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Save files can really tell a story

Psxphile said:
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I don't get it :(

Can someone provide a link/explanation?
 
Bought a PS2 that had a memory card left in (and a copy of San Andreas), and it was fun looking through the saves. Nothing really of note but it's still kind of fun to do.
 
My first save file was Majoras Mask on the N64 and it tells be that I didn't care about save file names because it's AAAAAAABBBBBBCCCCDDDDDFFFFFFFF
 
Pokemon is a spot-on example for this kind of topic. It's the only series I can think of where used copies have more value than new ones, exactly because of stuff like this.

About a year ago I bought both Platinum and HeartGold, obviously used copies. Both games' saves had some rare mons and trade-only evolutions that helped me in my quest to complete the Pokedex, but the absolute highlights were shiny Mewtwo and Regigigas that the game didn't even allow to transfer away, and two shiny Typhlosions in Ultra Balls.
Psxphile said:
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Why you gotta do it like this?
 
My cousin borrowed my copy of TLOZ Phantom Hourglass and played it for a while. It was the first time he played a game like Zelda and he liked it, he shared some of his experiences with the game but he didn't finish it. I checked his game file and saw he changed Link's name and named him after himself, etc. pretty much just standard stuff.

I left his file intact just in case he wanted to play it again.

A few years later he got cancer. He fought against it for 2 years. He passed away few days after he turned 18. I'm glad I didn't erase that save file.
 
Reminds me a bit of continuing a game that I've played years ago and picking it back up. It's almost like a stranger's game to me since I don't remember anything about the play through if it's been long enough. I haven't ever played on someone else's save though. That's always been kinda sacrilege to me. I did load up a save on one of the old GBA Castlevania games I had one time to see where that person was at that moment. I didn't delete it either, didn't seem right.
 
I got excited by a used Pokemon save file as well.

It was for Black/White, I think, and it had boxes of rare shiny Level 100 Pokemon. Of course, I figured they were all hacked (the trainer ID was a huge giveaway, associated with a well-known hacking tool or something), but I at least wanted to mess around with them on my own game.

Unfortunately they were all lazy hacks and wouldn't transfer up to Bank. So I decided to erase the game and start anew. But not before going all around the world to catch all the Legendary Pokemon the previous owner didn't bother catching since they hacked them all XD

Later on, I think I sold that same game, after finishing it myself. I left a bunch of Pokemon in it, just in case the new owner wanted them for Pokedex completion or something. If it wasn't Pokemon, I'd erase the save file so they could start afresh.
 
My friend got a used copy of Chrono Trigger on SNES way back when, and I'll always remember the save file having weird character names. Crono was Paxel, Frog was Foggy, and the rest I honestly don't remember but for some reason that memory always stuck.
 
An old neighbor of mine, about 70 years old, lended me her Playstation 2 years ago with all three Ratchet & Clank games. On each game, she had at least one save file that clocked at 99:59 with all weapons and tons of cash.
Respect.

And that was the first non-Nintendo console I tried out, and got me into buying a PS3 years later.
 
I booted up my 64 Ocarina of Time the other week and noticed I still have a save file from 2000 or so on it---named Scott, after a friend I knew. I did this a lot, like I named my character Brian (though misspelled it as "Brain") in Pokemon Red after a friend. I don't know what happened to either one of those friends now though, Scott probably is married but Brian was kind of off so I wouldn't be surprised if he's in prison or like dead now.

As for Pokemon, I still have all my Emerald and up in-game teams with me---I imagine one day when I finally drop Pokemon I'll leave them in whatever current game they're in and sell it off with the save file still active (if such things exist now that we're moving to on-console saves) so some kid can carry my legacy.
 
Super cool idea for a thread. Don't have anything to contribute other than its cool going through old memory cards and being like "holy fuck! I remember that game". Good times.
 
When I was a kid I got Diddy Kong Racing used. There was a completed file with the initials "JTT" so my siblings and I jokingly guessed that Jonathon Taylor-Thomas owned it previously.
 
