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[TonberrysKnife]

Star Ocean 2 (PS1). Played through the Claude scenario. 65 hours in. I'd just gotten to Nede, grinding at the Field of Love. Short dungeon but an excellent yet deadly grinding spot. I booted up my save and the memory card corrupted. I was SO FUCKING PISSED. I enjoyed the game so much that I started a new game a week later with an official memory card. I got to where I was in only half the time and got the Marvel Sword early in the game.

2nd time. A different memory card DISABLED all Playstation controller input. So not only did the card get corrupted, but it rendered systems inoperable.

3rd time. My BC PS3 died. So did half of my PS1 and PS2 saves. I couldn't recover the data.

This is why I'm always anal about backups because some shit can happen at any time.

 

[ACESHIGH]

My 60 hour elden ring save got corrupted.

 

[Platinumstorm]

I had Xenogears [PS1 for the younglings] corrupt the save file on two different memory cards; unbeknownst to me until I beat it on Playstation 3 less than an hour from the ending of the game.

 

[JLB]

My big bro deleted the saved files of Phantasy Star Online on my Dreamcast. 650hr+ lost. Hurts til today.

 

[Diddy X]

I used to play an mmorpg called Tibia where if you die you lose a lot of experience and money, equipment, etc. So one day I had a power cut while grinding and when came back online Inwas at the temple where you spawn upon dieing, I was like fuuuu

 

[ComputerBlue]

Demon Souls.

This was back on PS3 not long after the game released, I remember spending so much time farming everything, but especially Storm Beasts. I remember farming them for souls for so so long to level up, using whatever the sword was called that killed them, I can’t remember it’s been well over 10 years now. Anyway, my PS3 died, and since that game wouldn’t allow you to back up to USB I was never able to save my progress. I have not revisited that game since.

 

[alf717]

I got pretty far into Prince of Persia 2008 on PC and then my hard drive crashed. Couldn't really tell ya how far I was but I lost hours of progress.

Just remembered this one:

I lost a 100% save of Mega Man Battle Network while using it with Double Team DS.

 

[AJUMP23]

I have had some but I tend to forget them and move on.

I was playing fifa this year in career mode and it didn’t auto save. I quit to the main menu and when I came back nothing was there. No character no progress. Deleted of the HDD.

 

[taihenner]

I remember being near the end of Skies of Arcadia when it came out and my VMU failed completely. I did start the game over but it was such a bummer to have all of that hard work go down the drain.

 

[marquimvfs]

My Super Mario 64 cartridge stopped holding data after some years. Lost every star and it didn't saved anything from that day.

 

[Jeeves]

I don't remember enough to make a proper story of it, but I do remember a power outage happened while I was going for a 100% clear on Bomberman 64: The Second Attack as a kid. We had the N64 hooked up in the basement in my grandma's house. The game saves of course, but I must've been really deep into some difficult task...maybe I was almost done fighting the secret final boss? But yeah, power outage, suddenly I'm just in a pitch-black basement screaming "NOOOO!!"

...Good times.

 

[MaestroMike]

50+ hours of oblivion, but my 360 got the red ring and had to send it to get fixed. I think they sent me back a refurbished one and my saves were no longer there. re-started the game, but never got very far and just stopped playing it

 

[Agent Icebeezy]

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.

I just bought PS+ today for the first time specifically for this reason in God of War: Rangnorak. I am not going to lose my progress. The game is stuck in some weird state of saying it is installed but it isn't, and I can't delete it. Right now, moving my PS5 games to my external so that I can reset the console to factory settings, utterly stupid choice to not allow cloud saves as standard.

 

[Handel]

Lost a good 5-10 hours once in Legend of Dragoon back in the day when either the power went out/cable got disconnected from system can't fully remember.

Was playing through RE2 on PS1 without a memory card since there wasn't one available for w/e reason(I was a kid, twas a long time ago), got really far then died to the boss you face while waiting for the elevator to arrive. A whole day of play down the drain...

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

A few unpleasant tales of woes.

Me and my friend were playing the C64 version of Bubble Bobble.
Gets to around level 70ish and for some reason the sound disappeared.
I started pressing buttons and my friends pleading with me to leave it and just play.
Yeah, accidentally quit the game and lost all of our progress!

