Most devastating loss of a save file

[Simonoly]

Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on the SNES. I was 6 years old and had completed three quarters of the game. I switched it on one day with the intention of completing it, only to find that all saved data had been wiped. I was mortified and was convinced my brother had done it because he was pure evil when we were younger. Turns out it was a save game bug and whenever I turned the power off on my SNES after having played the game everything was always wiped.

I remember my mum phoning some Nintendo customer services who just said there was nothing that could be done. Couldn't get a refund either because if was out of warranty.

Oh how life sucked before game patching on consoles.

 

[chakra7777]

Legend of Zelda: Orcina of Time for the N64. Probably my first 100% of any game was just gone one day. Though i DID use a players guide to 100% it, the first always cuts deepest....

Notable runners up would include: - 1st PS3 Harddrive. Yes with all the PS2 goodness
- Pokemon Silver and many legit 100s
- Pokemon Blue and good times with MissingNo ^^
- 1st Skyrim character lvl 45 LIZARDMAN dual axes

Feels good to pay homage. RIP

On a brighter note, my dusty old Dreamcast memory cards still hold my lvl 113 HuCast from PSO V2
.....so boring on your own after awhile though. AND POWER STONE 2 with all the items... i think

 

[Mr Dizazta]

Assassin's Creed II. I reach sequence 12 on Assassin's Creed and save and turn off for the night. The next morning my entire saved game was gone. I was only 10 feathers away from completing my collection.

 

[Boggelz]

I bought Fallout: NV and loved it. But then, i had to transfer all my steam data, but lost my fallout save, which was the only save i lost. After months I started it back up. Even more determined to play through it. Then my hard drive stops working. I lost it again. I have yet to go back and play it since.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

My cousin overwrote my Tomb Raider save file...when I was on the last level *eyetwitch*

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Mario 3. World 8. Bowzer's castle.

Accidental use of Warp Whistle.

They heard the screams in Antarctica.

 

[Nekron_X]

I had San Andreas 93% complete, just a few airplane and taxi missions to go.
It was a devastating blow....
I have tried to recover...

similar to this, only at first, i went from los santos(firs area of the game) to the end...then the power went out.....started it back up when the power came back and the save was corrupted....*sniff*...

and one that's not a save file loss, but loss of function for a game. i was playing onimusha: dawn of dreams at a friends house and we were on the last boss fight.i had to leave but we didn't want to stop in the middle of the fight so i let him play it out and give ma back the game later. i got it back, but when i went to play it for myself i couldn't get the game to work. i turned it around to find out he had gotten the entire back of the disc scratched up.....couldn't play that game again....now nobody borrows my games unless i know they'll take care of them.

 

[DJ_DEnM]

A few months ago I was cleaning out my Xbox's Hard Drive (20 GB HDD, with all the Black Ops DLC and all the Borderlands DLC. I had to make space for other stuff) so I erased Darksiders. After seeing Darksiders 2 I decided I wanted to finish Darksiders, having forgotten that I'd erased what I had (Which was up to the Third Dungeon, before I got my horse).

I've been playing it recently, and I finally got past the third dungeon (I stopped because I was stuck at what I thought was a puzzle) and I'm about to finish the game. It's all good now.

 

[Nuuu]

My puppy also chewed my entire major gamecube memory card. it had 42 game save files on it. 42.

Excuse me while I go weep in a corner over my losses.

You think 42 is bad? I had OVER 90 on my Gamecube, and what happened was, i was using my 1056 block card in my Wii, had it in there for months. I decide i want to actually play on my gamecube, so i pop it in and the next thing i see, EVERY SINGLE GAME IS CORRUPTED. In fact, it wasn't every game, it was the entire memory card, any save i put on that memory card became corrupted because of that Wii. Apperently the Wii tends to do that with 1056 cards....
Luckily i wasn't a huge Gamecube player anymore at that point, still a dissapointment, the bigger games i was sad at losing was:
Kirby Air Ride (Probably the third time the save got deleted on that game)
Super Smash Bros Melee
Mario Kart: Double Dash


My puppy also chewed the edge of my Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland cartridge so it doesn't work anymore. Luckily we had a second.

 

[The_Echo]

My sister borrowed Trauma Center: Under the Knife years ago. I showed her exactly which save slot to use, and told her multiple times to not even TOUCH my save. I was at one of the very last operations, and that game isn't exactly easy.

So, as my luck would have it, she "accidently" saves over every single slot with the same 8-minute file. I tried to recover my progress, but I got to the operation on Reuben and I just gave up. Fuckin' Reuben.

Unlike many unfortunate others in this thread, I haven't lost a single meaningful Pokémon save. Not yet, at least.

 

[EHKOS]

Whiplash, final keycard. I just couldn't take it anymore. I was young and played the game for about two weeks, so I got burnt out and erased it, because I never wanted to play it or see it again. I still can't play it, but I might finish it if I had that file back.

