I lost everything...

DeaconKnowledge

...On my Wii. My Wii was in rough shape and it made a ton of noise, eventually not even turning on without a half hour of goading, and cursing. So I sent it into Nintendo, they threw their hands up with it, and gave me a new Wii.

I got the Wii back, and man was it barren. 1000s of Miis, gone. VG and WiiWare games, gone, but most importantly, all my saves had disappeared as Nintendo couldn't rescue them from the old Wii for some reason. Bummer.

So there I was, essentially left with about 30 new games as all my saves had vanished. So I got to work playing them again.

Man, I wish I had done this sooner. Having the saves for my Wii games was a license to never pick them up again. Strikers, Godfather, NMH, Galaxy, games I essentially forgot about due to completing them, all playable again since the roadblock that was the clear files was essentially dispelled.

Unfortunately, I haven't played too much of M&S, Wii Sports or Fit because of the loss of the Miis. It's like there's no one around...

It's been about 3 months, and I haven't even scratched the surface. I can't help but wonder now; why is it I keep clear saves again?

urahonky

You keep the clear saves because it's like a badge of honor you keep to yourself.

Also, I've been contemplating doing this with my 360. I want to get a larger HDD (120 GB) and might just not even worry about transferring the old to the new.

The_Scarab

I had the exact same experience when I got a new XBL gamertag. I'm there like, 'you know what I dont give a shit about Gamerscore' but when I have 40/1000 for NHL09 I think I might dip into it again just for the hell of it and then I find myself doubling my backlog.

I've found gamerscore is actually, minus the epeen bullshit, a good yardstick for how much time I have spent with a game. Proving useful to get my moneys worth.

Clear saves or saves where its like just before the final boss or a set piece usually mean I miss out half the game when I go back to play them so yeah its sometimes good to just slash and burn.

Nickle

Yeah, I just had a similar experience with my 360. I'd played a ton on my old roomate's 360, but after we parted ways he ended up selling it.

I recovered my gamertag, so now I have a ton of achievements, but no game saves. Which is fine by me, since, like the OP, I now have reason to play some of these games again.

greeble

I feel kinda the same way with the ps3 games that got retroactive trophies which require to do a new game to get them. However I wouldn't want this to happen to all my games. As there is some stuff that sucks to have to unlock again.

DeaconKnowledge

urahonky wrote: »

You keep the clear saves because it's like a badge of honor you keep to yourself.

This is very true, however I can't help but wonder if it's a good idea. I mean, when was the last time I said "man, wasn'tit awesome how I beat Prime 3 6 months ago? Let's look at the end file.

Yep, there it is. Now to tuck the game away and forget about it"

greeble wrote: »

I feel kinda the same way with the ps3 games that got retroactive trophies which require to do a new game to get them. However I wouldn't want this to happen to all my games. As there is some stuff that sucks to have to unlock again.

Agreed. Particularly games I didn't finish. A reset save is what killed my chances for beating Shadowrun on the SNES years ago. I was at the last boss.

Dodge Aspen

I perfected Super Mario Galaxy back when it came out. Every fucking star twice.

I had no desire to play it again with that save sitting there, but then while visiting relatives over the summer, the young kid had only about 20 stars collected, and I sat down and had a blast growing his collection for a few hours.

It's weird, but those save games are kind of like a roadblock. Interesting.

Daedalus

You should be able to redownload the VC/Wiiware stuff for free, if they repaired it right, but the saves for those are gone too.

On topic: I kind of like to start over in a game sometimes, but it's really annoying if that game has (say) a multiplayer component and unlockable stuff, to erase that file.

slash000

I keep cleared saves as badges of honor :P Otherwise sometimes having a cleared save will keep certain stuff unlocked in case you want to play it again. For example having most action games with a Clear lets you go back and choose a level to replay without having to play to the level from the beginning.


That said if you ever feel like re-acquiring a fully unlocked save file, I believe there are several websites out there that host Completed Wii Save files for various games and you just download them, put onto SD card, insert card into Wii, then switch it out for your current save file.




I do enjoy going back and playing my favorite games regularly though.

DeaconKnowledge

Daedalus wrote: »

You should be able to redownload the VC/Wiiware stuff for free, if they repaired it right, but the saves for those are gone too.

