post your gaming "horror" stories

[Video]

Hm. Let's see. I had a high school boarding school roommate that stole Kirby's Pinball from me. I finally replaced it this past week.

 

I don't have a lot of stories like this for consoles. I do have a few for PC games though... Like nearly getting to the end of Morrowwind, only to have the HD crash and lose the entire game. Thankfully, I'd backed up my important files, but save games were not among them. It was around 60 to 80 hours of gameplay.

That sucks, I lost my morrowind when I got a problem with windows and had to reinstall it. Fortunately, I did have a not so recent save of the game backed up, so I didn't loose to much. It's such a pain to copy PC saves for some reason, I'd think it should be easy, considering how easy it's gotten on consoles to keep backups.

[Herbarius]

Oh, about the PC, there is something for you:

 

 

One day, a friend came around, and he brought Diablo II, which was newly released. I was still running Windows 9x.

I installed it, and we started to play, then mid-game I accidently pushed the Eject-Button on the CD drive, it opened, the computer went Bluescreen... I then reset the machine, but Windows wouldn't boot up again.

On further investigation I found out, that somehow the file system of my whole C: partition was screwed up completely. So I had to format it, lost everything I saved there (didn't know much about possibilites for file recovery, and even if I did I wouldn't have had the necessary software to pull it off), and subsequently I took an "oath" to myself never to install this game on my machine again...

 

That oath propably did more damage in the long run than those few lost files and wasted effort in re-installing Windows

I'm finally planning to break it, as I figure running Windows XP with Service Pack III should be sufficient to avert such a catastrophy from happening again...

Edited August 20, 2010 by Herbarius

[Frizo]

I have another horror story, this just happened last night, too.

So me and my friend (for this story named 'Bob') were pulling an all nighter, okay?

So Bob and I pull out Stuntman for the PS2, and get super far in the game (8 hours into it) and around 8:30 AM the power flickers off and on. Mind you, we didn't have the brains to save the game, you can guess what happened, right?

Edited August 20, 2010 by Frizo

[MindController]

Having managed to find all items in Zelda 2 for the NES, and making it to the final castle, only to have a neighborhood friend save over our game. Accident nothing. It was a conspiracy!!

[doctorclu]

My brother managing to spill an entire pint glass of lemonade onto my Lynx

 

Man this was one I said EEk to.

[toiletunes]

About eight years ago, I lived near this arcade. I got really good at one of the ticket games- I could hit the jackpot about half of the time. One day, I go in with $20, planning to "win" a DVD player or something. The game kept running out of tickets, and the attendants were getting suspicious. They even had someone watching me from the second floor to make sure I wasn't cheating or whatever. At the end of the day, they're getting ready to close, so I go to the ticket eater, and I'm feeding this thing thousands upon thousands of tickets. I'm just starting on the last bundle of tickets and they cut the power. All gone.

[desiv]

OK, game related horror story..

 

I was a bit sick when I was younger, spent some time in the hospital...

My parents got me a really nice 10-speed then. More than they could afford (I remember it had Shimano Index Shifting, which was a big deal then..) and, as I was still kind of sick, I didn't ride it much..

 

So I started getting better health wise and taking it out a bit..

Possibly my 5th or 6th ride... My younger brother and I went to the local market..

Parked the bikes. He stayed with the bikes (no locks..) and I went inside to play AstroSmash...

(Yes, you can see this coming...)

Incredibly, I got this unreal (for me and the neighborhood) high score.. Awesome...

And I called my brother in to look...

(I was intelligent, but not very smart..)

 

He popped in.. Saw the score.. Awesome.. Popped out..

 

No bike..

 

It taught me some great lessons, but ouch....

 

desiv

p.s. Did I mention, I grew up in East Los Angeles, so it's not like I shouldn't have known...

Edited September 9, 2011 by desiv

[AlvinKarpis]

My little brother erased or saved over EVERYTHING

 

Zelda (at least 5 seperate times)

 

Super Mario World when I was super close to the end

 

Sim City on SNES when I was stuck at 475k population and just about to break 500k ( )

 

Street Fighter 2 Turbo on the SNES, not like erasing but when I would be E Honda and trap my brother in the corner with the 100 Hand Slap and keep moving forward, he would get super pissed and throw the controler and turn the SNES off while I rolled around on the bed laughing

 

There is so many stories

[Rex Dart]

I asked for Tom & Jerry for NES for Christmas once.

I got it.

