A gamer in Japan has taken his dedication and love of a gamesave to a scary new level by claiming that he has kept his console turned on for 20 years in order to prevent his gamesave from being lost.
The console the Japanese gamer has apparently kept running for 20 years is a Super Famicom (known in the west as the SNES). The save that he has gone to extraordinary lengths to save is for a platforming game called Umihara Kawase which was released back in 1994.
He was worried that he would lose his save as the cartridge uses Static RAM which has lithium-ion batteries. So long as the battery is charged, the save data will remain on it. However if the console was to be turned off or the cartridge removed from the console, the battery would eventually die, making the gamesave unrecoverable. In short, so long as the cartridge is in the console and the console is provided with power, it will keep the batteries charged preventing the save from being lost. Thanks Siliconera!
The gamer also posted pictures on Twitter back in September and October of the console and the gamesave.
ちなみに、20年以上SFCの電源を入れっぱなしにしてある初代 #海腹川背 は、稼働時間は 18万時間を突破しているものと思われます。 電源落とすとリプレイデータは消失します。たぶん pic.twitter.com/6ZJfLi997x
— Wanikun (@UMIHARAKawase) September 30, 2015
#海腹川背 ねとらぼ記事は意外と反応が多くてびっくり。 実は停電でデータが消えちゃってるんじゃないの、という疑問をみかけましたが現在の自宅では記憶にある限り停電はありません。 サントラ収録のときのデータもそのまま残ってます。 pic.twitter.com/gIoXGhyARg
— Wanikun (@UMIHARAKawase) October 7, 2015
He estimates that his SNES has been on running the game Umihara Kawase for over 180,000 hours as of September 2015, with the console only being switched off once while he was moving. However he was able to plug the console back in and power it up again before the battery had lost its charge.
As for how true this story may be, it’s hard to tell. Although if it is true, that’s some serious dedication and I wonder what made that save so important that he never wants to lose it?