EDIT: I also lost a Borderlands save on PC, which had playthrough 2 completed with Roland. But it wasn't that bad because I was done with it, I mean everything was %100. Plus I got a PS3 version too.

 

[Thoughtful_Salt]

I encountered an arena glitch in fire emblem: The Sacred Stones for the GBA. I had two level 20 Ewan druids attack each other with Luna, for some reason, it broke the game. The screen glitched out, I restarted to find that not only had about 75 hours of creature campaign and story campaign progress been lost, but all of the sound room unlocks and support conversations had been wiped out as well. It took me over a year of gameplay to get anywhere near where I used to be.

 

[Nubrain]

Pokemon gold. I had a full pokedex and had beaten EVERYTHING. yeah i hadn't played it in years and was playing pearl when this happened but my husband decided that he wanted to try one of the older games so without asking he deleted my gold game thinking it wouldn't be that big a deal. then he never got past the second gym.

it was hard not to feel a little bit mean when his xbox360 died last year and he lost all of his saves in everything including his ME1 and ME2 saves with all the different love interests and choices a month before ME3 came out.

Other than that I haven't ever lost much. I tend to do multi saves when possible and have never had a cartrage or memory card damaged.

 

[Frission]

Misery sure likes company it seems. I lost a save file for my main character on Oblivion and Skyrim ... and Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas.

The most painful I guess was when I save file on Pokemon Platinum was erased. Never forgive, never forget.

 

[Lancer873]

Well... I haven't had any full-fledged losses yet, but I came damn close with a save file of Loco Roco that I had put over 100 hours into. I made a new game, and accidentally saved over my good file. Thankfully I had made a backup about a month back, so I didn't lose /all/ my data.

Edit: WAIT yes I have. I was playing Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time, and I had exactly ONE gold bolt (or was it platinum?) to get in order to get the platinum trophy for the game, and, as luck would have it, my PS3 broke. I still have that PS3 in the hopes that I'll fix it one day.

 

[King of Asgaard]

little brothers overwrite your save files.

I'm guilty of this.
A few years ago, I ACCIDENTALLY deleted my brother's FFX save file. Over a hundred hours, all aeons, celestial weapons, Al Bhed letter spheres all gone into the Ether. I've never forgiven myself, even though my brother has.

As for most devastating save loss for me, a little while ago, my PS3 had to be traded in because it was overheating in ten minutes. No biggie, until it came time to transfer my data to my laptop for safekeeping. For whatever blisteringly idiotic reasons, a few saves have copy protection, meaning they cannot be copied to anything other than the cloud thing available to PS Plus subscribers only. This wasn't a big deal, other than one save. Dark Souls. Let's just say that, over 300 hours split across 8 characters, I was really upset.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Soul Calibur 3. I wasn't aware that the game had an issue with save files. I unlocked 80% of the stuff in that game. And then poof! Save file corrupted. Apparently in order not to have your save file corrupted, Soul Calibur 3 save file has to be the first one on your memory card. As I was obsessed with the game, I started all over again. Eventually I managed to unlock everything.

 

[MrShowerHead]

Recently? My brother tried to fix our Xbox, had some FPS drop issues on most games, he somehow managed to delete a single save file. What was that file? Only my NG+ Dark Souls char, around lvl 101. Not that big of a loss, but still... That was my original character, my first one.

Oh well, not that big of a deal, already pre-purchased the PC version on Steam, released next Thursday

 

[Snowblindblitz]

My PS3 had a hard drive error last week. Lost everything. MTG 2012 and other downloadable games, and plus, the worse for me:

I had just gotten Dark Souls, and was 40 hours in. Life hated me.

Plus some 60 hour or so Skyrim saves.

 

[Thee Lost One]

Erg. actually Lost Game Saves? Monster Rancher 2 is the primary, Legend of Legaia was the secondary, both on the same card. >.<

Monster Rancher 2 had the largest barn, all but 4 monster breeds unlocked, and I'd raised 19 FIRST generation monsters from Disc birth to S league, including an Arrowhead/Suezo, Blue Pheonix, Metal Slime, and a Hangar/Dragon. I had the events to unlock Mock set up for my next monster's death, and was working on trying to unlock a Beaclon.

Legend Of Legaia: I don't know how many of you have played this one, but i had over 400 hours invested in it, all my spells/seeru leveled up to max, all the best armors and items, Ra-Seeru at the highest forms, hidden bosses bested, level capped, stats nearly maxed, the arena dominated countless times...the rarest fucking drops found >.< augh.

Those two were lost due to me having the memory card in my ps2 when I tried one of Sony's demo discs back in 2005 i think.

I NEARLY lost a Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne save file with other 1600 hours of play time, every magatama found and leveled, nearly every demon crafted/recruited, Demon ending set up, rare items in hand all prepped to face the final bosses.... and some jackass tried to steal my games and memory cards while I was on my way to my friends to make the final dungeon a party event. He quickly learned that the flesh on a humans face does not react well to being forcibly ground against a blocks worth of asphalt >.> thankfully my saves were fine and fun was had after that.