Your worst save file accident?

[Johnny Novgorod]

I've always had a save file phobia, fearing someday...

... the console I was gaming on would betray me the morning after and show a clean slate of EMPTY SLOTS as I tried to load back my game (i.e. I mentioned this in another thread: my GameBoy went Alzheimer's on my Pokemon Gold)...

... or that I would accidentally save past the "point of no return" (i.e. the Ark of Yamato in Okami)...

... or that a friend I was having over would record his progress over my progress (i.e. I played Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction the whole Summer before my cousin saved his insipid progress over my file)...

...or that yours truly would make the same idiot mistake (i.e. erased my Sora endgame with my Riku file in Kingdom Hearts re: Chain of Memories).

Until I learned to emulate a GameBoy, save on several slots, and swipe Memory Cards in between having a friend and playing a game on my own.

Title question. Worst saving accidents/mishaps? Harder as this is to do on the current generation, I'm sure we all have Memory Card days.

 

[Redd the Sock]

Before I did backups my first PS1 memory card bit the dust. I lost full saves for Final Fantasy 7, 8 and Tactics, Parasite eve, Xenogears, and a few other RPGs. I cried. I guess we all have to learn to back things up the hard way.

Then there's the battery backed carts with one save file of the olden days. A friend started a new game killing my old file more than once until I hid those.

Today, yeah, if there's any legitimate avenue for backing up saves I take it.

 

[MarsProbe]

Most of save game accidents happened many moons ago, so have trouble remembering most of them. One thing that sticks in my mind was while playing Tomb Raider 3, I fell in some water that would have warranted the loading of an earlier save as there was no way back out of the water, save drowning perhaps. Being as lazy as I was, I rarely ever made a "proper" save, relying solely on the quicksave function. So (and you can probably see where this is going) I went to hit quickload and ended up quicksaving my game instead.

That was a terrible pain, as I had to restart the level over.

Something similar happened in Half-Life, I did a proper save right at the start of a particular level, but then just started quicksaving as I went along. Everything went fine, until I managed to quicksave what seemed like a nanosecond before the control panel I was standing next to exploded, killing me instantly. It took me a good number of reloads to realise that I lacked the superhuman powers that would have enabled me to get out of the way of the explosion in time.

 

[teqrevisited]

My completed Pokémon Red cartridge wiped itself one day. I once accidentally saved a new file over a file on Final Fantasy 8 when I'd just remembered to draw all of the boss GFs. Not so much of a big deal to me now. The worst part was that as soon as I accepted I realized what I'd done and could only watch in horror as the progress bar shot across the screen.

The worst in recent memory is a Mega Drive game that I was playing on an emulator, just in case the battery died whilst I was completing it (I have both the game and console before anyone asks), and I got right to the end. I attempted the last boss once, got killed and decided to call it a day. I came back to it the next day and was greeted with the message "Save file corrupt". The amount of grinding in that game is so obscene that a lot of the time I sped it up. Even the game itself has such options though. I was so annoyed that I left it for at least another week before I started again on the console itself, which hasn't let me down so far.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Let see-

F-Zero: Maximum Velocity suddenly got wiped. I first blame at my school mate who I thought he deleted it when he had a good on my GBA but I realise he didn't intentionally did it cos of the name he put in the saved file (he jsut type aaa imply he wanted to played asap). It really annoyed me because I had unlocked every single F Zero and all but one had gotten 1st place in every tracks (the last F Zero was just too slow to accelarate and turning).

Phantasy Star Zero somehow got corrupted. In saying so I should be thankful for that as the second time I redid it I had better loots.

Timesplitter 3. Technically this was my brother fault as he shut the game during saving time meaning the file was lost. It took me ages to replayed my progress.

 

[Bob_F_It]

I can't think of any I've had...

...maybe because if what happened with my brother's Gran Turismo 2 file. At first he accidentally starting saving the game after he'd sold a bunch of cars to use the credits to preview an expensive car. But then he pulled the memory card out halfway through the save. He tried to reload the game; needless to say it was dead. Fortunately I had my own save on another card which he copied.

 

[aguspal]

I had a few of them back in the psone era

Right now, thougt, I have a folder dedicated to just backups of various games I play

 

[ShinyCharizard]

I had an almost 100% complete save file on GTA Vice City which my brother promptly deleted after we had a fight.... I cried.

 

[Z of the Na'vi]

I had an almost 100% complete save file on GTA Vice City which my brother promptly deleted after we had a fight.... I cried.

My brother did the same thing to me, but with my copy of Pokemon Blue.

I was standing right in front of Mewtwo at the time.

 

[BabySinclair]

I was playing JK: Jedi Academy on my PC utilizing my quick saves (such a nice feature) on the Corellia mission that takes place on a moving train. Was moving onto the last train car and the end of the mission when the Dark Jedi I was leaping at Force Pushed me mid jump. I started plummeting to my death so I hit the quick load button, or what I thought was the quick load. Instead I quick-saved a split second before my demise. I promptly switched from being neutral to the Dark Side for a bit having to replay the entire mission.

 

[MajorTomServo]

When I was little, I was about 80% through a game of Crash Bandicoot 2. I felt like seeing how fast I could run through the first couple of levels, since I was getting pretty good at it. After starting a new game and beating the first level, I went and saved out of habit, not realizing what I was doing. As soon as I realized I was overwriting my almost-done game, I sprang up, ripped out the memory card, and turned off the console, hoping to interrupt it in time. But it was too late, I had to start from scratch...

 

[Vigormortis]

The worst that's ever happened to me was either save file corruption or an update forcing the game to use a different format of save file; rendering my old ones useless.

However, years ago my old programming teacher had a run-in with bad save scumming. It was an event that I actually witnessed.

