wii had just come out. I had put about 3 hours into it, finished off a dungeon and was into another when I got a phone call so I paused the game. I was on the phone for about an hour, so long that that I forgot what I was doing. By the time I was off the phone I had to leave for an appointment so I quickly put my shoes and jacket on, grabbed my keys, and shut off my TV and Wii. As soon as I hit that power button I realized what I had done. I was so mad.

I haven't played Twilight Princess since.

 

[Ancient Flounder]

Had a PS2 memory card completely wipe itself out right after creating save data on it for MGS3's online mode on it and playing some rounds. Had a lot of old saves on there that went kaput, including my save for MGS3 itself, which at everything unlocked on it fairly (I still hate the kerotans to this day).

Combine that with the cheaters and it made me had MGO back then a lot.

 

[Taiso]

I had a massive save file on my Final Fantasy III cartridge for SNES back in the day. I took it over to a friend's house to show him the ending and plugged the cartridge into his pro fighter backwards because at that time, I didn't know how to plug games into a pro fighter-it was one of those dual SNES-Genesis versions. All my data...gone.

I was so pissed off I took the cartridge home and started a new game right up. In three days, I had all my content back. Except for Gau's learned beast abilities. I didn't feel like farming the Veldt all over again. Didn't matter because I barely used Gau anyway. Still, it was fucking annoying.

I've also seen numerous PSX/PSOne memory cards just die out on me. These were Sony cards, which surprised me because normally 1st party hardware is super reliable, especially compared to the crappy 3rd party alternatives at the time (Nyko, Madcatz.) At the time, it pissed me off to see entire memory cards die and be unusable after that, but now I couldn't even tell you what game saves I actually lost.

 

[Magician]

Just recently with DCUO, my first character's data became corrupt. 100+ hours of work...gone. Then again just last night my second character's data became corrupt as I logged off. I quickly logged back in to check if everything was alright and the game wasn't crashing like it had with my first character corruption.

If my second DCUO character is nuked when I get home from work today I will be done with DCUO for good.

 

[SonGohan]

I remember back in'96 I moved to Oklahoma. The first friend I made was a huge RPG gamer, and on lunch one day he was showing me his perfect game on Chrono Trigger. All stats were maxed out, which took time back then. After fiddling with his save, I started a new game and dicked around, before we realized lunch was over so I quickly saved my game right over his perfect game. To this day, he still brings it up.

 

[beh3moth]

Does 'deletion by user' count? :P

I was at the last disc of Panzer Dragoon Saga on the Saturn.

Running very short on cash at the time. This guy I knew wanted to buy my whole setup including all the games for a decent cash price, so I reluctanlty decided to sell it to him. He payed me up front and asked me to remove any savedata and to get everything bundled up ready for him to collect later that day.

He turns up at the agreed time and as I prepare to hand the goods over I notice what I could only assume was his mother standing behind him, she was looking kinda serious. At this point the guy sheepishly asked if it was OK to cancel our deal and if he could have the money back.

I hadn't spent it at that point and perhaps foolishly handed him back the cash. (It actually turned out he stole it from his mother - he must have been mid-twenties at the time).

Either way I ended up with my stuff back and minus my savegames. I just couldn't be bothered to play PD Saga through from scratch.

 

[cannonball]

I've been lucky all these years. Never had a single data loss. It will happen now though.

 

[TonK]

Final Fantasy Legend 2 - still don't know what happened.

Got done playing.

Was at Arsenal... Lost the fight, turned it off, then back on real quick.

Data gone.

 

[Late]

As a kid, a Secret of Mana cart just glitched and lost a save which had the Mana Sword + everything maxed out. Weird thing though that the cart worked perfectly afterwards.

 

[Taiso]

I remember back in'96 I moved to Oklahoma. The first friend I made was a huge RPG gamer, and on lunch one day he was showing me his perfect game on Chrono Trigger. All stats were maxed out, which took time back then. After fiddling with his save, I started a new game and dicked around, before we realized lunch was over so I quickly saved my game right over his perfect game. To this day, he still brings it up.

Does he bring it up in a joking sense, to give you shit and you can all sort of sarcastically laugh about it? Or is he still upset on some legitimate level, even if minor.

I know that with my crew, we jokingly poke at one another about stupid shit we've done over the years:

"Hey Taiso, how's that FF III save data?"

"Pretty good. Did you evern fix your ASCII Stick so the turbo buttons weren't stuck?"

"Yeah. Have you burned anyone lately with your car cigarette lighter?"

"About as often as you spill Sprite on peoples' laptops."

And on and on. It's fun!

 

[k'_127]

I have a backward-compatible PS3 (via emulation), and during some rare brief hick-ups, the system wouldn't detect the PS2 memory card when I try to save a PS2 game. But it works fine when I attempt to save again. Somehow, this has caused my 60-hours Yakuza 2 save file to disappear once (perhaps the hick-up occurred while saving or something). By then, I already had done everything that could be done in the game, from owning every item / weapon and trying all foods ... etc. I just had to complete the second walk-through that I was in, so I wasn't that pissed lol.

I also lost my Castlevania DoS save file that had all weapons / sould / items and with just 100% completion of everything. I was using a fake R4, so I had that coming.



Would have pissed me off to no end if the I have lost the save file near the end of my 100% completion in either cases.

 

[TonK]

As a kid, a Secret of Mana cart just glitched and lost a save which had the Mana Sword + everything maxed out. Weird thing though that the cart worked perfectly afterwards.

Did you glitch the 8th sword orb?

 

[LoneSage]

116 hours on Pokemon Blue, cousin comes over and does the same thing Wes did.

Man, the tears I shed that night. What a little bitch I was.

 

[genjiglove]

I wasn't aware that if you start a new game of Shinobi (PS2) it automatically saves over the old file. I did this while at a friend's house not long after the game came out. He had finally gotten to the last level but was having a hard time finishing the game. I started his game over again completely on accident. I don't think he's played it since.

 

[zapatistab]

When I had my PS3 repaired (new laser installed) I forgot to put all my save data on my flash drive. That was the first thing I should have done...I didn't even realize it until I brought the repaired system home and it was like turning on a new PS3. Only my PSN stuff was recovered...I had to reinstall my downloads (no biggy)

losing all that data was a real pain, but losing all my Master League data for Pro Evolution Soccer, was like watching Barca lose in the Champions League.

 

[Average Joe]

116 hours on Pokemon Blue, cousin comes over and does the same thing Wes did.

Man, the tears I shed that night. What a little bitch I was.

i remember playing Pokemon Yellow in one of my Math classes and the teacher took it out of my hands, looked at it for a few minutes trying to figure out how to shut it off and he came to the conclusion that you did so by just pulling the cartridge out

i think i had like 60+ hours in that game

 

[Nesagwa]

I erased my Card Fighters near 100% saves at least twice by either hitting the "New Game" button myself or letting someone start a new game to check the game out.

Unlike most other sane games (Pokemon, etc.) where a New Game just starts a new game until you save, the CFC option completely wipes out any other save game immediately before you even save the game.

What the fuck was SNK thinking?

 

[fenikso]

I erased my Card Fighters near 100% saves at least twice by either hitting the "New Game" button myself or letting someone start a new game to check the game out.

Unlike most other sane games (Pokemon, etc.) where a New Game just starts a new game until you save, the CFC option completely wipes out any other save game immediately before you even save the game.

What the fuck was SNK thinking?

Ive had this happen to me, too. 120+hrs and only missing 3 cards. Stupid fucking idea SNK.

 

[Xian Xi]

There are still game companies today that make that programming mistake.