Flaw Proves Fatal to Players’ Memories

Call it the eternal sunshine of the spotless PlayStation.

A glitch in promotional game discs sent by Sony Corp. last month to 1 million PlayStation 2 owners had the effect of wiping out all data stored on the video game console’s memory card.

The card, the size of a matchbook, records how far players have progressed in dozens of games.

So all those hours getting to Las Venturas in “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas”? Lost. Gone too may be the little bits of data that note which weapons a player stockpiles, like the Annihilator in “Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal.”

For those who don’t play video games, this is the equivalent of, say, accidentally taping over your wedding video. Or having romances wiped from your memory, as in the movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”

“It doesn’t quite rise to the level of tragic,” said analyst P.J. McNealy at American Technology Research. “But it’s close.”

A Sony spokesman said the company sent out e-mails and postcards warning of the error, which wipes out memory cartridge data when players launch a preview of “Viewtiful Joe 2,” from Japanese publisher Capcom. Sony also posted alerts online.

“We recognize this is a serious issue,” said Sony spokesman Patrick Seybold.

A Capcom spokeswoman said the actual game, set to hit stores Tuesday, would not contain the error.

James Yu, senior hardware editor at GameSpot, a gaming news website, noted that such mistakes are “extremely rare.” Sony generally takes pains to prevent accidental deletion of game data by forcing players to navigate a multi-step process to erase memory-card data.

Yu’s advice: “I’d snap the disc in half before an unknowing sibling decides to try out some new games.”