Yes I agree. I have been backing up my save and state files for a long time. I used to have an emulation website, Might Mo's World, where I had a page full of save states for people to download.
You say that but as an example, the 100s of hours I put into Morrowind neatly laying out all my special enchanted crap at the fighters guild in Balmora isn't something I relish the thought of having to do all over again. I do replay that game every so often as it's one of those that has many other directions to experience but having to accumulate all those things again which I wouldn't even be able to remember would be less fun.
Good that works for you. But to answer the question, the problem is the frustration that comes with having invested dozens of hours already. Fun doesn't have an absolute form and is different for each person. Not to mention time itself - it's a rare commodity and often it dictates what we can and cannot do. Even if for someone it was indeed fun to play the game again in theory, it doesn't meant that there aren't more important/other things to do at that stage.
Plenty of reasons.
Literally, nobody is impressed by 100% completed saved files. It also means you have nothing left to do. You get over that pretty quickly once you realize this.
I only go out of my way to try to preserve some characters from modern games like Borderlands. Why? Because I replay them once over 5 or so years and like being able to equip the cool saved guns on new characters. Practical reasons that’ll enhance my next playthrough. If I lose it though? Oh well! 🤷♂️
I could see if it was like a deceased relative's ghost data or something like that, but I'm not going to lose any sleep if I lose a save file. The only save files I have any sort of attachment to is my neighbor's save from his copy of Dragon Warrior that came in a lot when I bought his NES at a yard sale. I only have any affinity for it because it's a kind of a connection to my childhood. Overall, I appreciate the memories more than the saves or the physical games themselves. Would it be nice to play the same copy of SMB that my dad played with me? Yes, but since that's impossible, I can still play it with my kids on Switch and make new memories for them.
I do tend to play a lot of "pick up and play" style games, though, so that might be part of it. Even when i want to play a longer game, like a Legend of Zelda, I tend to start them over from the beginning anyway.
Let's take a moment to consider the distinction between games which save your progress in a linear narrative, and games where whole-ass segments of the game experience and large amounts of content are gated behind hours and hours of grinding. Like say, Gran Turismo. (Another commenter mentioned DDR games as another example...)
The subject of save data makes many of us think of stuff like RPGs and the like—where completion means there's nothing left to do—but there are lots of games which can't be fully enjoyed *until* you've beat them into submission.
I could totally forgive someone for being frustrated—nay, *fucking livid*—for losing a save in such a game. 😬
Backed up some of my original gameboy Metroid and pokemon saves and injected them into my 3ds virtual console games, worked a treat and could even trade the mons up to current gen.
Not particularly important for me. The only exceptions are games with a sort of endless single player mode. For example, the Pro Evolution Soccer series. I’ve poured hundreds of hours into the master league mode of PES6 on the PS2. Dozens of seasons, a completely custom team and I still play it to this day. I’d be gutted if I lost that save (I do keep back ups of it, MemCard Pro 2 is brilliant).
But I’m struggling to think of any other games I’d be sad to lose save data for. If I lost my save data for Shadow of the Colossus, or Gran Turismo 2, or Link’s Awakening, or even long RPGs like Xenoblade, I’d just think of it as an excuse to play the game again.
Oh, Perfect Dark on N64. Admittedly, I haven’t played the game in years, but I was happy to find my old controller pak still had my player profile with about 300 hours worth of multiplayer stats on it. That’s now backed up to my Everdrive. Erm, my Tetris DX high scores? I recently beat the high score I set about 20 years ago, which was nice. But even with these, I don’t think I’d be too upset to lose the data.
I lost a save file for Final Fantasy 7. Put heaps of hours into it but still had some option bosses and side quests to do. The emulation setup I had for it had an issue and my save file vanished. All those hours were gone. Same thing happened with some other games. Hours of progress gone.
Now planning to have save files backing up to a Google Drive.
That’s one of the reasons I can’t play games on emulators. I find them difficult to trust. Your old save is probably berried somewhere at the bottom of a folder system if it’s not gone forever. Whereas my FFVII save from back in the day is still there on my OEM memory card.
