Whats the longest you've played a game with busted saves

Momo Momomo

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I'm talking about that cartridge you got at a garage sale with the dead battery, or your older sibling wont let you have any more space on the only memory card you both share, regardless of the reason, a lot of us have played the beginning of a game over and over again or left the console on over night just to get a little further.

for me it was chrono trigger, i played the first few hours of that game dozens of times. i still have never actually finished it too. embarrassing i know.
 
I played Pokemon Yellow without making saves when I first got it because the emulator couldn't make them.
 
I’m pretty sure I got the sigma final boss on Megaman x8 with no memory card. The game wasn’t really fun as a kid.
 
I think 4 days. Had a PS2, PS2 memory card, but a PS1 game of Tales of Destiny 2 we rented back before video/game rentals were obsolete back in 2001.

Other than that, probably a few hours with Shadowrun Genesis, where i was playing on a real genesis... and then it kept not remembering my save after i turned it off. Didn't bother keeping playing after that.
 
I honestly don't think I could do that. It would make me feel terribly uneasy. I don't mind when the game can't save by design (say, Outrun), but if it can, it absolutely must.
 
I think my Super Punch Out cartridge stopped saving back in 2002 or something, you can still finish it without trouble though.
 
I played Pokemon Yellow without making saves when I first got it because the emulator couldn't make them.
I just noticed this. This might Be a funny time to mention I’ve beaten blue multiple times without saving haha. Usually only takes less than an hour because of fast forward.
 
Back when i was 7 i played rise to honor and only got about half way through before a blackout happen that cut all the power and lost all my progress. it's a ps2 game by the way.
 
Does not really count but I remember doing 5 complete playthroughs of Need for Speed ProStreet because for some reason the save files would get deleted magically. Not sure if there was something wrong with my memory card.
 
I think it was FINALLY getting to second level of Tomb Raider 2 and understanding the need to buy a memory card... Also unlocking a few Tekken characters and leaving the PS1 overnight. We didn't have ANY saving in older games in my country, just passwords. No SNES whatsoever and yellow Famiclone cartridges only had games that didn't need memory (so no Zeldas, later Marios or Castlevanias).
 
"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" for PS2.
I played it when I was 9 years old, and for some reason the Memory Card wouldn't save my games. I played it and finished it right away. I don't even remember why, even though I'm a Harry Potter fan, lol
 
I've beat Beyond Oasis on SEGA without a save battery. I got to the midpoint of second generation in Phantasy Star 3. And around Halfway through the game in the first Shining Force.
 
Luigi's mansion. first attempt, until the 3rd boss, boolossus. second time, finishing it.
mario & luigi 3: bowser's inside story, in a commercial store.
without chairs to sit on and with neck pain, but I did it.
 
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I got a copy of Yoshi's Island (Snes) with a dead battery from a flea market as a kid. Every weekend I tried to beat it keeping the console on from Friday night till Sunday and failing miserably😅
 
My Donkey Kong Country 2 didn't save, i remember always getting a game over a bit after the honey world
 
I once did a 100% speedrun on Wario land 3 with a broken save (dead battery). I found the cart on a local playground. The entire run took around 10 hours and my Gameboy's batteries were barely holding on by the end. Thank you, GameFan magazine, for the amazing walkthrough.
 
I remember never beating Crash 3 beause we got a Memory card one year after getting our PSX/1, the farthest i reached was Warp Room 5
Crash 3 without saving? You deserve this.
the_cake_is_a_lie_portal.jpg
 
Middle school friend (very much a Nelson Muntz-type so more like frenemy but whatever) had a copy of Digimon World but no memory card. Yet he would still sink countless hours into the game. I found it equals part fascinating and retarded.


Personally when the battery of "my" copy of Pokemon Crystal died I never touched it again. Eventually it went back to its original owner I think. Or maybe that was just Zelda (which unlike pokemon I didn't intend to keep I swear for me mum).
Good kid, he scored our school's hottest piece of ass and they're together to this day.

I also got my hands on a knockoff copy of Pokemon Gold that didn't have a battery at all. Came from a friend of a friend of an older brother's friend.
Adding to injury the game was all messed up. Full of gibberish so probably machine-translated from moonrunes, and the gameplay felt extremely 'off'. As if the whole game had been recreated from the ground up rather than just being a janky romehack. You couldn't interface it with legit cartridges either.
Needless to say I didn't keep it for long. Probably traded it for a dimebag or Mickey Ds.
Now I used to buy knockoff OG gameboy games from a shady comics store but never saw anything like this again. Come to think about it they never had newer games so maybe it was just NOS.

Thank you for reading my blog. Like & subscribre for more foggy memories of a 32-y-o boomer.
 
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis on the PS1, managed to beat the game (on Hard) after a grueling, agonizing few weeks of a summer break when I misplaced my memory card and basically had to keep the PS1 running at all hours, pausing between sessions.

Absolute hell.

But, in good news, the day before I finally managed to beat the game, I found the card hidden under my friggin' boombox, of all places...so I got to save the aftergame stuff (Mercenaries, Epilogues, etc.)
 
Technically not a busted cartridge, but back in the old sega channel days, the shining force 2 save system had a save on it but also broke masking your own, at the middle point of the game, so i played through the game, playing the first half one day, then the second half another, over and over until they fixed it.

Say what you want but it did make me buy my own cartridge to have my own saves.
 

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