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What's the Most Saved Progress You've Lost in a Game?
Oops...
Last night, I looked over at my closed Nintendo DS and saw that the lights were off. It was strange, I thought, because they had been on for about a week, and I didn't remember turning off the game. Confused, I picked up the DS, turned it on, and watched as the screen flickered, the red light flashed, and the device turned off. After letting it charge for a few minutes and turning on Dragon Quest IX, which I had put nearly 30 hours in to, I saw something that literally made me feel light headed: the time counter was back at 23 hours. I had lost nearly eight hours of play because I had, for no reason, just let my DS sit there instead of making sure I had saved. I started thinking back, and realized that this wasn't the first time something like that had happened to be, but it was the first time I felt guilty about it.
The last time something like this had happened was in Halo 3: ODST. For whatever reason, Bungie's "checkpoints" didn't actually save progress. Instead, you need to hit save and quit, something that lead to me replaying the same few missions a few times. Thinking back, there are likely at least another dozen times this has happened to me, sometimes at no fault of my own, and other times with no one to blame but myself. Often, this leads to me being frustrated, and sometimes not even finishing the game.
Over the years, this sort of thing has happened less and less. Game designers are able to fill their games with autosaves, checkpoints, and a number of other safety measures to make sure that players don't need to replay sections unless they want to. Still, every so often, something goes wrong, and it's one of the more frustrating things about gaming. It's not a problem most of the time, but when it is...
It made me wonder how many others have made these same mistakes, and if anyone had any stories about times they've lost progress in a game and, more importantly, if they ever ended up going back and finishing the game. Post your own stories in the comment section below, and be sure to make fun of everyone else (myself included) for getting upset about playing video games.
Comments
Final Fantasy V... all 4 characters lvl 99, all 4 mastered all jobs, had almost every weapon/armor/trinkit in the game (complusive completionist)... all gone when i started a new game and didn't pay attention when i was saving. Saved over uber file with the new game. </3
I was playing an N64 RPG game back in elementary school and I was addicted hardcore. The issue was that I did not yet have the memory pack in order to save my game, so I left it on every night. I got to the final boss, gave my mom a little lip about something, and she turned the game off. So depressing.
The game was this odd RPG where you controled multiple characters and one thing I remember about it was you had to shrink & grow at some point to complete a puzzle of sorts. Also the final boss battle was you Vs. a giant robot and you and your buddies were also in a giant robot. Does anyone know the name?
Read my sad tale here. It involves Rygar, heartbreak, and a nine year old girl who is lucky I'm not a violent person.
Oh, found it. it was "Mystical Ninja - Starring Goemon". Glad I cleared that up.
Because of this article I have become obsessive about saving Etrian Odyssey III, since I usually leave my DS on with the game in all day while I'm reviewing it.
Once my friend and I went to load our game in Day of the Tentacle, and accidentally saved over it with a brand new game. Hours of progress, gone! We couldn't believe it when we realized what we had done. Luckily, it only takes a fraction of the time to replay point-and-click games once you know what to do.
3 seperate character on Oblivion with around 130 hours each, all gone...i'm still not sure how i lost all those characters.
and Mystical Ninja is a great game...difficult though.
I was about an hour away from the end of GTA IV, when all of a sudden, the game reverted to a save file from about two months earlier. All told I probably had to replay about eight hours of the game.
In 2002 I got really sick and during the recovery my younger brother gave me his old N64 and it has a WWF wrestling game where you could make your own characters.
I made 8 Street Fighter wrestlers including Sagat, Ryu, E Honda, Guile, Balrog, Zangief...etc... the game had some weird "fireball"-like moves and jumping uppercuts... so you can see the inspiration.
A few days later the characters were all magically gone and all game progress deleted due to some memory card/game glitch issue...
I remade 3 characters hastily after I was on the mend and had some people come over and play them... they deleted again a few days later...
Was playing super mario rpg for a good 12 hours one day, skippin class, made it past mole town. Had like 3 stars after mole town, on my way to the 4th. And my power went out, didnt save at all. RAGED, broke stuff, cried, then havent played it since.
This has happened to me several times. Legend of Zelda(all the way to Ganon), Final Fantasy III (all 99s), and Crono Trigger (all ** - PS1 version). The worst file save loss however was when I turned on Pokemon Blue (on my Super Game Boy) and found all 150 Pokemon gone, along with my whole save file. I had a level 100 Charmander, Bulbasaur, and Squirtle! I used to kill a friend's Mewtwo with them. He would nerd rage something fierce. Ah high school.
I've lost too many saves to count. My brother and I would always erase each other's saves on the SNES and SEGA. I'd come home one day and my Chrono Trigger or Super Mario RPG saves would be all gone.
I wrote an entire paper one time and my power went out...it was for the video game called "English Class"...
Fallout 3 and Borderlands have burned me. Actually, I burned myself because I foolishly shut my PS3 off like a chump.
I was fiddling around with an Action Replay and accidentally wiped out an entire PS2 memory card. It Me Dumb. There went my San Andreas progress up to Las Venturas.