[A_Locomotive]

When I last played Morrowind on xbox I had maxed out my character and explored most of the world and racked up well over 100 hours of game play, then while spelunking a cave for loot came across a sword I'd never seen before, I believe it was an ebony weapon as it was very heavy and powerful, it was also enchanted. I equipped it and for some reason saved my game... only to discover the weapon had permanently blinded my character. I must have assumed it was a temporary effect that would disappear when I unequipped the weapon because I have no clue why I saved. My guy was permanently blinded I couldn't find anything online mentioning the sword nor could I find it in the extensive game guide I own. So I'm assuming it was some sort of fucked up Easter egg or a bugged weapon. :/ This did teach me a valuble lesson though, I've never since played any game with only a single save when possible I keep a minimum of 2 but more often 3 or more.

 

I haven't played the game since. That was by far my worst gaming horror story. Only other ones I've got a various times my brother has saved over my games. Worst of which was when I was playing the RPG Summoner and was hours away from beating the game. Came home from school to discover my save was gone. My brother had thought it was his memory card and while looking through the save games for ones to delete to make room for a save for a new game deleted my save. I was furious.

[+thegoldenband]

There are three that come to mind:

 

- My friend and I decided to try to roll the score on Super Mario Bros. We were taking turns on World 3-3, farming the Koopa on the staircase for points. We'd got to about 350k when I brought in some books to read while my friend was playing. I dropped them on the floor...and that was that. Oops.

 

- I remember getting most of the way through Destiny of an Emperor for NES, and losing my saved game to a sudden attack of the blinkies. That one really angered me.

 

- Most recently, I got to the last stage of the "new" Genesis game from Super Fighter Team, Star Odyssey. I made it to the final boss, but wasn't able to beat him, so I turned off the game for the night, unplugged the console from the power and AV, and planned to level up in the morning. However, in the morning, my main savefile (in slot #1) was mysteriously corrupted, with the character names all messed up. I had a backup slot in #3, but first I tried copying my main savefile to #2, in case that might somehow fix things. Nope.

 

When that didn't work, I tried pulling the game out, putting it back in, and starting the console again...and now all of my savefiles were erased.

 

I contacted Brandon at SFT, but his opinion was that it was just a freak accident. Somehow, when a brand new cartridge in an unplugged console suddenly corrupts its saved game, the idea that it's simply one of those things doesn't sit so well. I'm not convinced it isn't a bug in the game, but whatever.

Edited September 10, 2011 by thegoldenband

[Rex Dart]

[IntellivisionII]

Don't know how much you guys know about the original pokemon game glitches, but I'm way into them. Probably a year and a half of experimentation and finally I turn on my gameboy only to see, "GAME DATA CORRUPTED!" at least I was able to start a new game and transfer glitch pokemon from other cartridges.

[Tr3vor]

Don't know how much you guys know about the original pokemon game glitches, but I'm way into them. Probably a year and a half of experimentation and finally I turn on my gameboy only to see, "GAME DATA CORRUPTED!" at least I was able to start a new game and transfer glitch pokemon from other cartridges.

 

I loved using the mew glitch where you fly away from that one guy next to the city to the left of lavender town. Sad that glitch pokemon from what I've seen crash the game on Yellow.

 

but I really like changing random bytes in the games ram through emulators to make the game freak out.

I found out that the certain address D35E is the location byte, and changing just this will make the game just crap its self: http://www.youtube.c...ser/Tr3vor42532

 

but the fact that I figured out the missingno. glitch randomly (seriously once I accidenlty made that random guy do the battle animation thing, then I flew to cinnibar to go towards seafoam and the instant I moved once while in surf, and some level like 149 'm showed up. I didn't have any Idea why that happened untill about a year or two ago.) made me shit my pants. I HATE finding the glitches in old 8-bit games that make games freak out. glitches were so creepy back when I was little.

Edited September 11, 2011 by Tr3vor

[2600Lives]

Playing a Neo-Geo at a grocery store one day while a buddy of mine shops. I didn't need anything, so I plunked a quarter into the machine and started up on Sengoku 2. Well, he's taking a freaking long time, and I'm playing away, doing really good. Got to the last boss, with only a couple of quarters left. Get to the final boss with no quarters left, but I'm doing awesome against him, and am going to beat him. What happens? A little kid decides it would be fun to run up in front of me and start pounding the buttons, literally smacking my hand off of them to do so. I lost, naturally, mostly due to the surprise of the whole situation. His mom came over, grabbed him by the arm, and started beating his ass right there. I sort of felt sorry for him, but realized that if I'd ever done anything like that myself at that age, I'd have had to have had a skin graft on my ass after my own mom had gotten through with me.

