Your worst save file accident?

[porous_shield]

My worse save incident that I remember was with Kings Quest 5. With every Sierra game you get an extra side of sadism so I was being very meticulous with saves, as slow and annoying as that was, and saving after I did anything. I'd finally got to the end area and promptly saved and I followed that up by promptly dying. The game starts me back at the beginning after dying and I wanted to give that last area one more shot before bed so I open the menu and notice I have a ton of save files so I decide to delete them all except my most recent one because the game couldn't screw me over now that I'm at the last puzzle. I delete the saves and load the last save file I made and the game loads the beginning area so I try it again and the same things happens and I probably did that five times before I came to the harsh realization that I had to do the game completely over again. The last save I made wasn't in the final area but one I made after dying when the game put me back at the beginning.

The game isn't that long and it's a point and click adventure so I should have been able to speed through the puzzles but I ended up stuck of hours on quite a few I couldn't remember the solution to.

 

[Karhukonna]

When I was a kid, I was obs... Screw that, I am obsessed with Breath of Fire III. However, as a child, I didn't exactly understand English, so I got stuck in Momo's tower. I thought you had to zap two cubes, not just one. Don't know what I'm talking about? Play BoF III, you're missing out. Anyways, I was stuck with this game for months. Months! And with the bullheadedness of a child, I kept trying. I kept failing. And failing with this particular puzzle places you earlier in the dungeon. So I failed, backtracked, tried, failed, backtracked, tried. Again and again, for months. Months!

Now, this dungeon is obviously hostile territory. Imagine me as a child, grinding for levels in an early game dungeon. At first, the exp was good, but after a while... But that puzzle had to be beat, so I still kept on grinding.

For months. Months! I was so godlike in the game as can be. Not max level, but definitely strong enough to take down any boss, maybe even the Berserker. So I was doing my usual routine one morning before school, just taking fifteen minutes to try and beat that dungeon. I did this every morning, by the way. For months! My step-dad called me to go, or I'd be late. I started rushing into the save room in-game, and finally made it. I was in the middle of a save when my step-dad rushed to the console, shuts it down and yells me to go to school.

That's right, folks. We're talking about hundreds of hours of early game power leveling. Not corrupted. Not safe. Just dead and gone.

...

...

For months! T_T

 

[JemJar]

I've never had any true disasters I suppose, a few "Oh god I didn't save for hours and now I'm dead" things, I've occasionally saved over savegames I meant to go back to (to try different choices) but nothing critical.

Worst thing I can think of at the moment is that I have a file called "spider.sav" on my computer which I keep rescuing every time I backup and I have NO IDEA what game it is a save file for.

 

[BlindTom]

Anachronox just ate my save file for no reason one day and now i'll never be able to play it because of all the retreading and the constant fear that it might happen again oh god Anachronox why?

 

[zzkill]

Hmm, Planescape: Torment. It's on the PC, no cartridge problem there, except it lacks auto-save from what I saw or it's so spaced that it could simply not be there. So, I was playing nicely, saved before major things in case things went to hell (decision-wise), everything ok. I pass the major decisions and keep playing. And keep playing. And keep doing that for 5 hours I think. And in one moment, poof. CTD. Well, a crash in an old game, nothing spectacular. Restart the game, load the save... Wait a minute, when was the last save? FUUUUUUUU-

And so, I have yet to play Planescape again after 2 months. But damn, this made a scar on my gaming soul and it has not faded away. Not to mention how much the combat takes in that game.

 

[garjian]

The only bad thing I can remember is saving over my most recent save of my first character on Skyrim, but I had a billion other saves so... wasn't much trouble. In fact, when I came back to that character, I didn't even notice for a while.

Which reminds me.
Sometimes, I listen to music on my Xbox via an old iPod nano. Sometimes, I get sick of my music mid game, and unplug it.
Skyrim forgets your selected storage device when you add/remove a device, so it can't autosave.
So it's late, I'm tired, I can't be bothered to save so I just leave it to autosave. I come the next day, and I don't remember any of the progress I made because I was that tired... but then a faint memory... "Didn't I already do this?" "I know I definitely came here... I know I did... didn't I?" ...It was bizarre. I thought I'd dreamed I'd made progress.
Then a week or so later I learnt about the storage device thing.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Once I got lost in a dark cave without Flash in Pokemon Gold. Being the small child I was, it didn't occur to me to reload the last save, or fight until all my Pokemon Struggled to death (I think I thought of Escape Ropes but didn't have any). So what did I do? New game. Best decision I ever made, Typhlosion errday.

 

[blink]

back when I was about 5-7 my brother was playing a run-through of donkey kong 64. There are three saves on this game and I SPECIFICALLY REMEMBER CHECKING WHICH SAVEFILE WAS HIS before I started my a new game. Nonetheless I started over on his account which was up to the final boss door and all he needed to do to get in was beat the original donkey kong. Neither of us have ever finished that game despite recent attempts

Spoiler: The following may be offensive to some people...

Also our N64 is broken now somehow. I don't know how it happened but it just won't turn on anymore. it broke my heart :'( </3

More recently on a emulator I finished pokemon emerald and was just out catching all the legendaries when one day it came up with *save file corrupted*...

How does that even happen on an emulator??

Anyways that wasn't all bad because there wasn't really anything else to do on that account and it prompted me to start a new account.

 

[AnthrSolidSnake]

My brother and I played hours of Terraria on PS3. One day I wanted to delete all the other saved worlds I didn't play anymore EXCEPT the one my brother and I worked so hard on. In the middle of deleting, my PS3 froze, restarted, and when it turned back on I found that all my Terraria files were still EXCEPT the one I didn't want to delete. WHY??!!