That comic always hits me hard. I should dig out my 360 and load up some old saves from Morrowind. It's fun trying to figure out what type of build/alignment I was playing from years ago.

I recently a used Link to the Past cartridge for my DS and kinda felt bad deleting the save files.

Now a days I'll actually delete my save files from big open world games (Elder Scrolls, Witcher 3, etc) when I start a new game. There's something about starting completely from scratch that I like.
 
In Maine & New Hampshire, there is a music store called Bull Moose. They're a really cool place for movies, music, and games. Most of their inventory is used, they have a great store credit and points program, and they're kind of an institution if there's one near you. You don't go anywhere else for your media. You go to Bull Moose. This is especially popular with teens because their prices can be very low. I just mentioned in another thread I got Elite Beat Agents there for the first time for less than three dollars. That was the kind of stuff you could find there so it's always worth a browse.

Anyway, towards the end of the DS era, I sold my copy of Pokemon Platinum to Bull Moose along with a bunch of other games. I'd restarted the game with the intention of giving it one more go before I sold it, but I decided not to continue almost right away. When I traded it in, I'd only complete the tutorial and gotten my starter, which I named Fareweller. I don't usually nickname my Pokemon, but because this was supposed to be my last round before I sold the game, I wanted to commemorate the occasion.

But that was it. Game sold. I'd barely begun and didn't really care.

When the 3DS came out, I bought one right away and wasn't happy with the purchase. I brought it back to Bull Moose after a few months and traded it in for store credit. I decided to buy another DS Lite and some games I'd since heard were really good. I got Henry Hatsworth, Ghost Trick, and just for fun, I got another copy of Pokemon Platinum. It was so cheap, since it was an "old Pokemon game" at that point, that it was really an impulse buy. I thought it would be good to have in case I wanted to play it again.

Like eight months go by and I have the itch to play Pokemon Platinum again. I decide check out the copy I got at Bull Moose and notice first thing that the trainer name is Dawn. This was my trainer name as well, but it's also the canon name for the character, so it wasn't really a surprise to see that. But I wanted to check out the person's game just for the sake of it. There were over 200 hours clocked.

The player was standing in front of the Elite Four. Their party was all level 100 with competitive natures and (I'm assuming) correct stats. They were good Pokemon. But nothing stood out right away.

I went to their PC and found a ton of Pokemon. Most were level 100, lots of Shinies, lots of eggs that hadn't been hatched. It was the hallmark of a player who played too much and ran out of steam. I've been that player before, especially with Pokemon. That was how all my Pokemon games ended.

But in the PC, there was a totally empty box with a Chimchar in it. It was level 6. It was named Fareweller.

Somebody had bought my old copy of Platinum. But rather than start their own save file, they just continued mine. They stashed my starter as soon as possible and began what would be a very long adventure. For what must have been posterity alone, they never trained or released the starter I chose.

But other than that, the final save of this mystery player was so similar to what my final saves have always looked like in Pokemon games. A ton of level 100 Pokemon I never used, a bunch of unhatched eggs, Pokemon still in the Day Care, parked outside of the Elite Four... So it was like getting back a save file I played from another universe.
 
I still have a couple memory cards laying around which I refuse to throw away, there's still some mystery stuff on there!
 
Murkas said:
?

Isn't in the ingame mom sending gifts and not the real dead mom? Been years since I played Animal Crossing.
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That is correct. Especially since the girl mentions that the letters were pretty much the same (aka. prewritten automated letters.)

Most likely, it was the in-game Mom sending gifts. Her real mom was much too busy cutting down all the trees and gridding while replanting so she could achieve Perfect Town status.
 
This is a weird savefile story as it resulted in a person getting arrested.

I worked at a Second Hand story called Entertainment Exchange it was a 1 off store ran by two woman. Anyway one day a guy comes in with a beat up black GBA and a Pokemon Ruby game in it. He wants to sell it for some quick cash and be done. due to the condition of it it was price was lower then he expected but he took it anyway and was on his way.

