Worse saving system ever?

In your opinion what is the worse saving file feature you've experienced in a video game platform?  This can range from any game/any genre.  I'm just curious what your thoughts are!

For me the top two ranking ones would prob be:

Castlevania II (NES) or Rambo (NES) for its insane 30 character password system.  A lot of you young casual gamers prob didn't know about this since NES was before your time, or even many others (since I don't know the age variety here :D ).  Today's games now usually have a save any where feature, super forgivable hold my hand constant check point feature, though I've prob played games like these where the check point system wasn't as bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttd_HcgaoXQ <--- AVGN video about Rambo skip to about 6:30 in the video and he'll explain about the insane password feature... a LOT of games used this yes kids it was that crazy :)

#2 on my list was maybe Silent Hill or early RE series (PS1).  While you could save any various check points you could only do so  if you had an ink cartridge to save at it.  You couldn't casually just save when you wanted to, it was limited to as a consumable, so you had to save...sparingly.

Well that's my thoughts....what's yours?

I guess I'm one of the 10 people in the world that liked the saving system of the older RE games. Limited saves and ammo made it feel more like a SURVIVAL horror game where resources were precious and took planning. Heck, all of the RE games with that save system had PLENTY of ink ribbons even on the harder difficulties. I always have a huge surplus and/or stop bothering to pick them up. >_>

Now days RE games drop ammo when you shoot a bird. But I digress. *sigh*

I always thought the way to save in the first Zelda game was ridiculously hard to get to.  A B select start?  Even if you know the button combination it wasn't exactly easy to do.  If you didn't read the manual you'd think you just couldn't save at all until the first time you died.  Still, saving was a really new feature back then, so I guess I can forgive it a little.

I remember playing Captain Tsubasa football game on a home atari system (I can't remember the name). The game was in Japanese and it used a password system and we had to draw the kanji passwords on a piece of paper everytime to later return to where we left off...

Fortunately though, the game was so fun when we were kids so we didn't really mind it too much.

For every NES game I think that's how it's designed you had to hold down the reset button then turn off the power.  I've had power outages go down but never lost my complete saved data personally, I think that only applies to actually saving the game.

Zelda:  You had to die in order to get the save menu, why nintendo designed this way is beyond me, other than the AB Thing which was still odd.  I always died because hey you got 3 life hearts when you resumed the game.

I liked the idea of survival horror but those games were difficult to me, not because i'm not the casual gamer but because I'm one cautious person!

On topic:  For RM games what sort of save file system do you expect?  The majority I've played usually have the save anywhere feature, I don't think I've ran into "unique" save points for RM games.

Diablo 2 (aka save and exit).

Not to mention that Death is actually so damn painful in that game...if you die you'll lose gold (and equipment) and you're forced to return in search of your corpse and redo everything to retrieve it.

An easy solution to prevent this is to use the save and exit command, in this way your corpse will appear in towns but...you'll lose all the gold (that you lost when you died) forever.

I love that game but seriously WTF? This is so frustrating...Blizzard you sadist.

I played the Zelda games on the NES but never knew this.  I always assumed you could only save when you died.

Then again, I probably quickly looked through the manual then played the game.

One nice thing about the password save systems was that you could continue playing the game at a friend's house.  Also, for the NES buffs, the reason for the password save systems was the Japanese Famicom did have a disk drive, but said device was not imported, so the developers made something else as a workaround.

Although I was fine with Metroid's password system, I was always annoyed with the NES games that said "Oh, yes, you can save.  Here's your password."  Then, when you resume play, you get a tiny fraction of your earned life bar.  In Metroid this would take awhile grinding away at minor enemies to fill up the energy tanks before playing the game proper.

I'm glad the DS portable system ports have a "Quick Save" so you can stop whenever (and restore that on power up) and save.  Important if the machine's batteries are running low.

I cant think of any games that I have disliked the saving function.

As long as the function fits the feel of the game to me, it doesnt really matter :)

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon : Red Rescue team.I played 20 hours+,then when I saved,the game said : Save Failed and crashed.ARGHHHH !!!

rofl yea, that is a poor saving system...

Havent had that experience myself :)

Quick save features are nice but they're a double edge sword since they're not a real save.

Lufia III's Ancient Dungeon great example.  It had over 200 floors to explore but no save feature in there, unless you quick save.  The problem with quick saving is that the data gets deleted after loading that game file up.  I got all the way to floor 200 only to get my ass handed to by the boss in 3 hits.  Well there's 10+ hour's ...GONE and nothing to show for it lol.

I like Quick Save features, but I agree 100% it's ridiculous to ONLY have a Quick Save feature.  But, I've never played Lufia III's Ancient Dungeon.  Is that game emulating a Roguelike?  Those are the games with randomly generated dungeons, permanent death and so on.

Although I liked them in college, I'm no longer a fan of Roguelikes, because I don't like permanently losing all of my progress.  All it takes in a Roguelike is finding one unlucky potion (some have a Potion of Instant Death), or encounter one monster too hard to battle.

Zelda: Link to the Past

I love the game, but in order to save you have to quite your game then go back to your house when you start again. You get to choose a couple more places later on, but it's still pretty annoying to get back to where you were.

The first Zelda was the same thing too, but that's mentioned above.

Except the WORLD MAP and Towns.  Lufia III's dungeon system was all randomly generated.  A first in the series I beileve.  It was well executed.  A great RPG, no lufia III isn't rogue like though it used you touch monsters to start an encounter (unless you were on the world map) it wasn't really a stealthy game.  But for a GBC game, I really loved it.

I see your Rambo and raise you Super Tennis for the SNES.

http://i.imgur.com/gYTL7xy.png <-- Why I never bothered with circuit mode

FIFTY SIX CHARACTERS. FIFTY. SIX.

Good god....  I didn't think it went that high and this game DIDN'T save?

*faints*

The only thing I hated about the save system in the old RE games was moving my ink ribbons in and out of the storage box.

On the other hand, I've never run out of ink ribbons, they give you plenty as long as you aren't a compulsive saver, so the mechanic was never really necessary for someone who plays like me anyway.

"Compulsive saver" that's another word for "cautious saver" :)

Resident evil 2 N64