[retrorussell]

I was once at an arcade having a great game on Kung Fu Master (a game I was never any good at until that day) and had never beaten the 4th floor boss. FINALLY I got to him and started kicking his ass. I kicked off his head (had lots of energy) and he grew another without making the "copy" of himself. I started gut-punching the hell out of him and was about to finish him off.. when the game froze. S**T!!!

 

Another time I was going for a record I was going to submit to Nintendo Power magazine for Super Mario Bros. I had MILLIONS of points, over a hundred lives, etc. I was playing this in the den, and the wiring was all screwed up.. the light switch at the bottom of the stairs from the living room turned off the television and NES. We had relatives over and their kids, and one of them (about 4 years old) sauntered down the stairs and turned the light switch off. UGH!!!

[DemonoidTentacle]

Back when I was in university I had a day off, spent all day playing Banjo Kazooie on the N64.

 

Now normally, I'm a freak when it comes to saving my games, I just HAVE to constantly do it.

 

8 hours into my game, it froze, and I realised I'd never saved the game once.

[SlowCoder]

My horror story ...

One day I was playing my game. My mom came in and told me it was time for bed.

[STICH666]

My horror story ...

One day I was playing my game. My mom came in and told me it was time for bed.

[Rex Dart]

I wonder if kids today fully appreciate Autosave?

Edited September 13, 2011 by Rex Dart

[Karyyk]

Probably the closest thing to a horror story that I have is having my Nintendo DS Lite and all of my games (not to mention the backpack they were in) stolen while I was downtown drinking with a few friends. What really made it worse was the fact that it was stolen because one of those friends didn't lock his door (something I had stressed repeatedly before going in). I didn't realize it until I got home later that night and then I kind of just snapped. Not a good memory...

[marcfrick2112]

Thankfully, I only have a couple horror stories...

 

In 6th grade, a 'friend' of mine borrowed my Entex Galaxian 2 handheld.... and never returned it!! :x

 

I FINALLY got a replacement Galaxian 2 game 26 years later.....

Now, it, as well as all my other handhelds (Scramble, Tron, some oddball Mattel games) are safely tucked away in my 'retro rec-room'....

 

And, while an annoyance, rather than a nightmare:

 

I am a big RTS fan... I had just installed the DVD of Command+Conquer: The first Decade.. it took forever to install. I proceed to install a MOD for C+C Generals... like I have done before, ...

After installing the MOD, I find the entire C+C directory got corrupted.... :x

[Hatta]

- Ultima Underworld: When games tried to be too realistic.

I cant remember what quest item I was looking for but what seemed liked 100 hours into the game I realized I needed that quest item to continue.

It took me months to find out who had the item and when I found out, I remember that I had pushed the creature\person into a lava pit, not knowing they carried the item I needed.

They were gone forever.

So....100 hours down the tubes. I never went back to restart the game.

 

That's almost exactly what happened to me in Morrowind. I had already found one of the items needed to complete the game while randomly crashing through dungeons. By the time I found out I needed it, I had already ditched it somewhere because there was no indication that it was valuable. Ultima Underworld from 1992 and Morrowind from 2002 share the same damn flaw. Bet you there will be a game in 2012 with the exact same problem too.

[disjaukifa]

About 3 weeks ago I was playing a round of Berzerk, and until that round my highest score was 27000ish, The game started off horribly! At 5000 points I had no lives left, however I kept earning a new life and then I would die so the game wouldn't end. This happened all the way till about 18000 points. From 18000 ~ 23000 point I started getting some lives, and by now I wanted to break through the 27000 barrier. Well I get to 28000 YES, then 30,000, then 35,000, then 40,000, then 45,000, then 50,000. I'm at that moment I'm having the game of my life, feeling great! Shortly after 55,000 points I sneeze and my foot yanks the power cord out of my 2600!!! I couldn't even take a screen shot to show people that I had done it!!!

 

That was probably my best gaming horror story.

[SoulBlazer]

- Ultima Underworld: When games tried to be too realistic.

I cant remember what quest item I was looking for but what seemed liked 100 hours into the game I realized I needed that quest item to continue.

It took me months to find out who had the item and when I found out, I remember that I had pushed the creature\person into a lava pit, not knowing they carried the item I needed.

They were gone forever.

So....100 hours down the tubes. I never went back to restart the game.

 

That's almost exactly what happened to me in Morrowind. I had already found one of the items needed to complete the game while randomly crashing through dungeons. By the time I found out I needed it, I had already ditched it somewhere because there was no indication that it was valuable. Ultima Underworld from 1992 and Morrowind from 2002 share the same damn flaw. Bet you there will be a game in 2012 with the exact same problem too.

 

Not sure which version of Morrowind you have, but the PC version has a 'virtual console' that you can use to hack the item back into the game. I did that a couple times myself.