The Pain of Final Fantasy VI – I Lost My Save File

March 8, 2021

I really need to get more writing done. Aside from writing lectures and reports, I haven’t written anything in a while. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been finding some time to relax. Mostly, this comes in the form of Final Fantasy. My goal is to replay 7, 8 and 9, being as thorough as possible, while I also want to finally finish 6, 10, 12 and 15. Final Fantasy 6 was probably the one I had the most progress with so far. However, that has now hit a massive road block.

Final Fantasy 6 originally released on the Super Nintendo System, however as a mid 90s kid, I have never had the chance to play on the SNES. Instead, I have both the PlayStation 1 port and the Game Boy Advance port. Thanks to being in the PAL region, the PlayStation one is more than a little slow, so most of my progress came from the GBA version. I was actually looking forward to this, as I know that the Advance port includes Kaiser Dragon. That and since the system is portable, I could take it with me around the house. Given we are still in lockdown, it’s not like I’m taking it to work with me anytime soon.

As the title suggests however, I have lost the save. I checked the back up save I’d made to fact check something, when the GBA System lost power. I grabbed my second system while the original charged, only to find that all the save data was now completely gone.

I’d logged 20 hours on that save, playing slowly over the course of 7 months. Grinding to make sure characters were even and learnt the Esper abilities. I was incredibly glad when I got past the Opera scene, and the Train segment was one I enjoyed but didn’t want to see again soon. Especially the heartbreak of Cyan watching his family depart this world.

And now it is all gone.

The question moving forward is this. Do I restart the GBA port and risk losing the file again, or do I suffer the loading time of the PlayStation port?