First some background. He was an avid gamer. During lulls in class he'd sometimes play games on his computer. In some occasions, he'd even game with the students. He also had a tendency to do two things:

1: Press the quick-save key often
2: Delete any superfluous save files

One day, during a class, he was playing Half-Life or Thief or something. Can't recall what. Regardless, at one point, while attempting to jump over a pit (and missing) he accidentally hit quick save.

It hadn't dawned on him what he'd done. However, the moment he loaded the save, he immediately plummeted to his death. Which caused him to let out a barely audible sigh.

Now, as annoying as it was, he thought to himself that he could just load an older save. It'd be a bit tedious to have to run through everything again, but at least he could continue.

However, when he opened the Load Game menu, there was only one save in there.

Now worried, he exited the game and went to the folder wherein the save files were stored. But, before he even got there, he realized what he'd done. Just a few minutes prior, he had deleted all but the most recent save file. Which, wouldn't normally have been an issue as he normally loads from the latest save and then immediately creates a new save.

This day, though, he forgot to do that. So every time he hit quick save it was saving over the only save file he had. Once he confirmed this by glancing at the now virtually empty save folder, he half-barked a "fuck!" though his teeth.

Of course, the whole class heard him and directed their eyes in his direction; many of them wide-eyed and slack-jawed.

He just leaned to the side, exposing his face from behind his monitor, and said, "What? Just get back to work."

After class, I asked him what the "fuck" was all about. It took every bit of my fortitude to keep from laughing after he told me the tale.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

I had an almost 100% complete save file on GTA Vice City which my brother promptly deleted after we had a fight.... I cried.

My brother did the same thing to me, but with my copy of Pokemon Blue.

I was standing right in front of Mewtwo at the time.

Ouch that sucks. Pokemon games and their stupid one save spot are notorious for that kind thing.

 

[piinyouri]

Two stand out in my memory.
One was playing Morrowind on my Xbox.
First time playing the game, and I had started and abandoned probably 4 characters trying to find something that worked well.
Finally got a good dunmer archer going and it became the file I did everything with. I forgot how big the save file was, but it took about 2 minutes to save. Anywho after doing pretty much everything with this dunmer and make a few other characters (this game had to be the start of my alt obsession) and I was playing one of them one night, and accidentally saved over my main file.

I panicked, and before the save bar was full I turned the Xbox off, knowing well that I may have just corrupted the whole thing. Amazingly after I turned it back on everything was there, and it didn't finish writing the save so my main file was still there. : D


The other was Phantasy Star Universe. I played offline and my main file was a cast ranger, around level 146 or so. As you can guess, I eventually had one of all the other races too.
Eventually ended up saving over my cast ranger with a lv 24 hu force.
"FUCK"
I just turned the game off and leaned back in my chair and let the despair and sorrow wash over me.


I also had to play the Midgar part of Final Fantasy 7 at least 3 times because for whatever reason my memory card would corrupt, or erase my data right after I got out of that place.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

Recently my PS3 broke down, not a PS Plus member, I figured, like the Xbox I have, you could just put the hard drive in and it'd be all good...

Lost everything, because my old PS3 doesn't even turn on anymore, so I couldn't USB anything and you have to format the damn hard drive to use it in any other machine. What a stupid f%&$ing system. I was on chapter 16 of Valkyria Chronicles and now I have to start over, as well as many other games.

Who the hell thought it was a good idea to do that with the system!?

 

[crimson sickle2]

Not really a mishap, but back during the PS1 times, my first memory card one day decided it couldn't save any more data and we couldn't edit any data on it. It just decided to die. Kind of sad, luckily, this was before I got into RPGs.

 

[lacktheknack]

Most of save game accidents happened many moons ago, so have trouble remembering most of them. One thing that sticks in my mind was while playing Tomb Raider 3, I fell in some water that would have warranted the loading of an earlier save as there was no way back out of the water, save drowning perhaps. Being as lazy as I was, I rarely ever made a "proper" save, relying solely on the quicksave function. So (and you can probably see where this is going) I went to hit quickload and ended up quicksaving my game instead.

That was a terrible pain, as I had to restart the level over.

Not to cause alarm, but I specifically went looking for water situations like this, due to my own save phobias (I keep four saves in cycle at all times), and couldn't find any. Where was this inescapable water?

OT: None. See the above four-save cycle.

 

[Nooners]

Pokemon Blue, battery died. At a friend's house while we were preparing for battle, no less. Sigh...

Also, I learned the evils of only having one save file when my little brother unwittingly saved over my lvl 30 Dark Elf in Oblivion. And now there's a new file every time I save...

 

[SomebodyNowhere]

I quicksave a lot and a time that it really came back to bite me was in dragon age origins awakening. I had been playing for a good stretch and I got to a part in the game where my team and I got abducted and we had all our gear taken. Naturally after showing up in the new area I quicksaved periodically as I went through the section. Unfortunately when I got to the end of the sequence chest that should contain all the removed items, I found out a glitch had happened at the start of the section causing all the best armor that I had carried over from the first game to be gone completely. My closest hard save was hours back and I didn't feel like going back through it so I rage quit the game. A few months later I had a hard drive death and never did get back to the game. Some day I should probably give it another go.

That same hard drive death also lost me my Fallout 3 play-throughs(with the exception of a few broken steel missions I had finished that one) and my Mass Effect 1 and 2 play-throughs.

 

[EHKOS]

I was playing Prince of Persia WW, trying to get the water sword. I was on a roll, getting all the fountains, until three hours after I started (having not saved once) the game froze in a cutscene. I had to restart the whole game because I didn't know which fountains I got or not. Still never beat it the %100 true way. Sand wraith was cool though....