Also, my friend helped me for almost TWO MONTHS make a huge world in minecraft on an online server, and then my hard drive crapped out. All. Of. It. Was. Gone. Forever.

 

[Joshimodo]

My original XBox 360 (launch model) had a HDD failure.

Lost 500+ Oblivion hours.
Level 59 Mass Effect NG+ save with everything done apart from hitting level 60.
A lot of very good Halo 3 clips.
A lot of other stuff.


I answered the door while playing Pokémon Silver. I had almost every Pokémon (was missing one or two plus the unobtainable ones like Mew and Celebi, maybe 5 total missing). Had my dreamteam (Blastoise, Scizor, Gyarados, Zapdos, Mewtwo and Nidoking) all at level 99.

The door hit the side of my Gameboy Colour. Screen went blank. Turned it off and back on, no save found. All gone.


Non-game related, I had a HDD failure on a PC years ago. Lost around 250 pages of a novel I was writing. Lesson learned, back up.

 

[Eliwood10]

I recently lost all my data on my GameCube memory card. All my Smash Bros data. All my Double Dash!! data. All my Wind Waker saves. All my Chao. Gone forever ;^;

 

[UniversalRonin]

This isn't a gaming one per say, but in the last year of my degree, the laptop I was doing my final SW project on died. And the memory stick it was saved on got corrupted (Everything else was saved on drop box) a month before the project was due in. Did I want to cry? Hell yes. Did I cry? No. I'm a man (And a Brit- stiff upper lip and all that rot). In the end, thanks to excessive amounts of caffeine and a cheap (rubbish) notebook, I got it in and semi (read 'utterly not') functional (by the skin of my teeth).

Yeah, that's the worst file save crisis I have ever had. Other than that, I was once playing UFO Enemy Unknown, and I hadn't saved for almost a month game time (stupid I know) and then I met my first landed medium UFO. The Sectoids within it had at least one Psi-dude and proceeded to probe my entire team. Deeply, painfully, unwillingly, hard and fast and most definitely without consent. Despite all of my protestations and anguished cries. All 12 dudes dead, only 2 rookies on the Skyranger. Let's just say I bit the bullet and went back in time by a month.

 

[Sir Christopher McFarlane]

My worst accident involving a save file was with Final Fantasy XII. I was taking hyatus from playing the game at the time. My cousin came over and he wanted help with several things the game never explains. I inserted his memory card in the PS2, and mine was there as well. After doing whatever he asked of me, I saved his game over my 114 hours file.

I also accidentally saved over Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete with some game I wasn't going to play again anyway. Don't even remember which.

The first time I was playing Final Fantasy VII, right after leaving Midgar where I'd been for 7 hours, I was level 21. The memory card corrupted that file somehow. It still worked.

 

[Johnson McGee]

I had a completed 150 pokemon pokedex in the original Pokemon Red which I accidentally saved over after that infamous Nintendo Power article that promised you could 'start a new game with the same pokemon' (don't flak me for not double checking, the internet wasn't a thing and I was about 8 years old). Needless to say that cartridge still has a save file with 1 min played on it.

 

[Halfie2]

When I was younger I had a LoZ:Windwaker save in the final dungeon, I was stuck at some puzzle and just left the game there.
Years later I decided to go back and finish it, even if I had to use a guide(Madness, I know)...

And the memory card was gone, it wasn't in the game box, it wasn't in any of the other game boxes either.
I went through my entire room looking for the thing but I never found it.

The card also had an Ocarina of Time save with the biggoron sword, smash bros melee with all chars.
It also had an Animal crossing town with a few characters, may they rest in peace.

I still don't know what happened to the damn card or where it went.


tl;dr Lost my gamecube memory card

 

[Childe]

Worst save file accident probably had to be when i was playing Crysis. I was on the final boss and had saved and right after i saved i died due to a missile. No matter what i did when the file loaded i still died so i had to go to an earlier save file lol

 

[Malkav]

Devil May Cry 3 Special Edition on the PS2
To unlock new difficulties, you must beat the highest at the time, so after a few playthroughs, you can freely chose every mission on every difficulty with all that bonus stuff. Which I did. It's tough as hell. DMC3 may not be the most difficult game out there, but except for DMC1, it's MY hardest game. Those later stages cost me weeks.
Then I started the game over with Vergil (bonus character). You have a couple of save slots, but you need a separate slot for both characters. Which would be fine. Only, when you save, the game automatically selects the last slot you saved in, so every time you switch, it's about to overwrite the slot of the other character. After 40 hours and x saves, you just don't pay careful attention, you click through the damn save screen as fast as possible. So I overwrote a 40-hour 100% save with a fresh one. I don't think I touched the game ever since...

On Skyrim, I messed up a mod update, which caused crashes at every attempt to save over it. Since I had that mod for months, all saves in that time are affected. Soooo... the mod creator didn't know. There went a lvl 50-something character. Thank god for console commands, though it still sucked.

 

[sage42]

Yesh I haven't had many but one I did have scarred me. I was over at a buddies house and he just got done playing Persona 3, he had a great run so far, high leveled, great equipment, everything right where he wanted it. He offered me a turn and I took it, however first save of my game, right in the lobby, he was talking to me as I was saving, paying more attention to him I saved over his file.

Needless to say I couldn't apologize enough, over a hundred hours of his life, down the drain.