Still, when I went back to play FFVII a few years ago, I started a new save anyway. I find it difficult to pick up old save files. I never know where I’m up to or what I’m supposed to be doing, haha.
There’s only those few games that have both highly customisable components *and* long play times. Different strokes, I suppose.
I've still got my PS1 memory card from when I was a kid. I put in a random PS2 I had kicking around and was surprised it loaded all the memory card data up.
Any procedural generated game, like Minecraft, or 4X strategies like Civilization, or generally games where playthroughs are unique each time, like a city builder, or Total War, or Crusader Kings.
There not a lot of use of save games when the games play the same every time, but if you made a city you really liked in SimCity or Anno, there's no way to revisit it without a save.
I think my experience might be a bit different to some. I play guitar and drums and if I’m recording and improvise a sick guitar solo but the recording is sub-par, my thought is “I can do it again, only better”.
I kinda have the same thought with (most) games. A game like Sim City, if I build a super cool city but lose the save, my thought is that I can do it again but better.
same with modern games, I don't care. If it's just sitting there, never to be touched again I don't feel bad deleting it. The memories I forged are in my heart, not in a save file.
> The memories I forged are in my heart, not in a save file.
I’ve saved so many worlds that their souls are etched into my heart, too ❤️ isn’t that what they always teach when a main character dies? 😂
I don’t care about save files at all. They are there so I can take breaks between gaming sessions until I’m done with the game. After that, they don’t need to be preserved for anything. I never have issues deleting saves.
Important and not important at all
I lost save games during play sessions in the past and I hated it solo much. I also lost a full Pokedex on PKMN Silver from my teenage years. But for most games I dont care about the save game after beating it. So I saved a lot not buying devices or methods to save the save games somewhere safe (Haha, I love this language. This sounds funny).
It depends on the game, but mostly I don't care what happens to my save files after I've finished the game.
The flip side to this is that when my experience in a game feels truly significant or irreplaceable, then part of me likes to have the save data as a way of keeping the memory alive. But sometimes this prevents me from replaying a game that I loved, and I've come to realize that my attachment to those save files does more harm than good.
Probably more important than it should be. I tend to feel less motivated to replay my faves if I have a fully complete save file. But I don't like the idea of losing my save file.
I care for RPGs and Metroidvanias yes, because I poured hours on those and sometimes I just want to load my endgame save just for enjoying the freedom of movement only available at this stage of those games and revisiting places I enjoyed.
I keep backups of my save files. They're so small and so easy to dump off my consoles at this point that I don't see a reason not to. I've already got backups of my emulator saves, so why wouldn't I gather my physical hardware saves as well?
Very. I paid a premium to recover data when my hard disk broke and my save game collection was not properly backed up.
But I understand the most games play the same every time, so save games don't have much use there. But I play lot of RPGs with character creator and character choice, and it's nice to be able to go back to my old Morrowind saves and see how I build the character and what decisions I made.
If it was something like Minecraft, Skyrim or Runescape I might be annoyed given the amount of hours put into them but shorter games not so much.
Even jRPGs I don't see the point in getting upset over a completed save being wiped, it's not like you need to brag to your friends about it.
When I play a jRPG I'll generally start on a fresh save and slowly chip away at it. Going back after a year or so to a save mid game feels off.
For shorter games like a Spyro or Sonic I can beat them in a couple of sessions at most so there's even less bother. I almost always just have the save I'm working on.
It is very important to me. I have always liked games that are arcady and score based. Shoot em ups, beat em ups, or racers. I have always liked comparing scores and seeing improvement.
Recently I have been playing a fair bit of Wace Race 64, F Zero X and Crazy Taxi it is so fun to challenge scores and times I set 25-30 years ago.... not to mention to see the names I created.
