Initially, I wasn't too impressed with the Wii's SD card slot. I had (and still have) no intention of uploading my pictures and using the Wii for a slideshow presentation. But, of course, this isn't the SD card's only purpose, and I frequently use them to copy and transfer my Wii game saves to my computer. Knowing the 34 hours I spent beating Twilight Princess are safe helps me sleep at night. Despite how much fun I had with Twilight Princess, I would only want to play it again from scratch on my own accord, not because my Wii choked and erased the previous file.
After unlocking quite a bit of stuff in Elebits, I decided it was time for a routine backup. Unfortunately, when I selected the copy command, I was promptly told, "This file cannot be copied." I've tried everything possible, but the bitter truth is: Elebits will not let you copy your saved data to an SD card. A little upset about this, I went straight to the source (Konami) to find out why the simplest of tasks couldn't be done. The response: This feature is not possible at this time. Uh... yeah, I realize that. No explanation as to why. You just can't. End of story. Let's just hope you never have to reformat your Wii.
Oh, Elebits, why must you torment me so?
Losing your saved data is devastating. As losses go, it comes in third behind the death of a pet and death of a human being. Even though games are designed to be fun, they require a lot of work. They are hard, grueling, and oftentimes frustrating. This is especially true for those games that keep so much of their content locked and force you to learn the game inside and out by playing hours on end just to open some of the better levels and characters. If something happens to that work, you have every right to cry. Go ahead, it's okay.
I used to play Worms Armageddon religiously, running home from school every day to beat my siblings to the computer and get in a couple hours before my mother showed up and made me do chores. It took me several weeks to "win" Worms Armageddon. I had to play some missions several times. Things were said I wish I could take back. I stuck with it, though, because, by beating the campaign mode, I would have access to all of the special weapons and items. When I finally got this, my computer crashed the very next day. All that work-- gone. I have had no desire to play Worms ever again.
I know three people who would be very sad to see this go.
This "tragedy" could have been avoided, of course, if I had just copied my Worms save file to a disk (or disc, I can't remember what I was using at the time). That's one thing PCs have over home consoles. Though consoles are trying to be more and more like computers, they are still restrictive. My brother bought a memory card for his Xbox to backup his more important data, but when he tried to go about doing this, he found many of the games didn't even have a copy option. They were stuck on the hard drive. So when his Xbox died, and he had to get it replaced, all of our Burnout 3 content went with it. As I understand, there are "ways" to get around this, but you shouldn't have to mod anything or buy questionable peripherals just to create a backup.
The GameCube had the right idea when it came to backing up your data. Memory cards may be a hassle, but at least these ones didn't try to limit what games you could transfer. You could copy whatever you wanted to that second card plugged into your GameCube. Because it was so easy to backup data, I always had a second memory card specifically for this purpose. Yeah, it cost an extra $20, but that $20 was what kept me from making a poor buying decision like Judge Dredd: Dredd vs Death. And when one card inexplicably turned corrupt, this obsessiveness suddenly made a whole lotta sense.
Now this is how data management should be done.
If backup options are being left out to prevent "sharing," or maybe out of sheer laziness, developers should at least include "unlock everything" cheats with their games. In the Nintendo 64 days, I owned games that required so many blocks of memory, they wouldn't fit on my single memory card. Kobe Bryant's NBA Courtside took up way too much space, but my custom teams were too valuable to throw away. So it was impossible for me to save my Snowboard Kids progress. Fortunately, there was a cheat code I could put in at the beginning of every game which would open everything up, and suddenly I could enjoy it! Seriously, I didn't like Snowboard Kids until I was able to use some of the later snowboards. For a more recent example, Cel Damage requires a lot of single-player trudging just to earn the ability to turn off weapons you don't like. The game wasn't any fun like this, but once I put in the end-all cheat code, the game was completely customizable, and now it's one of my favorites.