I should have put this into the OP, but i'll say it here, I was able to re-download all my VC/WiiWare games for free. I just gave Nintendo a call. Be warned though, if this happens to you don't download anything until you call them or it assumes your Wii as a new account and all of your old shit is lost.

Dodge Aspen

Thing with a lot of Wii games, is they are multiplayer centric, with stuff to unlock to have the most multiplayer options. Losing my Brawl save would seriously impede my gamer nights.

EDIT: Mario Kart, too.

jothki

Dodge Aspen wrote: »

I perfected Super Mario Galaxy back when it came out. Every fucking star twice.

I had no desire to play it again with that save sitting there, but then while visiting relatives over the summer, the young kid had only about 20 stars collected, and I sat down and had a blast growing his collection for a few hours.

It's weird, but those save games are kind of like a roadblock. Interesting.

I'd say that's a good thing most of the time. Imagine if you felt obligated to reply your entire backlog.

Mr_Grinch

Did you let your Miis wander?

Isn't there a chance (I can't remember how it works) that they've walked on to anyone's Wii who's friend code you added? I seem to remember using the parade and ending up with lots of weird Mii's

Also if you have "character" wii's you can redownload them and copy them to your Wiimote using a bluetooth application on your pc.

Chance

I don't think I've ever lost a significant save file... though my Fallout 2 save bugged out after 40+ hours and at that point I said "fuck this" and never went back to it.

But revisiting old favorites can be a very rewarding experience. For my birthday last year, my little brother was kind enough to get me the Hitman Trilogy for PS2. (That's Hitman 2, Contracts and Blood Money, it doesn't include the middling-to-bad Hitman: Codename 47.) I'd SSed every kill in every Hitman game before, but getting the trilogy felt like a fine reason to go through every game and do it again.

I love you, 47 - come to the current gen consoles, won't you please? I know Kane & Lynch sucked, but I don't hold that against you, IO Interactive. Just give me back my beautiful set peices, intricate scenarios, Jesper Kyd soundtrack and gorgeous animations.

Also, the Sly Cooper trilogy - wonderful to replay again. All kinds of great trilogies on the PS2... Sly, Hitman, Metal Gear, Ratchet & Clank, DMC 1 and 3, PoP...

DeaconKnowledge

Dodge Aspen wrote: »

Thing with a lot of Wii games, is they are multiplayer centric, with stuff to unlock to have the most multiplayer options. Losing my Brawl save would seriously impede my gamer nights.

EDIT: Mario Kart, too.

Yeah, Playing Smash again was my first priority. Haven't gotten back into Mario Kart Yet (I want to unlock the Mii Racer more than anything else).

The biggest bitch on the Wii though is if I want all the Miis and friends lists back I have to contact the people on my list for their system codes all over again. Not easy to do for 100 entries, and i'll be damned if I enter all those friend codes for games I play occasionally again.

tastydonuts

Nickle wrote: »

Yeah, I just had a similar experience with my 360. I'd played a ton on my old roomate's 360, but after we parted ways he ended up selling it.

I recovered my gamertag, so now I have a ton of achievements, but no game saves. Which is fine by me, since, like the OP, I now have reason to play some of these games again.

This and the OP are part of the reason I'm trying to clear my backlog and fully wrap older games up before hitting my new ones!

PikaPuff

The_Scarab wrote: »

I've found gamerscore is actually, minus the epeen bullshit, a good yardstick for how much time I have spent with a game. Proving useful to get my moneys worth.

I have about 50 on Rock Band 1, and 150 on Rock Band 2. I really should play them more than a week.

tastydonuts

PikaPuff wrote: »

The_Scarab wrote: »

I've found gamerscore is actually, minus the epeen bullshit, a good yardstick for how much time I have spent with a game. Proving useful to get my moneys worth.

I have about 50 on Rock Band 1, and 150 on Rock Band 2. I really should play them more than a week.

Earth Defense Force. I played that game, and heavily. I have 0/1000 gamerscore on it... I shouldn't have started clearing it on hardest first. :U

PikaPuff

haha yea, i have 100 because i beat easy, and have about 30 levels on every other difficulty beat

Brainiac 8

While it sucks to lose all that save data, it sort of is a blessing in disguise because like you said, it gives you a reason to revisit old games.

I had something similar happen to my Wii a while back, and Nintendo just replaced mine also. I swear they have the best customer service I have ever dealt with. I lost saves and Mii data, but they moved my shop channel account so that my money I spent on the shop wasn't wasted and I got all the stuff back from the VC for free.