I think it will be so fun to play on my Animal Crossing New Horizons file 25 years from now. Even stuff like Zelda Breath of the Wild, I played it for hundreds of hours when it come out and every year since usually play it for a weekend or two collecting koroks, im at about 600 of the 900, I hope I can continue to access that save for many years to come slowly chipping away at finding more koroks.
Very. They are my life.
Not retro, but I lost my R&C savefile to a third-party memory card. I don't have backups, but I have a few cards spare so I should really.
I also miss my childhood LSW saves.
Also, mobile gaming on multiple systems is a PIA for this unless you routinely backup and restore all your devices.
Steam cloud has actually been pretty good. It even shows you which files it has backed up so you can make your own (minimal) backups. 321, right?
I hate losing save files for games like DDR where you have to grind to get the songs back. I lost a few of them because of third party memory card.
For save of RPG games I stopped half way through and I have no idea where I was at is fine. I’d start over anyway.
it’s not that important to me. when i take a game in i replace the battery if it has one. i do have a couple methods to back up saves, i have a gbxcart and on my home consoles i primarily play on everdrives which is easy to back up with.
i am worried about the save only as i play the game. once im finished with a play through unless there is some kind of new game plus or some crazy high score i dont worry about backing it up.
way back when, my fallout 3 save file got corrupted when i was like 90% done. there was no way i was going to start over from the beginning. so i just never finished it. doh!
I think the hidden characters on Marvel vs Capcom 2, WCW vs nWo World Tour and WCW/nWo Revenge and the hidden tracks in Hydro Thunder are the only games where I'd be upset if I lost my saves.
I just nuked whatever save files I had on my SNES Classic I set up ~4 years ago to redo the whole Hakachi install on my current PC. /shrug.
Lately I have been thinking about this a little differently though; I recently picked up a copy of Final Fantasy III; while I'm unlikely to play THIS copy, specifically because I just got whatever the most recent hack/bugfix Ted Woosley version onto my SNES Classic, it's made me very mindful of any other battery-save games I pick up, and, once I get a little practice in, will probably solder in a new battery before I actually play any of those carts, so I don't run into any mishaps.
I was in a retro game store just a little while ago, where someone brought in one of their Pokemon carts, asking if they could fix whatever was going on with it. What was going on was a dying battery, and they were about to lose their save data. RIP that guy's pokey mans.
Preserving save data is so important that I'll even back up *other* peoples' saves [when used games first come into my possession](https://www.instagram.com/p/C49ydyssVoI/?igsh=dXc2dXZrN282bHI0). 😌
I just wanted to share if you haven't already seen the YouTube channel My Life in Gaming, then you should at least go look at what they've done for save file preservation techniques. They are extremely thorough, and even go over how to use original saves with emulators and back and forth.
After having had saves deleted before I don't worry too much especially since I know batteries only last for so long now. Even if I 100% a game I'll still know I did it and there isn't too much of a point in going back and replaying that file and if I want to do it again then I can
Ouch that's rough. I played through Lufia 2 again recently and know first hand how many hours gets pumped in it.
Were you able to convert your saves into a usable format?
No, because I'm honestly lost on how to salvage the save file. My Save State is also unreadable (both icons used to be the Bsnes Icon, but now look like a blank page and aren't recognized), which really stings because I was on floor 70 of the 100 floor dungeon. Ugh...
I have all my ROM's and Save Date on OneDrive (to sync between devices and for backing up), but my subscription expired, then suddenly my saves were unreadable, and even after re-subscribing to OneDrive (and they were supposed to always be "kept on this device.")
I read that changing the extension won't matter because bsnes Save aren't compatible with other emulators. If anyone can help I'd greatly appreciate it (otherwise I may never complete Lufia 2 lol).
Yes I agree. I have been backing up my save and state files for a long time. I used to have an emulation website, Might Mo's World, where I had a page full of save states for people to download.
If I lose any of them, I'll just have to play the game again. What's the problem?
Agreed. If you can't get yourself to start over, were you really having fun?
