Your worst game save data loss?

Probably would be Stalker SoC. I got to the brain scorcher lab (basically second last dungeon in the game) and the coded door that I needed to open wouldnt. It made a swinging open sound effect but stayed firmly in place. Stalker has no noclip so that was that and I abandoned the save after 40 hours leading to that point.

The best bit?

I have lost an about 75% complete Fallout 3 save because of GFWL and I have lost a pretty much 100% Final Fantasy X save (including a gruelling victory over Penance) due to me pulling out a memory card while the game was still saving.

The most sad/hilarious one was Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas though. I was doing post-story completionist stuff. After multiple hours of playing I finally finished everything. Then while I was driving to a safehouse in Las Venturas to save my game I thought it would be fitting to visit a strip club and make it rain fat wads of dosh in celebration. I enter the strip club, the screen goes black to load... The screen stays black. Nothing happens.

... I have not played GTA:SA since.

My Mum deleted not one but I think 2 or 3 level 99 FFVII saves from the PS Memory cards to make room so she could play FFVIII or FFIX I forget which. I had every character leveled up to lv99 and got all limit breaks in those saves.

130 hours of Fallout 3. Luckily it was just after completing all of the DLC. I only had maybe one or two side quests to do so I wasn't too bummed at all.

An entire PS2 memory card having an error, including 120 hour Final Fantasy X save.

I remember losing my Final Fantasy 10 save file when I was at the save right before the last boss. My friend accidentally saved over it when he went to save his own game. That was a lot of fun.

I also lost my save in Diablo 2 when my brother accidentally deleted my sorceress character. I don't even remember how he did it, I was just really upset, because I was destroying shit in that game and it was all ruined by that.

Jak 3. I was near the end, and when I was loading through the splash screens, pointlessly mashing X to get through them...I hit it so much that I hit new game and overwrote my save...so it was my fault

I once accidentally deleted every single save game from my 250GB Xbox 360 harddrive. It was mildly upsetting to say the least.

Also an 80 hour Neverwinter Nights 2 OC save. If you don't know, the first 20 hours or so of that campaign are a slog on the level of FFXIII.

Was a victim of The Walking Dead's shitty save system and had my save get deleted after beating Chapter 4. I still haven't gone and played Chapter 5.

The worst for me was actually on a game that was pretty "meh" it was Shrek on the original Xbox I got like 80% through the game and there was some awful shit you had to do (One boss in particular I remember fucking hating) and my cousin came over, I let him play it and he decided to quit the game and even though there was 3 saves spots he decided to delete mine needless to say I never finished it because fuck doing that bullshit again I only played it because I had that and Halo.

FF7. I think I was on disc 2 or almost done disc 1 when my single save got corrupted. After that I started to keep around 7 saves.

I got 2/3rd of the way through D&D Warriors of the Eternal Sun on the Megadrive and accidently deleted my save game. I'm still gutted about this now.

Pokemon Red, 149 pokemon caught. My sister saved over my game even though I TOLD HER EXPLICITLY NOT TO SAVE.

I've never actually lost save data due to corruption or battery/drive failure, but I did lose a lot of progress in Knights of the Old Republic when I saved after a progress halting bug occurred.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that there's so many other Pokémon related stories, but I'm so happy to be able to commiserate. Lost my 85 hour Blue save file one day. Called up Nintendo begging them to fix and was in tears when they said they couldn't. (I was a really emotional ten-year-old, what do you want from me?) Never been more distraught about a game than that.

My worst was losing a completed file for Kingdom Hearts 2 with ultima weapon and the save the queen/king stuff I came back a few years to try to finish up the loose ends, aka sephiroth and the save was gone from my memory card.

This, I had a large collection of pokedudes in my copy of Pokemon Silver that I transferred from all of the previous games and for whatever reason I jumped into a pool forgetting that the cartridge was in my pocket

brother deleted my FF7 save.

~80 hours, just before final boss.

I always back up my saves now.

Final Fantasy X, was about 3/4 through the game when my file somehow got corrupted. Went back to it about a year and a half later and finally beat it. Also, Shenmue, which was especially frustrating because I made it to the final disc, waited a few months, then played through it start to finish, still loved the experience though.

I lost my Dark Souls 1 save that contained my main character I had worked on for 400+ hours. I got the platinum trophy though, so I'll always have proof of my deeds

An Okami save file that stopped me from finishing it for a good long while.

I might have something to top the rest.

I had a level 112 Hucast for the Gamecube version of Phantasy Star Online. I had been leveling this guy up over the course of several years. I finally felt ready to take on Dark Falz on Ultimate mode. One day I turned on my console, and a few minutes in it threw up a message saying my data had been corrupted. I have never in my life thrown a controller, or lost my shit with a video game, but on that day I felt like I was having what I imagine a panic attack is.

It was rough.

Final Fantasy 8

First try I got to the start of Disc 4 when you're on Lunatic Pandora and have a boss fight vs. Adel. I was severely under-leveled (all characters around level 35 iirc) because that game is totally borked. You can't leave Lunatic Pandora and all the enemies only give 1 exp per battle, so I had no way to level up. I had to restart...

