Absolute data corrupts absolutely

February 2nd, 2008

OB_IMG - Mr. Game & WatchStill disheartened by those lucky Japanese kids playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl over a month ahead of us, I thought I’d console myself with a little bit of the previous entry in the series, Super Smash Bros. Melee. This was the sparkling diamond amid a sea of GameCube coal. It came out less than a month after the ‘Cube’s stateside release, and I played it almost daily for a long time. Even after unlocking all the characters and stages and sound tests, I still kept playing. The game had an amazingly well-refined balance and complexity to it that made each experience unique. I quite literally saw something new every time I played that game. Though the occasional Super Mario Sunshine or Resident Evil 4 would momentarily attract my attention, I’d always come back to Melee. I played and loved the original N64 game, but Melee surpassed it in every way. Only in the past year have I seriously neglected the game, but it wasn’t out of lack of enjoyment. My hope was to approach Brawl from a fresh perspective, untainted by Melee‘s now antiquated graphics and control scheme. I want to be on the same play level as everyone else come release day. But since release day is now as far back as March 9th, I figured there wouldn’t be much harm in a little nostalgic run-through.

So I was sad to find that my save data was corrupted.

I guess six years is a long time to continually write and rewrite to a data file, but damnit, I had a lot of data! I had amassed thousands of hours (yes, thousands) of play time, fallen countless thousands of miles, and Link had racked up an impressive KO percentage. Kind of a bummer for all that to just disappear. Guess I’ll be making backups of such things in the future.

Sigh.

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