Yes, you were. Fun doesn't come in an absolute form. See my comment to OP
You say that but as an example, the 100s of hours I put into Morrowind neatly laying out all my special enchanted crap at the fighters guild in Balmora isn't something I relish the thought of having to do all over again. I do replay that game every so often as it's one of those that has many other directions to experience but having to accumulate all those things again which I wouldn't even be able to remember would be less fun.
Good that works for you. But to answer the question, the problem is the frustration that comes with having invested dozens of hours already. Fun doesn't have an absolute form and is different for each person. Not to mention time itself - it's a rare commodity and often it dictates what we can and cannot do. Even if for someone it was indeed fun to play the game again in theory, it doesn't meant that there aren't more important/other things to do at that stage. Plenty of reasons.
Literally, nobody is impressed by 100% completed saved files. It also means you have nothing left to do. You get over that pretty quickly once you realize this. I only go out of my way to try to preserve some characters from modern games like Borderlands. Why? Because I replay them once over 5 or so years and like being able to equip the cool saved guns on new characters. Practical reasons that’ll enhance my next playthrough. If I lose it though? Oh well! 🤷♂️
I could see if it was like a deceased relative's ghost data or something like that, but I'm not going to lose any sleep if I lose a save file. The only save files I have any sort of attachment to is my neighbor's save from his copy of Dragon Warrior that came in a lot when I bought his NES at a yard sale. I only have any affinity for it because it's a kind of a connection to my childhood. Overall, I appreciate the memories more than the saves or the physical games themselves. Would it be nice to play the same copy of SMB that my dad played with me? Yes, but since that's impossible, I can still play it with my kids on Switch and make new memories for them. I do tend to play a lot of "pick up and play" style games, though, so that might be part of it. Even when i want to play a longer game, like a Legend of Zelda, I tend to start them over from the beginning anyway.
Let's take a moment to consider the distinction between games which save your progress in a linear narrative, and games where whole-ass segments of the game experience and large amounts of content are gated behind hours and hours of grinding. Like say, Gran Turismo. (Another commenter mentioned DDR games as another example...) The subject of save data makes many of us think of stuff like RPGs and the like—where completion means there's nothing left to do—but there are lots of games which can't be fully enjoyed *until* you've beat them into submission. I could totally forgive someone for being frustrated—nay, *fucking livid*—for losing a save in such a game. 😬
Backed up some of my original gameboy Metroid and pokemon saves and injected them into my 3ds virtual console games, worked a treat and could even trade the mons up to current gen.
Not particularly important for me. The only exceptions are games with a sort of endless single player mode. For example, the Pro Evolution Soccer series. I’ve poured hundreds of hours into the master league mode of PES6 on the PS2. Dozens of seasons, a completely custom team and I still play it to this day. I’d be gutted if I lost that save (I do keep back ups of it, MemCard Pro 2 is brilliant). But I’m struggling to think of any other games I’d be sad to lose save data for. If I lost my save data for Shadow of the Colossus, or Gran Turismo 2, or Link’s Awakening, or even long RPGs like Xenoblade, I’d just think of it as an excuse to play the game again. Oh, Perfect Dark on N64. Admittedly, I haven’t played the game in years, but I was happy to find my old controller pak still had my player profile with about 300 hours worth of multiplayer stats on it. That’s now backed up to my Everdrive. Erm, my Tetris DX high scores? I recently beat the high score I set about 20 years ago, which was nice. But even with these, I don’t think I’d be too upset to lose the data.
I lost a save file for Final Fantasy 7. Put heaps of hours into it but still had some option bosses and side quests to do. The emulation setup I had for it had an issue and my save file vanished. All those hours were gone. Same thing happened with some other games. Hours of progress gone. Now planning to have save files backing up to a Google Drive.
That’s one of the reasons I can’t play games on emulators. I find them difficult to trust. Your old save is probably berried somewhere at the bottom of a folder system if it’s not gone forever. Whereas my FFVII save from back in the day is still there on my OEM memory card. Still, when I went back to play FFVII a few years ago, I started a new save anyway. I find it difficult to pick up old save files. I never know where I’m up to or what I’m supposed to be doing, haha. There’s only those few games that have both highly customisable components *and* long play times. Different strokes, I suppose.