Things are changing, though. If micro transactions really do take off, I have a feeling we'll see even fewer cheats and, perhaps, even fewer means to backup your save files. Developers are still a business, even if their hearts are "in the game," and there's no telling what lengths they'll go to to get your money. When your only options to recover lost data are to either play the game again for 50 hours or pay up for some micro transactions, a dark cloud has truly passed over the game industry.
After unlocking quite a bit of stuff in Elebits, I decided it was time for a routine backup. Unfortunately, when I selected the copy command, I was promptly told, "This file cannot be copied." I've tried everything possible, but the bitter truth is: Elebits will not let you copy your saved data to an SD card. A little upset about this, I went straight to the source (Konami) to find out why the simplest of tasks couldn't be done. The response: This feature is not possible at this time. Uh... yeah, I realize that. No explanation as to why. You just can't. End of story. Let's just hope you never have to reformat your Wii.
Oh, Elebits, why must you torment me so?
Losing your saved data is devastating. As losses go, it comes in third behind the death of a pet and death of a human being. Even though games are designed to be fun, they require a lot of work. They are hard, grueling, and oftentimes frustrating. This is especially true for those games that keep so much of their content locked and force you to learn the game inside and out by playing hours on end just to open some of the better levels and characters. If something happens to that work, you have every right to cry. Go ahead, it's okay.
I used to play Worms Armageddon religiously, running home from school every day to beat my siblings to the computer and get in a couple hours before my mother showed up and made me do chores. It took me several weeks to "win" Worms Armageddon. I had to play some missions several times. Things were said I wish I could take back. I stuck with it, though, because, by beating the campaign mode, I would have access to all of the special weapons and items. When I finally got this, my computer crashed the very next day. All that work-- gone. I have had no desire to play Worms ever again.
I know three people who would be very sad to see this go.
This "tragedy" could have been avoided, of course, if I had just copied my Worms save file to a disk (or disc, I can't remember what I was using at the time). That's one thing PCs have over home consoles. Though consoles are trying to be more and more like computers, they are still restrictive. My brother bought a memory card for his Xbox to backup his more important data, but when he tried to go about doing this, he found many of the games didn't even have a copy option. They were stuck on the hard drive. So when his Xbox died, and he had to get it replaced, all of our Burnout 3 content went with it. As I understand, there are "ways" to get around this, but you shouldn't have to mod anything or buy questionable peripherals just to create a backup.
The GameCube had the right idea when it came to backing up your data. Memory cards may be a hassle, but at least these ones didn't try to limit what games you could transfer. You could copy whatever you wanted to that second card plugged into your GameCube. Because it was so easy to backup data, I always had a second memory card specifically for this purpose. Yeah, it cost an extra $20, but that $20 was what kept me from making a poor buying decision like Judge Dredd: Dredd vs Death. And when one card inexplicably turned corrupt, this obsessiveness suddenly made a whole lotta sense.
Now this is how data management should be done.
If backup options are being left out to prevent "sharing," or maybe out of sheer laziness, developers should at least include "unlock everything" cheats with their games. In the Nintendo 64 days, I owned games that required so many blocks of memory, they wouldn't fit on my single memory card. Kobe Bryant's NBA Courtside took up way too much space, but my custom teams were too valuable to throw away. So it was impossible for me to save my Snowboard Kids progress. Fortunately, there was a cheat code I could put in at the beginning of every game which would open everything up, and suddenly I could enjoy it! Seriously, I didn't like Snowboard Kids until I was able to use some of the later snowboards. For a more recent example, Cel Damage requires a lot of single-player trudging just to earn the ability to turn off weapons you don't like. The game wasn't any fun like this, but once I put in the end-all cheat code, the game was completely customizable, and now it's one of my favorites.
Things are changing, though. If micro transactions really do take off, I have a feeling we'll see even fewer cheats and, perhaps, even fewer means to backup your save files. Developers are still a business, even if their hearts are "in the game," and there's no telling what lengths they'll go to to get your money. When your only options to recover lost data are to either play the game again for 50 hours or pay up for some micro transactions, a dark cloud has truly passed over the game industry.
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