I was very happy with them when they did that.

SirUltimos

This really makes me wanna go back and replay some old games. I think over the Christmas break I might try that.

But know what`s not cool about losing saves? Playing an epic RPG and losing your save after dozens of hours put into it. Or Pokemon. Losing your Pokemon save is enough to make you want to kill someone.

Peewi

Thousands of Miis? I thought that the maximum was 100. Also, you lost everything that you bought from the Wii Shop Channel? That must suck.

I completely understand not playing the game again if you have a completed save file, if it is a game with limited save slots. I have in the past wanted to replay Pokémon games, but not done so because of only having one save file.

DeaconKnowledge

Peewi wrote: »

Thousands of Miis? I thought that the maximum was 100. Also, you lost everything that you bought from the Wii Shop Channel? That must suck.

I completely understand not playing the game again if you have a completed save file, if it is a game with limited save slots. I have in the past wanted to replay Pokémon games, but not done so because of only having one save file.

I didn't lose anything from Wii Shop: Nintendo transferred everything from my old Wii with a phone call.

As for the Miis, yeah. thousands. Recall, you have 100 total in your Mii Channel but a virtually countless amount in the Mii Parade. I was up to 4000 or somesuch. by itself it's not that bad of a loss, but when you play Wii series games and Mario and Sonic, the game populates with your Mii characters. Not having them there makes the games barren and sterile to me.

Lunker

Slash and burn, baby. Video games are about the journey and not the destination. Put another way, if a game's not worth replaying, it's not the kind of game I'd be interested in playing in the first place. Though I don't think I ever got past the Fire cup in Strikers because of how infuriating the enemy AI got at that point.

Glad to see you've found a silver lining, Deacon. When I had my Wii repaired in January '07, they transferred my saves and the dozen or so Miis I had but I lost the ability to edit them, which meant I couldn't use them for certain things.

Nickle

Yeah, the situation with the 360 is pretty much ideal, considering I still have the achievements to recognize that I have, in fact, beaten some games, but I still have the incentive to go back and beat them again.

The only downside is the games I hadn't quite beaten yet. I'm notoriously bad at finishing games, and usually have a dozen (ok, a few "dozens") or so games with a save right near the end. For whatever reason I find it harder to play these games than I do the ones I have beaten.

Of course, my backlog is so ridiculous right now, regardless of this situation, that it's not even funny. I just try to ignore it and keep plugging away. It makes the rare moments when I actually beat games that much sweeter, and takes the sting out of short games. I was disappointed in the length of Mirror's Edge, at first, but then I was just so happy to see the credits of a game for once.

DeaconKnowledge

Lunker wrote: »

Slash and burn, baby. Video games are about the journey and not the destination. Put another way, if a game's not worth replaying, it's not the kind of game I'd be interested in playing in the first place. Though I don't think I ever got past the Fire cup in Strikers because of how infuriating the enemy AI got at that point.

Glad to see you've found a silver lining, Deacon. When I had my Wii repaired in January '07, they transferred my saves and the dozen or so Miis I had but I lost the ability to edit them, which meant I couldn't use them for certain things.

That really blows. When I got my Wii back I had my Mii on a controller and I put him back in, but he very clearly didn't recognize me at all. The new Deacon is nice, but he's no original.

Idx86

The_Scarab wrote: »

I've found gamerscore is actually, minus the epeen bullshit, a good yardstick for how much time I have spent with a game. Proving useful to get my moneys worth.

I feel the same way. A bunch of the stuff I would not have done in Assassin's Creed had it not been for the achievements. I like the little trophies, but also just to extend the game play.

Xenogears of Bore

I had a big problem in the GCN era with saves.

2 times I lost gigantic SSBM saves do to someone inserting the card and saving over. I lost it again in a JPN region format and another time when I lost my 1059 card for 11 months.

Other saves on that lost card include 2 completed SOA saves, a gigantic Harvest Moon Save, a completed save for both pokemon games, A full Pokedex on my Box file, and pretty much any other long format game you can think of on the GCN. Animal Crossing, both BK games, a 10 clear all dogtag Bigboss Extreme clear of Twin Snakes... And a year 78 FF:CC save with the best equipment on every character. Some of those saves took hundreds of hours.