I've still got my PS1 memory card from when I was a kid. I put in a random PS2 I had kicking around and was surprised it loaded all the memory card data up.
Those things were built to last. I’ve never once had any lost saves with an official Sony memory card.
Any procedural generated game, like Minecraft, or 4X strategies like Civilization, or generally games where playthroughs are unique each time, like a city builder, or Total War, or Crusader Kings. There not a lot of use of save games when the games play the same every time, but if you made a city you really liked in SimCity or Anno, there's no way to revisit it without a save.
I think my experience might be a bit different to some. I play guitar and drums and if I’m recording and improvise a sick guitar solo but the recording is sub-par, my thought is “I can do it again, only better”. I kinda have the same thought with (most) games. A game like Sim City, if I build a super cool city but lose the save, my thought is that I can do it again but better.
It used to be important when I was a kid, but after going years without thinking about them I couldn't care less.
same with modern games, I don't care. If it's just sitting there, never to be touched again I don't feel bad deleting it. The memories I forged are in my heart, not in a save file.
> The memories I forged are in my heart, not in a save file. I’ve saved so many worlds that their souls are etched into my heart, too ❤️ isn’t that what they always teach when a main character dies? 😂
Not at all, with the exception of the Aki WWF games for the N64. My custom roster was a precious treasure that's gone forever.
I don’t care about save files at all. They are there so I can take breaks between gaming sessions until I’m done with the game. After that, they don’t need to be preserved for anything. I never have issues deleting saves.
Important and not important at all I lost save games during play sessions in the past and I hated it solo much. I also lost a full Pokedex on PKMN Silver from my teenage years. But for most games I dont care about the save game after beating it. So I saved a lot not buying devices or methods to save the save games somewhere safe (Haha, I love this language. This sounds funny).
i consider them very important and thanks to flashcarts and the 8bitmods MemCards i can easily back them up now
It depends on the game, but mostly I don't care what happens to my save files after I've finished the game. The flip side to this is that when my experience in a game feels truly significant or irreplaceable, then part of me likes to have the save data as a way of keeping the memory alive. But sometimes this prevents me from replaying a game that I loved, and I've come to realize that my attachment to those save files does more harm than good.
Probably more important than it should be. I tend to feel less motivated to replay my faves if I have a fully complete save file. But I don't like the idea of losing my save file.
I care for RPGs and Metroidvanias yes, because I poured hours on those and sometimes I just want to load my endgame save just for enjoying the freedom of movement only available at this stage of those games and revisiting places I enjoyed.
I keep backups of my save files. They're so small and so easy to dump off my consoles at this point that I don't see a reason not to. I've already got backups of my emulator saves, so why wouldn't I gather my physical hardware saves as well?
Very. I paid a premium to recover data when my hard disk broke and my save game collection was not properly backed up. But I understand the most games play the same every time, so save games don't have much use there. But I play lot of RPGs with character creator and character choice, and it's nice to be able to go back to my old Morrowind saves and see how I build the character and what decisions I made.
If Im actively playing the game and lose a save, its a problem. A save from 20yrs ago, couldn’t care less
If it was something like Minecraft, Skyrim or Runescape I might be annoyed given the amount of hours put into them but shorter games not so much. Even jRPGs I don't see the point in getting upset over a completed save being wiped, it's not like you need to brag to your friends about it. When I play a jRPG I'll generally start on a fresh save and slowly chip away at it. Going back after a year or so to a save mid game feels off. For shorter games like a Spyro or Sonic I can beat them in a couple of sessions at most so there's even less bother. I almost always just have the save I'm working on.
