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[Kadve]

Lets share some horror stories. My worst was probably Dragon Quest 8 when I spent an entire afternoon grinding at the casino in order to get the Gringham Whip (Jessica's ultimate weapon) and had gone to test it out on the Dragovian Trials (without saving, off course). Then i got called away by my mom for something so i turned off the tv and left the PS2 running as you do and didn't return until a few hours later. And guess what had happened during the meantime? My dad had tried to use the TV and found the console running, so he had turned it off for me. Throwing all my progress down the toilet...

Another bad one i remember happened when i was quite young playing the original PS1 Harry Potter (philosophers stone) game. I had made it after many tries to the final showdown with Voldemort, and after yet more effort i finally beat the actual battle portion only to have the game freeze on the transition cutscene (its followed by a QTE IIRC). And since i was 8 or something i had completely missed the fact that there are save points in the corridors preceding the battle (they are behind hidden doors, a mechanic which the game is really bad at explaining and which i didn't discover until a later playthrough) so i had to no choice but to redo the entire gauntlet which had taken me a good few hours....

Obviously there are many more times that i have lost progress in a game, but those are the ones i remember being the most pissed about.

(edit) another great one i remember. Had played Dungeons & Dragons Online for quite a bit back in the day, only to find out the hard way that the game saves your characters locally when i had to reformat the HDD. I hadn't even considered backing up the save beforehand because you know, its a MMO....

 

[MidGenRefresh]

I've lost progress due to Sony not supporting cloud saves as standard and me not knowing about it.

I had to start Ghost of Tsushima from 0.

 

[Spyxos]

I've lost progress due to Sony not supporting cloud saves as standard and me not knowing about it.

I had to start Ghost of Tsushima from 0.

Yeah, the same, I lost 120 Hours in Monster Hunter World. When i downloaded MHW again on ps5 to finally try out this iceborn addon, my save was just gone.

 

[Daneel Elijah]

90+ hours on Death Stranding. I got a PS5 and by the time I remembered that my PS4 did not have cloud saves active I had already given her to a cousin.
130+ on pokemon Yellow. Never let your games alone when siblings are around...

 

[AV]

None I can actually remember due to tech issue, but echoing the post above me, lost my almost complete Pokémon Blue save to an idiot cousin. I like him now, but it took a long time to repair that friendship.

 

[Windle Poons]

Around 80 hours of Dragon Age Inquisition on PS due to it failing to load any saves.

 

[drganon]

I had to redo the final area and boss fight in yakuza Kiwami 2 when my power went out during the end credits.

 

[tommib]

Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl. Kept losing hours because of blue screens. Something in that game was driving my Radeon crazy and there was some driver incompatibility going on. I never finished the game and had around 30 hours. Even with quick saves I kept losing progress. It made me quit PC gaming almost 15 years ago.

 

[RoboFu]

Ps4 FF15 saves got corrupted about halfway through. . Bought the Xbox version after that.

 

[stevecro7]

I remember tackling one of the 24hr endurance races in Grantourismo 3 on PS2

for 3 days my brother and I played the game every waking hour
and overnight it was paused with something covering the ps2 power light light


on the 4th day there was a power cut, I remember feeling absolutely gutted

 

[Revolutionary]

- MadCatz PS1 memory card wiped my late-game Xenogears save for no apparent reason (never bought another MadCatz product after that)
- My cousin accidentally overwrote my Monster Rancher save.

That's about it. Both times I just restarted but it was pretty devastating when it happened lol

Edit: just remembered my Dragon Quest IX save corrupted out of nowhere

 

[Kupfer]

Savegame error in AC II on the 360 while being 30ish hours in. Never finished it or touched it again although I really liked it.

 

[Dr. Suchong]

Nothing major.
Probably only bad thing was Chrono trigger saves deleting when I was playing an import copy on my snes via a adaptor of sorts.

 

[coffinbirth]

In 1991, my five year old sister erased my Zelda II save. I was very, very far into it. I never played it again.

 

[Dr. Suchong]

I overwrote my friends ff12 save with my own when I took my memory card over to his.
At least he got the Zodiac spear through me though.
Sorry Kev

 

[Drizzlehell]

I lost some saves to big RPGs in the past without realizing it. I usually forget about it and only remember when I reinstall the game on Steam and then delete it again because I don't wanna play it from the start.

 

[Dr. Suchong]

In 1991, my five year old sister erased my Zelda II save. I was very, very far into it. I never played it again.

She probably did you a favour tbh

 

[Ovek]

Recently… Got to the very end of Control, and it crashed. The Epic game store proceeded to have a complete fucking hissy fit and managed to download and replace my save with an ancient cloud synced version (I was like an hour in tops).