Now being the biggest Pokenerd and Nintendo Guy they had in story I used to hard reset all save data on the games for them, except Poke Games, I always asked to if I could take them home first and take any Pokemon they have for myself, they were fine with it and so I did with this Ruby.

So I get home, load up my GBA and take the guy to the Pokemon center and save, load up my Gamecube a Pokebox to transfer all Pokemon across. But as I am doing this I notice a Ralts, it had an odd nickname, a nickname I knew because it was mine. It was my PurplDhed. I know stupid name but I did it to trade to a friend. So I quickly save it load up the GBA and check the name on the file.

Sure enough the name Liam was there, this was my friends game, the ID numbers match from the Ralts match my savefile on Sapphire. I get straight on the phone and call Liam ask him did he have his GBA Stolen and he had, he was at ruby practice when he had his CD Player and his GBA with Ruby.

So here I am with his game in hand so that night Liam called the Police back to say he had found where his GBA had been sold too, and we have to keep a record on name and address of everyone who sold stuff so the Police caught the guy got Liam's stuff back and the guy had to pay back the store as well.

All in all a good day for a game of Pokemon.
 
Trophies are even better. You can see at what time you did what.

I really enjoy that, sometimes I still have memories of the moment I defeated certain bosses.
 
As soon as I saw the two Darkrais I was certain that this save file had been tainted by wickedness. You should destroy this cartridge as punishment for the original owner's sin.
 
I really miss this aspect of cartridge-based gaming. Lot of fond memories of renting games as a kid and playing a continuing save file that others have clearly been building on. Once I had rented Pokemon Red from Blockbuster, despite having Yellow and Blue. On my own carts, I was only about midway through the game (I was maybe 5 or so - not exactly Great At Video Games). The cart was in Cinnabar, though, and it was really kind of blowing my mind. I didn't even know you could surf on water in the game (I had the guide book but refused to look past where I currently was. spoilers!). I ended up doing that a lot as a kid. Whenever I got a used game, or rented one, I almost always would play on other save files before starting my own, if not just to get an impression of the game. I played through most of Super Mario RPG four times as a kid - and the first three times were all just on other people's save files before I finally decided to start my own.

It's one of my favorite parts of buying used games these days, but from a different perspective. It's less of a window into later parts of the game, and more just interesting to see how the previous owner had gone through the game. Pokemon and RPGs especially are great for this. I picked up Final Fantasy Legend II the other day to find that it had three separate save files, all unique, what seemed to be halfway through the game or so. A few years back, I got Pokemon Green and found the person stuck halfway through Victory Road. They had never completed the game, so I guess they just got frustrated and called it quits. I finished up their file before erasing it and starting my own. It was a neat experience to carry their team to victory, one that's going to be increasingly uncommon from now on.
 
When I was in middle school I bought Pokemon Blue off a real sketchy kid for $5, in retrospect I would guess it had been stolen. He (or whoever played it last) was near the start of the game, had picked Squirtle as his starter, and all the pokemon were named things like PECKER and ASSFACE.
 
Uh oh, I can remember seeing a few stories before like this, I don't feel ready for feelings right no--

WITHE1982 said:
I bought a reconditioned fat PS2 a few years ago and one of the memory cards it came with was just full of images of the locker posters in MGS2.
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--Aaaah, there we go. Back to normal.
 
My wife and I both at different points worked at game stores. Lot of really cool stories from traded in things including save files on memory cards. Mostly about stuff stashed in the hdd bay of the PS2 though.....
 
I rented an NBA Live game on Genesis a long time ago. I don't remember which year it was but this version was one of the first with a character creation option.

There was only one created character on this cartridge and it was a gangly, goggled 7-foot-tall pale dude with minimal stats named "CHILD MOLESTER."

My parents made us take that one back early.
 
I always hate it when I buy a used game and I find all the save files maxed at 100%. Of course I immediately erase it.
Like when I bought Star Fox 64 and the save file completed everything in perfect, 5 stars, SSS rank, etc.

Then I played it and couldn't get nowhere near what the previous owner achieved.

Sorry, I don't share OP's sense of discovery.
 
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