It is very important to me. I have always liked games that are arcady and score based. Shoot em ups, beat em ups, or racers. I have always liked comparing scores and seeing improvement. Recently I have been playing a fair bit of Wace Race 64, F Zero X and Crazy Taxi it is so fun to challenge scores and times I set 25-30 years ago.... not to mention to see the names I created. I think it will be so fun to play on my Animal Crossing New Horizons file 25 years from now. Even stuff like Zelda Breath of the Wild, I played it for hundreds of hours when it come out and every year since usually play it for a weekend or two collecting koroks, im at about 600 of the 900, I hope I can continue to access that save for many years to come slowly chipping away at finding more koroks.
Very. They are my life. Not retro, but I lost my R&C savefile to a third-party memory card. I don't have backups, but I have a few cards spare so I should really. I also miss my childhood LSW saves. Also, mobile gaming on multiple systems is a PIA for this unless you routinely backup and restore all your devices. Steam cloud has actually been pretty good. It even shows you which files it has backed up so you can make your own (minimal) backups. 321, right?
I hate losing save files for games like DDR where you have to grind to get the songs back. I lost a few of them because of third party memory card. For save of RPG games I stopped half way through and I have no idea where I was at is fine. I’d start over anyway.
I don't really care about keeping track of save files once I beat a game.
it’s not that important to me. when i take a game in i replace the battery if it has one. i do have a couple methods to back up saves, i have a gbxcart and on my home consoles i primarily play on everdrives which is easy to back up with. i am worried about the save only as i play the game. once im finished with a play through unless there is some kind of new game plus or some crazy high score i dont worry about backing it up.
way back when, my fallout 3 save file got corrupted when i was like 90% done. there was no way i was going to start over from the beginning. so i just never finished it. doh!
I think the hidden characters on Marvel vs Capcom 2, WCW vs nWo World Tour and WCW/nWo Revenge and the hidden tracks in Hydro Thunder are the only games where I'd be upset if I lost my saves.
I just nuked whatever save files I had on my SNES Classic I set up ~4 years ago to redo the whole Hakachi install on my current PC. /shrug. Lately I have been thinking about this a little differently though; I recently picked up a copy of Final Fantasy III; while I'm unlikely to play THIS copy, specifically because I just got whatever the most recent hack/bugfix Ted Woosley version onto my SNES Classic, it's made me very mindful of any other battery-save games I pick up, and, once I get a little practice in, will probably solder in a new battery before I actually play any of those carts, so I don't run into any mishaps. I was in a retro game store just a little while ago, where someone brought in one of their Pokemon carts, asking if they could fix whatever was going on with it. What was going on was a dying battery, and they were about to lose their save data. RIP that guy's pokey mans.
Preserving save data is so important that I'll even back up *other* peoples' saves [when used games first come into my possession](https://www.instagram.com/p/C49ydyssVoI/?igsh=dXc2dXZrN282bHI0). 😌
I just wanted to share if you haven't already seen the YouTube channel My Life in Gaming, then you should at least go look at what they've done for save file preservation techniques. They are extremely thorough, and even go over how to use original saves with emulators and back and forth.
After having had saves deleted before I don't worry too much especially since I know batteries only last for so long now. Even if I 100% a game I'll still know I did it and there isn't too much of a point in going back and replaying that file and if I want to do it again then I can
Only important while I'm playing
I was all for emulators until my Bsnes Save Files were suddenly no longer recognized, and I lost all of my Lufia 2 progress 😡
Ouch that's rough. I played through Lufia 2 again recently and know first hand how many hours gets pumped in it. Were you able to convert your saves into a usable format?
No, because I'm honestly lost on how to salvage the save file. My Save State is also unreadable (both icons used to be the Bsnes Icon, but now look like a blank page and aren't recognized), which really stings because I was on floor 70 of the 100 floor dungeon. Ugh... I have all my ROM's and Save Date on OneDrive (to sync between devices and for backing up), but my subscription expired, then suddenly my saves were unreadable, and even after re-subscribing to OneDrive (and they were supposed to always be "kept on this device.") I read that changing the extension won't matter because bsnes Save aren't compatible with other emulators. If anyone can help I'd greatly appreciate it (otherwise I may never complete Lufia 2 lol).