Moodily contemplating the advance of time, partially spurred on by the loud whippersnappers in the world, and discovery that I have marked “read” emails in an inbox that are over a decade old, I was just wondering: what’s the oldest Saved Game that the rest of you have, that’s still in existence?
For myself, I have a few SimCity 2000 cities and Civ 2 runs quietly enjoying retirement on a Zip Disk or two that date back to the mid-to-late 90s, at least. And if the battery has managed to hold out, a Maniac Mansion save on an NES cartridge in the storage shed that would date back to 1998.
How 'bout you? Bonus points if it’s actually a continuing campaign.
I’ve managed to find an SC2000 save dated 1996. It would be quite unlikely that I’d have anything that goes back farther than that, as that’s about the time when I first got my own computer.
The oldest timestamp I can find is a saved game slot for Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, dating from January 23, 1997. I think I might have something older from Doom II or Hexen, but the timestamps all got reset somehow during one of my copyings from one computer to another.
I’m a little surprised about the Dark Sun one, because that game only had a limited number of saved game slots that you had to re-use, and I’ve played it through a number of times since then. I guess I just never happened to re-use slots 7 or 10.
I have played Chrono Cross three times on the same save(it gives you New Game+ at the end).
Once in 2000 up on release. Once in 2005. And once a few years ago. I still have the PS1 save card and have considered playing it again. I have functioning PS2 to play it on.
Like a box you move from house to house and never actually unpack, I have some files I moved over and over from four computers back that have saved games that date back to the late 90s that are probably unreadable. Original Baldur’s Gate saves and Sierra game saves plus others. Probably have some D&D Gold box game saves somewhere as well that are older still.
I deleted most of my old saves on my PS3 to make room for new games, so probably Portal 2 (2007-2008) which was the first game I played on my current computer.
I still own cartridges for Warrior of Rome II and Master of Monsters, both on the Sega Genesis from around 1995. They would have existing campaigns on them assuming the batteries held out (which I doubt).
I probably have a Princess Maker II save somewhere from around 2000. Not a saved game, but I still have my custom unit icons for Civilization II somewhere. They would date back to around 1998ish
My laptop is new and I didn’t port anything to it, so I’d say I’d have to go back to a memory card I have stuck in my PS2, which still works but which I rarely play. I think I have an old Spider-Man 2 saved game still on there, and a The Warriors saved game as well. How old is that … no clue. The ol’ wiki machine tells me those two games were released in 2004 an 2005 respectively, so let’s say a nice round 10+ years. I strive for accuracy.
I’ve got an old 3.5" floppy disk with a bunch of old DOS savegames on it. I know there’s at least an old Wasteland save, and a bunch of campaign scenarios for Ancient Art of War at Sea, both circa 1989-90. But of course I don’t own a drive anymore that can read the disk so I might as well just frame the thing and hang it on the wall.
An Amiga game, Deuteros. Working from memory, since I haven’t fired up the game in decades, but the save game should be about 1992. I still have the floppies and the computer, and I know that the computer (at least) still works.