So second try I get my characters to level 89 on Disc 1 and max out my GFs. I did that over end of term break from school by fighting Vysages for hours in a certain part of the world map prior to the forest on the way to Galbadia Garden where they were the only enemy encountered. They're super easy to kill and give levels extremely fast--no idea if that's the most effective strategy at that stage of the game, but it's what I stumbled upon and chose to exploit. It was the most boring grinding ever. Anyway, I continue on to the end of the disc and boom... corrupted save data when trying to start Disc 2. I foolishly had been using only one slot. The memory card was fine, just the FF8 save wasn't loading. I assumed at the time the game couldn't handle the fact I was so over leveled, though I don't know if it's just a coincidence or not.

Never beat that game. Though I did play it again and get past Adel with a normally leveled party. Then I lost interest in finishing it.

I had one of those crappy 3rd party mega memory cards for the PS1, and that thing would wipe itself on a whim. Needless to say, I lost a bunch of endgame JRPG save files due to that.

Another one is from Morrowind. It's a known fact that Bethesda games on consoles are held together by the code equivalent of duct tape and crazy glue. I've been playing the game with only a single save file for hundreds of hours and I've practically uncovered the whole map. Then the game decided to crash in a middle of saving one day. I promptly started up a new character and proceed to make a new save after every session. LESSON LEARNED.

When my launch model ps3 eventually died it took with it a lot of unpublished created content for littlebigplanet, all of my game saves... and worst of all I hadn't synced with the PSN in a while so all of the trophies I'd earned had been lost too. Some of the trophies were platinums for Fallout 3 and Demon Soul's.

@i_stay_puft: playing Banjo Kazooie, was kind of enjoying it but feeling frustrated with the maze like hub world. Kept getting lost trying to find the levels I needed to play, felt like there hub was to confusion compared to the castle in Mario 64.

Went to play one day managed to get confused with the house that had the n64s as saves and some how managed to delete my hard frustrating work. Practically threw the cartridge out of the n64 and never put it back in.

Still to this day I feel like Mario 64 was a better game then the Banjo series.

Nothing too major, had a Gamecube memory card stolen when my mam rented out my bedroom and moved me to the attic when I was a teenager. My brother once tripped over my N64's power cable while I was fighting Twinrova in OoT, so very near the end of the game, and the save got corrupted, I was pretty torn up about that.

Also had a corrupt 360 hard drive once but it was like 2008 so I didn't have TOO many save files on it. It does however remain the reason I've never completed Nuts and Bolts to this day.

@trafalgarlaw: happened to my 1st LBP save game, did a little research. My version was bought from psn, found out that they had a problem with the save file in the normal save folder so they decided to attach it to the actual game file in some strange way. From my understanding if you go where the actual game files/updates the new save would be either there or attach in some way. Not sure if it's the same for the disc version or 2nd game but it did sounds like an update on LBP changed how they dealt with there save files, I Think it had to do with all the custome content from what I remember.

FF8, made it to the third disk with all the GFs, was kicking ass and taking names. Some d-bag that was a friend of a friend saved over it and tried to tell me it was an accident. Hurts so much that I haven't gone back to it since.

Just wiped my old 3ds data bungling a transfer to a new 3ds.

It's not that bad though; at least i can still redownload my games.

Most recent one would be Diablo 3 on PS4. Did a HDD change on the console and moved over my important files nice 'n smooth, along with my Diablo 3 characters...only problem was, that we mostly played it in a local co-op mode and the thought of having to also move the save files from the second account to the new HDD kinda slipped my mind and I couldn't access the old HDD anymore, so...there went a good dozen of hours worth playtime.

Being half way through the final Splinter Cell Blacklist single player mission, having unlocked all the coop maps etc. Uplay deleted my save and cloud save and everything was reset to the starting state.

Was something like 97% complete with Midnight Club Los Angeles, which is just about the most frustrating racing game I've ever played. Game locked up during a loading screen and I lost everything. Everything. Never played it again.

Lol funny yours is a persona 3 issue OP. Mine is a 90+ hour save on Persona 1 (yes the original PS1 US release with the "westernized" characters) where I was literally about to fight the true last boss and some sort of power outage happened. When everything recovered the save file had become corrupt and could no longer be read. That kept me from playing the game for again something like 2-3 years :P.

about a week ago the disc drive in my PS4 stopped working and thankfully it was still under warranty. Among the saves I lost are:

a 96ish% Far Cry 4 save (I was going for a 100% playthrough)

my nearly complete GTAV save

most important though is the fact that I had multiple games I bought digitally, and due to the slow ass internet I have, it's gonna take a solid week to get like two of the games back

I'm sure there are many instances my mind has "forgot", but a major one I still remember is Street Fighter Ex plus alpha.