Didn't replay it for ages, and even then it still wasn't the same.

 

[Dr.Morris79]

Got to the last race of Test drive unlimited 2, went out to make a tea, came back to my lad sitting there and the opening splash screen was running, he'd started a new game. Never touched it again.

I sold my N64 Goldeneye cartridge then realised my completed save was on it, that hurt.

Not so much a save issue but nothing hurt more than loading a C64 game, having to turn the tape over half way through then it completely crashing. Twenty+ minutes down the bog.

One of the worst loses of data had to be when I bought a 16 gig card for my PSP, loaded it up with all my stuff from PSN getting ready for a long drive being a passenger for a holiday. Getting five miles down the motorway and it corrupted, it was a fake card. I was livid.

Never bought a duff card since and drive myself for holidays..

 

[Dr. Suchong]

Thief 3 save crashed on the last stage.
Saves never loaded after that.
No way I'm doing Shalebridge cradle again... *Shudders*

 

[Thief1987]

Nothing too egregious from what i can remember. I think the biggest loss was when Castlevania LoS on PS3 crashed right after Dracula fight. Not a big deal to fight him again, but this crash also corrupted save file somehow. So "officially" i never beat this game.

 

[RCU005]

Tomb Raider (2013).

I only had the last mission left, So I decided to finish everything 100% before it. I was collecting stuff and I fell into the ground. I wasn’t able to do anything, and when I tried reloading the save I was just stuck there for all eternity.

I never got to finish the game myself. Had to watch the ending on YouTube.

 

[lordarchaon666]

Had to format my PS3 hard drive and lost my 74 hour Final Fantasy 13 playthrough. I was really annoyed because I was really enjoying the game, didn't go back to it for a few years.

 

[Kadve]

Another good one. Was recently replaying Space Rangers II with the shuniverse mod. Everything was going fine until i was made ~40 hours into the game and it suddenly crashed on me. No big deal i thought as the game autosaves often so i reloaded my most recent one only to have the game crash on me again almost immediately.

Annoyed i used an earlier save and everything was going fine for a few hours until the game, once gain crashed on me at pretty much at the same spot as it had crashed the previous time. Looking it up i found out that a new update had partly broken combability with the mod and every time it was trying to load a certain element it crashed. And while i could easily turn off said element it now meant no save file from my current game could be used as the mod is really picky in that regard.

 

[Soodanim]

- MadCatz PS1 memory card wiped my late-game Xenogears save for no apparent reason (never bought another MadCatz product after that)
- My cousin accidentally overwrote my Monster Rancher save.

That's about it. Both times I just restarted but it was pretty devastating when it happened lol

I must have had exceptional luck with memory cards, because I had a few including a 4x capacity MadCatz one (translucent blue and you switched between the 4 profiles with a button) that only had minor compatibility issues and even one I got free with a magazine. No lost saves ever.

 

[NahaNago]

I lost my save for FF8 when I believe I was on disc 3. I don't remember if I failed to save or it got deleted. I still haven't beaten that game even though I've started it several times. I just grind on the beach and then forest for forever and pretty don't progress much past that.

 

[funking giblet]

Playing this map on SNES Doom


Got to the last shotgunner in the shotgunner corridor, and he killed me just before the exit. Threw controller at the ground and it bounced and hit the SNES.
Reset game, and never played it again! No saves

 

[TintoConCasera]

Someone hit my Gameboy at the park with a football ball while I was changing pokemons with a friend and that corrupted my save data. Eaelier that same day I got my first pokemon to level 100 so yeah, shit sucked.

Around 80 hours of Dragon Age Inquisition on PS due to it failing to load any saves.

Same here. Power went out while the game was saving and that corrupted my whole PS4's HDD. Had to format the console and, since I didn't have PS+ and cloud saves, lost all my game data.

 

[Eimran]

I collected all the hidden packages in Grand Theft Auto Vicy City (in 2003 so I had to switch between my pc and consoles since smartphones weren't a thing then. So it was a pain in the ass

My little cousin tried to start to game but ended up in my memory card. He saw the Vice City logo and thought it started the game. Ofcourse he pressed 'x' for the delete option.

He never slept in our house ever since


@OP having played DQVIII, damn I feel your pain.

 

[SScorpio]

Probably FF8, I was either near the end of disk 3 or on disk 4 when I had either an HDD crash or some other Win98 corruption take out the save.

For all people complaining about PS4 Cloud saves. This is a valid complaint for PS5 games, but PS4 saves on a PS4 or PS5 can be backed up to a USB drive.

