While it might be something of a dying concept with disc based games and profile locked saves stored with online servers then for many years games had their saves stick with them, and even without that you might have bought a memory card or console with existing things on it. Others might have rented games and experienced something similar, indeed many have stories of playing the same games as someone else local to them that they might have never met, as well as adopting a certain etiquette when playing such things.

By way of example. End of the 16 bit era. I had purchased a copy of a Lotus III driving game for the megadrive. Today it is not so well remembered other than being an earlier example of procedural generation, and a few select fans of game music (skip to track 3/6:29 for what many consider the best). In my case the high score table told me in a few letters each time how to access the hidden shmup minigame, something in the pre internet era I might never have discovered. Presented something of a dilemma when I eventually got good enough to start troubling the high scores as well.

More recently. A "too good to be true" deal on an xbox 360 slim saw me have to clean out smoker house dust from everything including the power supply, however that did mean a nice working xbox 360 as a result. It included a profile with a bunch of saves on it, one that I am actually still using (who needs online games). Exploring someone else's game of Skate 3 was an interesting affair, though if someone else has played with someone else's pokemon I am sure we are all interested in that one.

On a somewhat related note then back on the N64 then in Goldeneye you had to earn cheats by beating levels within a timeframe, some of them were fairly notable feats so a friend traded his cartridge with said cheats unlocked with another person in the school.

Maybe you encountered a copy of 3ds Resident Evil Mercenaries and all that went on there.

To that end you are invited to share some notable or otherwise interesting stories of your interactions with second hand games and the saves contained upon them.

 

[Mr_Steve_Mineson]

I recently copped several 3DS consoles, and all but one were not factory reset. I saw some interesting stuff there..
Mostly photos of people which very clearly were from 5+ years ago. (I never saw a photo newer than 2018)
But from one console that seemed to be owned by a brother and sister...
A selfie of a clearly topless girl.

She seemed young, so I guess she was just bored and didn't realize the meaning of such a photo, but that was one pic I made sure to delete from that device, haha.

It does feel a bit odd keeping these pictures though; I'm not one to wipe away stuff like this because it sort of feels like history. I don't want to delete the memories of the previous owners who used (and quite clearly loved) these consoles...

 

[seseiSeki]

After I found a Gameboy in my grandmas basement, my parents got me a few games from relatives. At that time, I thought that these were just borrowed.

One of those games was Donkey Kong '94 and it had a fully completed save file. Well, back then I didn't know a lot of English and learned the hard way what "clear game" means. And thinking I had to give the games back at one point, I tried very hard to complete DK94 so that they wouldn't notice, when they got their games back.

I later found out that I could keep the games, but I still beat Donkey Kong. The later levels and the final boss are pretty tricky.

 

[asper]

A story tells that pre-owned NES cartridges contained drugs inside and it was discovered only in late 201x

 

[Alexander1970]

For all the Wii´s I had between my Fingers - Never looked on the Game Save Games <- Deleted.
Only an Eye on some previously "hacked" Material like Homebrew Channel and that Stuff.

Used PlayStation 1 and 2 Memory will "emptied" first too.I am not really interested,what is on it.

For used Handheld Modules like GameBoy Advance od DSi Saves - > Resetet or Deleted before playing.

XBox (Classic) - Only checked if they are Softmodded before then -> Deleted.

I do not really remember of rented Games....

 

[Foxi4]

I’m not entirely sure if this is an “existing save story”, but I’m going to say that it is because it relates to a pre-owned memory card. As I was building my collection of consoles, I’ve purchased a PS2 Slim to play all the hits I missed out on due to having a Gamecube instead (and let’s not pretend, Gamecube kids missed out on a lot). It came as-is with no memory card in the set, so I ventured into the nearest game store to get myself one of those fancy 8MB cards, and there it was - in the dark corner of a cabinet, waiting to be picked up for pennies. I thought to myself “great, now I just need an exploitable game, some way of injecting the save file exploit and we’re off to the races”. I grabbed it, plugged it in to my system to test it and wouldn’t you know, it already had FMCB installed. Banger, 10/10, here I come OPL! Been using the same card ever since - it saved me so much hassle back in the day when you needed to do backflips to mod a PS2 without a chip.

I had similar luck with one of my pre-owned Xboxes - as I opened it up to clean it and repaste it, I noticed that not only was it already modded, it was in fact chipped, and with a quality chip at that. Bonus nachos always feel great when you’re thrifting for some gaming stuff from the past.

 

[Yokimari]

I preferred to buy used Pokemon games on the DS so I could see what the person who had the game before me got.. and I would just .....you know.. pluck them out and hang on to them for my game.

 

[tfocosta]

Apart from The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening for Gameboy with a 100% save game on it, I believe I never had the luck to get any other used cartridge games with a save game on them. It seems the previous users of most the used games I've got so far were too careful to delete their stuff before they sold them. It was either that or game batteries were dead and I couldn't save without replacing them with new ones. So the old saves were long gone (this happened to me several times with used GB/GBC cartridges).

 

[SaberLilly]

i once got a used PS2 memory card that had some saves on it, a DBZ game, Gran Turismo, what stood out to me was a 100% completed save for GTA Vice City

 

[Plazorn]

Has anyone here heard of AdventureSnivy? They have destroyed every NDS-3DS Pokémon game’s GTS.