For those who remember that game, it had a challenge mode that required you to accomplish different conditions to unlock things, aka., perform combo x, counter with y, etc. There were over 100 of them, and many of them were very hard. That said, a friend and I marathoned through most of it over a weekend and neither of us were good at the game, just good at the challenges. Then on Sunday night, I was getting ready to leave his house, while my cousin was playing the game. Afraid that he would mess up the save, I insisted I take care of it. I highlighted the main save and clicked to save the new file. My mind instantly knew something was wrong, but it had already fired off the command to my hand to confirm the overwrite. I probably sat there for a good 5 minutes, motionless and silent.

The good news is my friend and I were able to complete many of the challenges again fairly quick, but never the hardeset ones again. The cruel irony of it all.

Got to the final area of Dragon Age Origins on the hardest difficulty and my PC HDD shit itself.

No big deal though, I'll happily play through that game any time.

I remember playing The Elders Scrolls III Morrowind on my pc about ten years ago. I had gotten my character up to level 60 or slightly over (level 79 is the maximum level you can reach), I owned a very rare set of glass armour and some glass weapons and I had crafted several special items (mostly amulets) that allowed me to carry a huge load, breath underwater, walk on water, fly and also a couple of daggers that would summon daedric armor and daedric weapons for about 10 seconds. That might not seem like much but since they were very powerful (and I had six charges on each dagger) I could clear a room of demons with just one charge and finish the stragglers with my high level glass weapons. I must have put between 100 and 200 hours into that character in the course of about two years. Then I got distracted by other games and in order to clear some much needed disk space I deleted Morrowind which also deleted my game save. I didn't fully realize this until I got hold of the GOTY edition a year or two later and decided to boot up the game and pick up where I had left. Only to discover that I didn't back up my game save and would have to start all over again since it's not advisable to play the expansions with a starter character. Luckily Oblivion came out around that same time so I played that instead.

I remember transferring all my good Pokemon from FireRed to Emerald when I was younger, only for that Emerald save to corrupt, leaving me with none of my Pokemon. That was a bummer.

Couple of years ago, my PS3 died and took with it my FFVII save with all the best gear, levels, multiple master summon materia, etc., all that was left was grinding out the sources to get all the stats up to max.

One time I lost a save game of civilization v. I was about 50 hours in, had started out trying a get a technological victory, but half way through I got entrenched in a massive war. I needed maybe another five or ten hours and I would've conquered the entire planet. After I lost the save I was kind of disheartened by that game and put it away for a while. I never really picked it back up.

Another lost save that really made me upset was mgs4. I had beaten it on big boss extreme with zero kills and zero alerts. I was really proud because I didn't use any walkthroughs or anything to help figure out the best strategy.

When my Xbox 360 was burgled from my home. Insurance was a huge help in replacing almost everything. Unfortunately almost two years of early 360 game saves were lost. I had to start fresh in Burnout Paradise, GTA IV, Mass Effect, Oblivion, and others.

Had two Suikoden saves on one memory card. Accidentally deleted the one with all 108 stars.

@agentboolen: Oh is that so? I thought it was just a case of the save file being in a different folder, I found them in the game data folder which you cannot back up. Anyway, I still have the hard drive so I might be able to recover it somehow. It is really stupid how a PS3 harddrive has to be formatted before using it.

GTA IV. Was about 80% through the story, dropped it in favour of some other games - went to come back to it a few months later, my brother's X360 I had my save data on had been sold!

There is nothing worse than losing data from an RPG. Nothing.

Some of your stories are breaking my heart

Playstation 1. Probably around 1997. My brother was playing Deathtrap Dungeon and got really pissed off at the game at some point. He got up and kicked the PS1 hard, then took the disc outside and played a bad game of frisbee with it.

Oh, but that's not the bad part. I certainly didn't care about Deathtrap Dungeon. While he was playing frisbee, I examined the PS1. The memory card had been snapped in half by his kick. I don't remember everything that was on it, but what hurt the most was my Final Fantasy VII and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night saves. I probably had 90 hours logged in FF7 and was at the end of the game. I had beaten it once, but back then I liked to watch game endings a few times, plus I never beat any of the special bosses like Ruby Weapon. Never went back to it.

I'd already beaten Symphony of the Night too, and probably only had 11-12 hours logged, but still....ugh. Didn't have any trouble going back to that one eventually, though!

Got to the last dungeon on Majoras Mask and took a break to go eat. When I came back and booted up my N64 all the data on the cartridge was completely gone. I was so mad that I never went back to MM until I bought it a week ago on 3DS

The most shocking one was when my friend didn't know the difference between save and load and went to start up my almost beaten Crash 3 save.

I lost my character in Morrowind that had beaten Mournhold's story line and was almost done with the main quest when I switched to an SSD. I had beaten Morrowind before and I lost interest in the game so it wasn't a painful loss.

I lost my very first pokemon, my Blastoise, between transferring him around and then restarting the game he was on. I haven't been hardcore into pokemon in so long that losing him didn't bother me at all. It would be like losing a fishing trophy you won as a kid when you haven't fished in ten years.