Uhh, this wasn't in the river by any chance, was it?

I just bought The Witcher, so thanks for the reminder

Modern games that save frequently and automatically with checkpoints and whatnot are definitely spoiling me. Every now and then, one like Mass Effect that's much more draconian will pop up and punish you horribly... or a jaunt down memory lane teaches you that the good old days could be pretty punishing, especially compared to today's games.

The most I've ever lost is a few hours. Going way back I've had the habit of using 3-5 overlapping save files, just in case I need to backtrack.

My deepest sympathies.

Something like this happened to me when I first played FFVII. Not sure how many hours, but to put it in context, Sephiroth had just spiked that huge snake on a tree. I went into the cave and fought the Turks and decided that that was long enought and low and behold, I had no memory card in the slot. I just about cried. That memory is the driving force that reminds me to always check and save whenever you can.

Grandfathering saves (at least three) is definitely the way to go. I remember saving by mistake right after dying and being dragged off my zombies in Alone in the Dark. Every time I loaded, I was being dragged off. Oh, the horror.

He makes a valid point. In Snake Eater there is a part of the story where you are wading through a river and you are being attacked by every soul you've killed up to that point in game. Eventually you end up "dying". To wake up you have to take the pill that is hidden in your tooth by accessing the equipment menu when it says SNAKE IS DEAD... I forgot what the pill was called in the menu. It could be something like antidote or something.

I shamelessly creep save. I had as many as 200 save games in Oblivion, and as many as I could possibly make in Bioshock. And I'd do it again too.

I thought I had learned all my saving lessons as a boy, but I think we've been spoiled by the checkpoint ridden future. I'm mostly game on the PC, so I've gotten used to the F6 key being my one and only lifeline.

Actually, now that I think of it, I played the first 4 hours or so of Halo3 and turned the game off in frustration and boredom only to find I had not actually saved once. Didn't come back until a few weeks later when a friend and I played through the entire campaign in a night, which was a far better experience anyway.

And as far as my crash, I was inside the walls of Grozny Grad, but still just in the yard with the trucks and guard dogs and whatnot. It was a normal death of just getting shot and stabbed, then I just sat there for about 30 seconds until the "SNAKE IS DEAD" screen came up and I hit O. Then the screen went black. Is that what you're talking about? If it is, that would piss me off greatly, as the game itself is fantastic, but all the little "try to figure out what the designer is thinking" puzzles really drag it down at times. Down to the point where I fear for the safety of my controllers.

There was one time where even that didn't save me. It was in Knights of the Old Republic, Tatooine. The sequence there was long enough that all of my saves ended up in the same general area and I encountered a bug that locked me into an area on the planet. No matter which way I tried to leave, in any save, the game would crash. Soured me on the whole game and I sold it.

I enjoyed Homeworld 2 much better than most...one of the non-gameplay reasons was the excellent autosave system. Not only did it save frequently at key points, but the points were clearly named and listed in a reasonable order. My eyes were opened to new possibilities...only to be dashed as other games failed to take up the mantle.

On another forum I complained about not being allowed to save as I wished in various games and I was taunted by people saying I should play through absolutely straight with no backtracking to experience a game as intended. F*** you very much is my basic response...if I can't save frequently and try different approaches, I actually miss much of the game, because I have to become so conservative in my actions that I can't experiment. "Hey, how does the flamethrower work? Hmm, better not try in case I fry some of my own men..." Being able to experiment and find different ways through a level makes a game much more interesting to me.

Most recently, I've spent a lot of my holiday vacation time playing Warlords Battlecry II on Gametap (I can't make a post without the G-word...) and quite enjoying it...except, it has a system that only allows one save slot, and it clears that save after you finish a battle. I learned after some painful experience that the only way to do it is to save at the very beginning of a battle (and I'm screwed if I forget) and play through the entire thing from scratch, then redo it if I mess up. Thing is, at least for me, this is a tough game. It kicks my ass. I've actually been enjoying that fact and replaying and replaying and replaying and...(really, sometimes dozens of times) battles. But sometimes it's a battle I just can't win, and if I'm in Ironman mode that means I have to start the game over; in other modes, that means I have to resign that battle and the AI players all gain ground while I fall back; do that two or three times and I'm screwed.

So I really enjoy WBCII, but I think I have to give it up...the game is just too damn hard to play with only a single save allowed.

This discussion reminded me of a time about 10 years ago when our apartment was broken into and my N64 was stolen along with all the cartridges. Since we had insurance I wasn't so much upset about losing the hardware as I was about losing my saves on Mario, Goldeneye and whatever stupid annoying Star Wars game I'd been plodding through. I never had the heart to restart any of those games after the insurance money replaced it all.

Games that do rotating quicksaves are rare but wonderful. I can't remember which game(s) I played recently that do this, but they're out there.

I usually accumulate huge numbers of save games if possible. Fallout only has space for 10 saves and I used them all. I had dozens of Oblivion saves. And yet, even today, there are developers who don't realize players are going to have large number of save files. There was a game a few years back that put the oldest saves at the top and the newest at the bottom; any time you wanted to load a save game, you had to scroll down down down the list, each and every time.

Actually, the Valve games do that, if I recall even the first Half-Life did. It's a godsend in first person shooters and stealth titles, particularly. Those types of games are ones where I'll occasionally hit the quicksave button, but can go a long time without manually exiting to the menu and saving. This can sometimes lead to me having to redo a whole mission or level because of that one moment where everything goes wrong and I accidentally hit quicksave when I mean to hit quickload.