MY JAK X: COMBAT RACING DISC HAS THE MEMORY CARD GLITCH

It happened.  Again.

And I found out I’m not the only one with this problem.  Many other players of Jak X: Combat Racing had this problem as well, preventing some of these guys from ever playing the game or forcing them to buy another copy.  I read the reviews for the game from Amazom.com, and then the Wikipedia page for Jak X to learn more.

I was one of those people who, for some games, HAD to get it soon after it was released in stores.  Jak X was one of these games.  I was excited about it being a nice change from the adventuring that was in the Jak and Daxter trilogy.  I’m not interested in ANY other racing game.  This game was the only racing game I would ever buy, because it had a story and the lovable, familiar characters I’ve come to know sharing the story together.

I played the game into 30% of its completion.  There were no saving problems.  Then, one day, after leaving the Garage part of the menu, the Save icon didn’t go away; it kept on flashing.  I went to the Stage Select screen and it was still flashing.  I played one race, and the entire time the Save icon still flashed non-stop.  I made a mistake of trying to save the game manually while the game was trying to save automatically, and it just froze up the progress.  I didn’t know what else to do; the only way to get out of it was to reset the game.  It corrupted my card, everything that was in there: Chaos Legion, Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, Jak 2, Jak 3, my progress for Jak X, Sonic Mega Collection Plus, all of it.  Finished games, gone.

So Tuesday I try Jak X again.  I got through the tutorial all right.  Then I finished one full race, in which I earned a Silver Medal on the first try.  Then after saving, I wanted to check the garage, since I got two new vehicles.  The game auto saved, even though I did not make any changes to the race car whatsoever.  And the Save icon kept flashing.  And kept flashing.  And kept flashing.  I stood up from my seat and paced around the room figuring out what to do.  I haven’t backed up the data from Jak and Daxter R2 and Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier.   I was afraid I was going to lose data again.

Funny what happened though.  I tried to Load my profile to hopefully “counter” the stuck-on-auto-save mode.  I left it like that for over thirty minutes.  Nothing changed, and I had to reset the game or nothing else would happen.  But actually, when I browsed the data in the memory card, the data was still readable.   The first time Jak X corrupted my data, the data files in the memory card showed up as gray cubes and a verbal indication that the data was corrupted.  The PS2 did not recognize the memory card’s data and the icons for each game didn’t show up.

This time, the data icons DID show up:  for Jak and Daxter: TLF, Jak and Daxter, and Jak X.  It was a relief to see that two of the icons showed Daxter and Jak X had its title logo there.  I may have saved my game data from a horrible fate.

I would buy another copy of the game but I want to see if I can do what Wikipedia suggests for this particular “Memory Card Glitch.”  Keep the memory card out and just put it in when you want to save, and then save it manually from the Main Menu screen.  I wouldn’t mind doing that; the auto save feature just doesn’t help for this game exactly like it should, huh?

Meanwhile, if the data for Jak and Daxter: TLF is okay, I should back it up somewhere else and delete it from this memory card so that this glitch won’t happen again.

Here is the link to the Wikipeida page for Jak X: Combat Racing: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jak_X:_Combat_Racing

Go to the section that says “Autosave Memory Card Controversy” and read up on it.  If this happened to you, I suggest following the “workaround” advice.  It may be a bother, but at least you don’t have to go buy a new copy of the game, and you can keep your currently non-corrupted memory card.