 

[VinsCool]

Not really a save data story but a disappointing observation.

Once bought a cheap dslite off a game reseller store (which was attached to movies rental too) and the ds was in crappy condition.
It barely held itself on the hinge, and while I paid like 40 bucks, I was understandably upset.
So I ended up getting a refund.

Some time later, maybe a year or so, I found a Pokémon Pearl bundle, which was the case, manual, cart, etc.
Bought for like $20 bucks, and as soon as I come back home, game does not work.
Nothing at all, won't ever appear at the menu.
I took it apart, and saw that thing was literally melted... Like the printed circuit in the cart, chips, etc, were all melted.
And the outside didn't look so suspicious either. It had some yellowing on the plastic but nothing that would have looked burned.
Got a refund the next day.

Then, sometime in 2015 I think, I had bought a PS2 slim from a pawn shop a few blocks away, and the thing literally died while I was giving it a test in store, destroying the game I was using to test it (Okami) as well...
Store guy was cool however, he picked another PS2 from his backstore which thankfully worked fine, and let me keep the damaged game and have another one of my liking for free.

And the most ironic part was that I went straight to the game store with defective items the same day to try and repair/resurface the damaged disk, and miracle it came out like it was brand new, with only a slight discoloration where the disk drive lens had been engraved in a perfectly circular shape.

So nice to see the store with careless employees selling junk at least were helpful and repaired my disk using only few bucks per round lol (I think the disk was spinning like 3 times in the machine before coming out silky smooth).

 

[Ricken]

A highlight of my childhood was playing the entirety of Pokemon White and White 2 off of rented copies of the games; a 5 day rental was enough time to binge all the content on top of school :^)

When I got my copy of MM64, it had two 100% saves named "Zelda" and "Link"

 

[JK_]

I went on a huge retro binge a few years ago, including importing some carts directly from Japan. I can't remember them all, but a few do stick out to me:

1. The Pokemon Green cart I bought still had a save with the original factory battery, which surprised me. The whole first box was filled with nothing but Rattatas and Pidgeys so I assume the original owner traded everything to another game and sold it.

2. The Pokemon Gold cart I got still had a save with a complete team at the Elite 4 I believe? I dumped the save to send to someone a while ago. Not sure if I'd be able to find it now. The person that replaced the battery didn't do a very good job though and it just disappeared by the time I got around to playing it.

3. My Japanese Crystal cart I was gonna chip swap for that sweet design on the back had a save, but after turning it on once, it was gone. I was going to dump it to see what it had in it.

3. Whoever had my FF5 before me 100% completed the game. Something I don't have patience or time for anymore.

4. The FFII(USA) cart I got had a very interesting save on it. Someone used a game genie on FF2 USA (WHY?) and also gave the characters some very interesting names. I actually have a screenshot of it from when I first popped it in the retron thing I had at the time. I'm not sure posting it here is the best idea, but I will if people actually want to see it.

5. My FF Mystic Quest cart had a save with what I assume is the ex-owners name and Phoebe was just named "Wife". Still not sure what to make of that one.

I always take a look at what's on them when I get them, but for the most part it's nothing too interesting to me at least, so I just swap the battery for a holder since I have received a few games with leaking, corroded batteries.

 

[Thejax]

I still loved my Pokémon black 2 and white 2 copies that came stuffed with hacked shinies and legendarys.

 

[playstays_shun]

Bought a red wii from a lady a few years ago

Her bf or whatever’s Mii was on there. Had huge enlarged eyes and was like “ass crusher” or something to that effect

 

[GothicIII]

Bought an used copy of Pokemon silver on a flea market when I was a kid.

Was exited when I saw a save game there! But sadly it was saved in the first town before getting any Pokemon. Seems that the seller just tested the game if it was in a working condition xP

 

[SaberLilly]

i remembered i bought some games off Ebay, mostly ones that the seller threw in with gameboys, and one boxed copy of pokemon crystal. What got my interest is that aside from crystal, both copies of pokemon green and yellow still worked perfectly on their original batteries. the copy of green had a game shark used at one point right after the owner got the third badge and had some glitch pokemon as well as a level 100 charizard, I was rather tempted not to erase it but those first gen games have sloppy coding so i don't know if he broke it or not.

 

[Burorī]

Not my video but the dad's reaction still makes me laugh:

 

[Taleweaver]

Both the 3ds end vita I bought secondhand had pictures of the previous owner ('s family?). I just deleted everything after a few days.

Most notable savegame was a xbox360 that had Skyrim on the hard drive, as well as a savegame. I tried playing, but i had no idea what i was doing so I restarted.
That's when i learned Skyrim has a notoriously boring intro sequence. I regretted deleting that savegame, and stopped playing shortly after the first mission (Skyrim simply isn't my cup of tea... I don't even know if it's still on that hard drive).

 

[iLL wiLL]

I had experiences like this when id buy all the broken rrod xbox 360s from pawn shop and fix them id always find downloaded games and multiple profiles and I actually sold them with the profiles and games on there.I kept most the harddrives for myself.to bad I couldn't transfer all those games from various consoles to my xbox profile.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Not a game or anything, but I bought an early 2000s laptop a couple years ago that ended up being owned by Mike DeGruy. There wasn't a whole lot of data on it, seemed like most things were on an external drive or a network drive, but did find a few neat things on it, couple scripts he wrote for videos and a few pictures and such.