Xbox game saves - the awful truth
I found an interesting blog entry discussing my Monday Rant on how Xbox game saves won't be transferrable to Xbox 360. In it, I'm criticized for approaching the whole game save topic "in an alarmist fashion." That's fair. I would have gone with "sensationalistic" myself.
But the goal of the piece was to be a wake-up call. Titling it Dude, wake up, your hard drive's dying and there's nothing much you can do about it and, oh, Microsoft's said they're not going to help either - so there wouldn't have been much of a hue and cry. And I believe that what I've described is truly the one thing that will suck about the 360 - or at least the one thing we know about. So I stand by my title. Hey, made you look, didn't it?
Anyway, the Space Ninja blogger also reports that he talked to his buddy Daniel who worked on Whacked! dev team and takes issue with my report that the saved games are locked - that is, cannot be copied from your hard drive to any memory card. Daniel apparently didn't bother to boot up his Xbox to check - I'm guessing he didn't know he was on the record and would be quoted in a blog. But it would have been nice. Because he would have found that it is indeed so.
Actually, a lot of Microsoft Game Studios games are locked (as you'll see in the list I've compiled below) so - I would speculate - the decision was probably made at an executive level and no one bothered to challenge it.
Anyway, this guy Daniel's disbelief made me go back and double-check my Xbox hard drive and I was shocked - SHOCKED! - at some of the other titles that have locked saves. This means you can't rescue these files to a memory card or another original Xbox unless you have illegally modded your machine. It also means that even if Microsoft comes around and offers a memory card solution to move your Xbox saves to the 360, you still won't be able to move these ones. They're permanently stored on a single hard drive that will inevitably fail.
Before I get into the list, let me preface this with an admission. I didn't double-check the titles before I posted my Rant (hey, I was pretty beat Sunday night and I'm fighting my fourth sinus infection this year) so I depended on memory. I remembered Transworld Snowboarding and Whacked! because I tried to copy them once and it struck me as odd that anyone would bother locking these saves. I also correctly recalled Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball because it made sense - you could cheat to more easily acquire the most expensive and revealing swimsuits if you could back up your save before every round. Plus, all Team Ninja games have locked saves - it's some hard-core gamer machismo thing with them.
But I misremembered Steel Battalion, which zaps your save if your Vertical Tank explodes before you hit the eject button. Turns out, that one's not locked so you could back it up before each mission. I haven't actually tried it, but I suspect it would work. So much for it being the most hard-core game on the block, or maybe they just took pity on us.
With that said, here is the result of my survey of games with locked saves:
- Burnout 3 (V)
- DDR Ultramix
- DDR Ultramix 2 (V)
- Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball (V)
- Dead or Alive 3 (V) (ZSF)
- Dead or Alive Ultimate (can copy battle records though) (V)
- Defender (V)
- Forza Motorsport (V)
- Fuzion Frenzy (ZSF)
- Grabbed By The Ghoulies (V)
- Kung Fu Chaos (ZSF)
- Lego Star Wars
- Mafia
- Namco Museum (ZSF)
- Ninja Gaiden (V)
- Otagi
- Shenmue II (ZSF)
- Silent Hill 4 (V)
- Simpsons Road Rage (V) (ZSF)
- Spider-Man (ZSF)
- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (V)
- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 (V)
- Tao Feng (ZSF)
- Transworld Snowboarding (V)
- Whacked! (V)
- X-Men Legends (V)
Again, all this means is that you can't back up your progress. If you want to play these games on another Xbox (whether or not you're concerned about about the survival of your existing one's hard drive) or an Xbox 360 (pending emulation), you'll have to start over.
This is why I'm hoping Microsoft will find a method to permit a one-time transfer of both locked and unlocked game profiles, saves and other game data to your 360's hard drive - so your $400 can at least buy some time for your hard-earned Xbox saves and customizations.
-=Gamewatcher