One day I was digging through the couch (between the arm and the bottom support, looking for a GBA game of all things, and I feel something about that size. I end up with a bloody arm from a really sharp spring and the prodigal son of all memory cards. It sometimes isn't recognized by the Wii, but it still reads and writes fine.

h8b1llg8ts

Is it too late to piggy back your previous VC purchases to your Wii now? I have a day one Wii and it's been hesitating in loading along with not reading GC discs every time. I can imagine it dying out within any month now ...

If not how do I do that?

Xenogears of Bore

Call Nintendo after it dies. You might have to put it out of its misery first and send it into them.

Also if your Wii is ever stolen you might have to call up the chain a bit but you can in fact get all the games transferred. It is much easier to do if you already have a Mynintendo account.

SirUltimos

Argh. I hate it when younger cousins or siblings come over and accidentally save over my files. That happened with both SSBM and Skies of Arcadia for me.

AuburnTiger

Have we had a thread here for people's thoughts on the idea of achievements and gamer scores? I'm sure we have, but I'd love to read more about what people think.

Anyway, I've thought about buying a memory card to copy my game saves to; i know that you can recover an account and achievements on a new 360 hard drive, but the game saves would be lost if the HD crashed, right? I don't know how much a memory card costs.

And yeah, sometimes time spent playing does not equal achievements. I've spent almost 20 hours on Blue Dragon and I have a whopping 20/1000. :x

DeaconKnowledge

h8b1llg8ts wrote: »

Is it too late to piggy back your previous VC purchases to your Wii now? I have a day one Wii and it's been hesitating in loading along with not reading GC discs every time. I can imagine it dying out within any month now ...

If not how do I do that?

The steps you should take:

First of all, back up the saves you want. That could be some, all, or none. There is a chance Nintendo will save them, but don't leave it to fate. (Oh, and say goodbye to Smash Bros. It won't copy over).

Second, say goodbye to your Miis, or at least them recognizing you (read: being able to edit them). Again, hit or miss on if Nintendo can save them.

Send your Wii in, and wait. When it comes back, the first thing you should do is check to see if your Wii/VC games are re-downloadable. If they're not, CALL NINTENDO IMMEDIATELY. DO NOT BUY ANYTHING NEW ON WII SHOP UNTIL YOU DO THIS. They will re-link your games to your account.

Copy over the saves you put on SD, and the healing can begin.

Norfair

I had this happen with some Dreamcast games. I'd bought a cheap shitty third-party memory card to save a few bucks, and the damn thing corrupted. My Soul Calibur save, my Shining Force save (from the Sega Smash Pack), my PSO character... all gone.

I was devastated about losing my PSO character--I'd put dozens of hours into him--but I ended up starting all the games over from scratch.

And, yeah, it was pretty fun. I got over the disappointment pretty fast. Especially when I ended up liking my new PSO character more. (Hunters are more fun than Rangers, at least for me.)

Since then, I've deleted stuff on purpose just for the pleasure of replaying it many times. (The one time I think it was a mistake? Metroid Prime. I forgot just how annoying it is to get all the missable scans. It's better to just leave the main save alone, and just start a new file on it, and delete the old ones as you go, but leave all the art gallery stuff unlocked.)

I do leave clear saves alone, if the game was particularly annoying, or I managed to 100% a game with a lot of hard-to-get unlockables that I enjoy using in replays.

LBD_Nytetrayn

This is a fear of mine; I have backed up everything I can, but unfortunately, it's chiefly the stuff I don't mind losing that it lets me copy.

I don't mind replaying Super Mario Galaxy of Super Paper Mario or Zelda: Twilight Princess again.

But I don't want to have to rebuild everything I've got in SSBBrawl, or what there is in Mario Kart Wii again. And I don't want to lose all my Miis.

Nintendo really has it quite backwards, I'm sorry to say.

Darth_Mogs

Norfair wrote: »

I had this happen with some Dreamcast games. I'd bought a cheap shitty third-party memory card to save a few bucks, and the damn thing corrupted. My Soul Calibur save, my Shining Force save (from the Sega Smash Pack), my PSO character... all gone.

I was devastated about losing my PSO character--I'd put dozens of hours into him--but I ended up starting all the games over from scratch.

And, yeah, it was pretty fun. I got over the disappointment pretty fast. Especially when I ended up liking my new PSO character more. (Hunters are more fun than Rangers, at least for me.)