 

[Mownoc]

Yooka-Laylee. Lost power while I was manually saving the game. Exceptionally unlucky timing. Lost about 8 hours.

So yeah all things considered I've been very fortunate. That's the only time of note it's happened.

 

[ADiTAR]

I played Disaster: Day of Crisis and it crashed my save at a late chapter and I think I had to restart the entire game. I didn't.

 

[Kokoloko85]

Hmmm
My brother turning off the snes when I was on the last boss in Contra 3
Or killing the blacksmith in Demons Souls after 40 hours

 

[BruceWayneIII]

We were a bunch of good friends coming together maybe once or twice a year and would go fishing or have fun playing games. Since some of our friends live far apart (Europe / Australia) it really was something special when we got together. During the years we played a lot of Burnout on PlayStation 2, mostly Burnout 2 and 3. We had so many memorable evenings setting new records. Once my girlfriend, at that time, called and asked if she could let her nephew play Burnout 3. Sure, have fun. Just start a new game. They did - and overwrote our year long game save.

 

[fart town usa]

Building I lived in in Singapore had old wiring and lightning storms would fry electronics. Unplugged my new Asus laptop before work one morning during a storm but forgot to remove the ethernet cable. Came home and the laptop was completely dead.

 

[Mr Hyde]

50 hour save lost on Kingdoms of Amalur due to corruption. Never went back.

4th disc on Final Fantasy 8 (I think I was near the end) when my save got corrupted and couldn't load. This was 98 at the time of release. I was devastated and didn't touch the game until just last year when I finally got around to it on Switch. Great game.

Loaned out my Dreamcast to a friend when I was on vacation. When I got it back I noticed he'd erased my 80 hour progress on Soul Calibur because he wanted to start fresh. Never loaned out anything to him again.

 

[RaZoR No1]

my stupid cousin overwrote my Pokemon Red savefile..
I was a child and just beat the Pokemon League.. and then one day my cousin and his family came over and my parents gave him my GBC with Pokemon Red to so he does not get bored....

I was so mad :<


And my relatives lost my PS2 memory card.... dont know anymore what was on that, but still...


I just should keep my relatives away from my devices

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

Kind of in this category but lost a 15 year MLB career in one of MLB The Shows when I traded in my PS4 for a Pro and the cloud file would just crash the game when I tried loading it

 

[Danknugz]

back in college i got the chernobyl virus and lost days of school work

 

[abstract alien]

The cutscene bug in Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver that didn't let you complete the game slayed way too many people

 

[Days like these...]

Skies of Arcadia on Dreamcast. I made it to soltis and my data got corrupted or sompin.

 

[calistan]

I was doing a second playthrough of Fallout 3, only this time going full evil instead of just part evil. Played loads of it, and went to the Pitt DLC area, which was pretty huge, and completed everything there, but the leader of the Pitt just froze in place when I went to turn in the final quest. He couldn't be moved, shot, or talked to.

I always kept multiple saves, just in case, overwriting the oldest one each time, but by this point all my saves were in the Pitt, and you can't get out of the Pitt until that mission is completed. Went back through all the saves, trying different stuff, but the same thing always happened at the end. Game over, man. Never played it again.

 

[joedan]

Turok 2 for the N64. Reached final level and memory card lost the save. Never played it again.

 

[Celcius]

Once as a kid I took my n64 memory card to a family reunion and left it plugged in after I was done. Someone erased my ENTIRE memory card.

I was also once halfway though a 9 hour endurance race in Gran Turismo 5 and the power went out.

 

[SmokedMeat]

Showed a friend the new Tomb Raider game on Saturn. I was at the end of the game, but let him see it from the start.

He accidentally overwrote my save file.

 

[Thebonehead]

Switch died just outside of warranty and luckily replaced for free by Nintendo.

On the other hand my 60 hours or so on BOTW went up in smoke

 

[Thebonehead]

Kind of in this category but lost a 15 year MLB career in one of MLB The Shows when I traded in my PS4 for a Pro and the cloud file would just crash the game when I tried loading it

15 years !

Got to be the biggest investment in time so far in this thread

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

15 years !

Got to be the biggest investment in time so far in this thread

Yeah it was a ton of hours invested lost

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

Trials of Mana Remake, I unknowingly triggered some bug in the final dungeon for Kevin’s scenario that caused some required battle to never spawn, and saved over my only save slot afterward.

 

[kondorBonk]

Grandia 2 on Dreamcast. Tens of hours in while traveling with a US/UK transformer which fried the VMU somehow.