Same friend, myself and a few others were doing some marathon 120 lap race on the original Gran Turismo.
Were each doing ten or so laps and passing the pad along to the next person.
Gets to my mate and he's skimming the wall on the final bend.
Were all saying 'watch that wall' each time he passes it.
Final lap, final corner (about an hour of solid racing) and sure enough he hits the wall and the car just stopped dead!

Another time he lent a friend his Ps1 who managed to overright his Tomb Raider 1 save with a save of his own losing almost all of the games progress.

Gutted.

I guess your friend locks himself up into a man-cave when gaming today, and never ever lets any friends come close to it.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

My son deleted everything for ACIV blackflag and I was taking my time doing basically everything before the legendary ships. I only needed to do the legendary ships.

 

[Kadve]

I used to play an mmorpg called Tibia where if you die you lose a lot of experience and money, equipment, etc. So one day I had a power cut while grinding and when came back online Inwas at the temple where you spawn upon dieing, I was like fuuuu

Tough luck. They have have since made it so that the game will automatically log you out if it detects connection being lost. Saved me more than once.

 

[cireza]

I lost many saves because of the Saturn internal backup battery not lasting that long.

 

[Deleted member 1159]

Yeah. Ye olde 3rd party jumbo memory cards on PlayStation that let you have several times the capacity of the standard card…I had several false starts with FF7 when I first got it until we just got an official card that was reliable.

And plenty of crashes in PC gaming back in the day. Nowadays it’s very rare in comparison.

 

[Mufausa The 3rd]

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....

Yep.. Happened to me while playing Vanilla Dead Island on PC.

GPU displayed some yellow image right near the end of the game when I was playing online with friends and the shit crashed and BSOD my PC.

Once my shit turned back on. I lost my progress and had to replay the game again. Never bought another Techland game ever since.

 

[Kiya's Guard]

Not many, but first time I played uncharted 3, i had a blackout at the second to last mission, exactly when the game was saving. Had to youtube the ending lol.

These are not errors of the games but mine, but I abandoned many games through the years because of things like formatting windows, or a new game coming out and I lost interest in the one I was playing

 

[rofif]

I think I had a jedi knight 2 save with rocket in my face....

 

[Windle Poons]

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.


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.

I was running with 3 or 4 saves at any one time and an autosave. Came to the game a few days after what I assumed to be a routine save and continue game just sat there and trying to load any of the saves just threw up a random error.

 

[lachesis]

The ending of Knight of Old Republic. on original OG.
I did the Jedi path and I think I was supposed to be honored in some sort of New hope ending type of ceremony - but the game crashed into black and somehow lost my save too.

Also Konami's Parodius on MSX.
I was playing on a borrowed bootleg cartridge. The game was insanely hard, but I managed to the end boss named "bug".... and the game bugged out, or perhaps it was a power surge...

 

[GamesDontSuck]

Batman Arkham Origins.
About 60-70 % in to the game. One day I put it on and dont ask me why or how, but managed to delete my save as opposed to loading my save.

 

[GamesDontSuck]

game pass and ps plus causing a lot of this now I reckon.
Nearly completed the witcher 3 on xbox game pass and they take it down. Later appears on ps plus. Not going through that all again. Yes I COULD buy the game but meh.

 

[Kamina]

Corruption of the save file on the memory card and therefore loss of the whole save.

 

[Drewpee]

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....

Ninja Gaiden on original Xbox. I was maxing out all of my weapons outside the area of the final boss. Only had the wooden sword left and my best friend decided to start a new game and erase all of my progress. Had no idea he did it until I lost my mind lol

 

[SHA]

Gran Turismo 3 and I don't wanna mention the details cause everyone knows GT game progress is life , Silent Hill 2 and 3 , not a big deal cause I liked them so much , PC emulators especially pcsx2 and Dolphin , back when they really unstable , I remember ending up buying the wii because of it , Assassin's creed 3 on PC, haven't touched it since then cause everyone knows modern games are unplayable the minute you lose your progress cause it really sucks.