Since then, I've deleted stuff on purpose just for the pleasure of replaying it many times. (The one time I think it was a mistake? Metroid Prime. I forgot just how annoying it is to get all the missable scans. It's better to just leave the main save alone, and just start a new file on it, and delete the old ones as you go, but leave all the art gallery stuff unlocked.)

I do leave clear saves alone, if the game was particularly annoying, or I managed to 100% a game with a lot of hard-to-get unlockables that I enjoy using in replays.

Oh my God. The thought of my PSO character being lost to the abyss is heartbreaking. He's, like, level 124. That's so much time off my life, it's ridiculous.

I've felt this horrid loss twice, though. The first was when I tried taking my favorite Ogre Battle 64 save to a memory card and managed to screw that all up somehow. I lost it completely, because I think I accidently copied another save over it, instead of copying it over another save. It was just never the same, playing it again.

And the second one, the one that makes me so goddamn angry even to this day: Poke'mon Gold. That fucking shitty piece of -garbage- that was the GB Reader attachment for the controller never connected right. So, of course, one of the times it was saving, and had the big "Do not disconnect" blah blah blah, message, for some reason, even though it didn't move or anything, it registered as not being there anymore.

So when I tried to play it again? NO SAVE.

I had it beaten, did all of Kanto (Or whatever the Red/Blue/Yellow place is called; I get them confused), beat Red, had an awesome team, ALL OF IT.

Gone. Because of shitty Nintendo products. I've never played Gold again, and it was/is easily my favorite incarnation of the series.

Followed by Diamond. Which, yes. I have almost Caught them all.

tastydonuts

AuburnTiger wrote: »

Have we had a thread here for people's thoughts on the idea of achievements and gamer scores? I'm sure we have, but I'd love to read more about what people think.

Anyway, I've thought about buying a memory card to copy my game saves to; i know that you can recover an account and achievements on a new 360 hard drive, but the game saves would be lost if the HD crashed, right? I don't know how much a memory card costs.

And yeah, sometimes time spent playing does not equal achievements. I've spent almost 20 hours on Blue Dragon and I have a whopping 20/1000. :x

I have a feeling that it would that kind of thread would be about as constructive as... uh... hmm... I got nothing. but it wouldn't end well.

Memory cards for the 360 are a rather cheap way to backup your stuff on it. I don't even know where my wii is right now, but what were the storage options for it? I know I have a smash save so it has something... but what were the other options?

Daedalus

DeaconKnowledge wrote: »

h8b1llg8ts wrote: »

Is it too late to piggy back your previous VC purchases to your Wii now? I have a day one Wii and it's been hesitating in loading along with not reading GC discs every time. I can imagine it dying out within any month now ...

If not how do I do that?

The steps you should take:

First of all, back up the saves you want. That could be some, all, or none. There is a chance Nintendo will save them, but don't leave it to fate. (Oh, and say goodbye to Smash Bros. It won't copy over).

Second, say goodbye to your Miis, or at least them recognizing you (read: being able to edit them). Again, hit or miss on if Nintendo can save them.

Send your Wii in, and wait. When it comes back, the first thing you should do is check to see if your Wii/VC games are re-downloadable. If they're not, CALL NINTENDO IMMEDIATELY. DO NOT BUY ANYTHING NEW ON WII SHOP UNTIL YOU DO THIS. They will re-link your games to your account.

Copy over the saves you put on SD, and the healing can begin.

There is a homebrew program you can use to copy the so-called "uncopyable" saves, such as those for Smash Bros and Mario Kart. I used it the last time I needed to send my Wii in, because while I might replay Subspace Emissary at some point, there's no fucking way I want to have to re-unlock all those characters.

Brainiac 8

Quick question about achievements and losing saved data. Is your data attached to the achievements, or are they attached to your XBL profile?

So say if my save for Lego Batman was lost, and I had to start my game from scratch, do my achievements for Lego Batman dissapear, or will they be safe?

SirUltimos

Brainiac 8 wrote: »

Quick question about achievements and losing saved data. Is your data attached to the achievements, or are they attached to your XBL profile?

So say if my save for Lego Batman was lost, and I had to start my game from scratch, do my achievements for Lego Batman dissapear, or will they be safe?

They're tied to your profile. You'd be safe.

Brainiac 8

Awesome, thanks.

I was worried about that for some reason.