Pokemon Player Loses 20 Years of Memories After Switch 2 Save Disaster

While many gamers are excited to upgrade to the new Nintendo Switch 2, some Pokemon fans have found the switch to be anything but smooth. Reports are surfacing about lost save files, leaving years of hard-earned progress and cherished Pokemon gone for good.

One story that got a lot of attention came from a Reddit post where a player shared how their Pokemon Scarlet save vanished during the move to their new console. According to them, everything seemed fine during setup and transfer. But when they booted up Scarlet, it didn’t load the usual game—it started fresh, asking them to pick a language and create a new character.

I just got a switch 2, did the startup and initial data transfer with no issues. My Scarlet save file is gone. It loads straight into the language selection and create a character screens. No data on my OLED. Just all gone.

THERE WAS NO ERROR IN DATA TRANSFER AT ALL. “IT WENT FINE. ALL MY OTHER POKEMON DATA IS STILL THERE, BUT NOT SCARLET. I had mons from my original GBA up to current on there. Literally 20 years worth of data. There’s nothing I can do. I don’t even know if i wanna play anymore.

The player, who goes by ThatOtaku26, said the lost save held over 1,000 hours of gameplay, with Pokemon they had collected and transferred across nearly two decades. Many others jumped into the thread to share the same pain, with some saying they too lost beloved teams during the upgrade.

Part of the problem is that Pokemon games on the Switch still don’t use the built-in cloud save feature that comes with a Nintendo Switch Online subscription. Popular titles like Let’s Go, Pikachu, Sword and Shield, Legends: Arceus, and the latest Scarlet and Violet all skip cloud backup to avoid issues with cheating and duplication.

Fans who want extra protection are reminded to keep a Pokémon Home account active. It’s the official storage and transfer app for the series and can be a lifesaver when unexpected data loss strikes.

For now, trainers making the jump to Switch 2 should double-check their backups and maybe wait before moving their most treasured creatures to the new hardware.

(via IGN)