Some games, especially online games, save games on servers that are connected to the Internet. This minimizes the possibility of save game corruption and may also make available those saves on other computer systems. It also reduces the probability of modifying game saves to cheat.

I have covered several programs to backup and synchronize game saves in the past. From Save Game Backup and Game Save Manager to Save Game Profiler which allows gamers to create multiple profiles for game saves (perfect if multiple users are using the same PC) and Game Anywhere which is a save game synchronization software.

The latest addition is GameSton, a program that is currently in beta. Windows gamers can use the program to create backups of their game saves.

The list of games to backup is empty on first start of Gameston. A click on Add opens a wizard that walks you through the process of adding new game saves to the backup list.

The program identifies some, but usually not all, of the games installed or available on the computer. The identification found several games on my computer that were not installed anymore. The reason for this is that some game uninstallers do not remove save game directories when a game is uninstalled. Other games that were properly installed, like Warcraft III, were not identified correctly.

Game saves that are on the computer but not recognized automatically can be added manually with a click on Add Customized in the add save game dialog. This basically opens a prompt where you need to enter a name for the game and a path on the system where the game’s saves are located.

Backups can be run manually with a click on Backup Now, or on schedule. Scheduling is available under the Backup tab in the main application window. Here you can select backups to run every one, three, twelve or twenty four hours.

Previously backed up game saves can be restored from the main interface again. This triggers the recovery wizard where you need to first select the backup directory where the save games are stored in and then one of the available saves to be recovered.

GameSton is a handy program to make save game backups. Windows users can download the latest version from the official project website. The application requires the Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0.

The motivation to start the game anew usually went down the drain after this, and the consequence was a half-finished game that I never bothered to look at again.

A program like Save Game Backup could have aided me and other users who have been experiencing similar issues. The program offers to create backups of Windows game saves.

The portable program scans the system for save game folders to display a list of the games that have been found.

save game backup

The program detected most of the games installed on the test PC. It missed one, Warcraft III, and added some that were not games per se, but gaming related. This included the games for Windows Live profile, Logitech Setpoint, Steam and TeamSpeak.

There is unfortunately no option to add games manually to the program, which could be used to add programs that the backup program missed.

Each game can be selected individually for backup. This makes sense for the programs that do not need to be backed up, and those that are no longer present on the system. It seems that quite a few programs fail to delete save game data on the system during uninstallation.

Backups are completed in two steps. A save folder needs to be selected. This is the location where all selected game saves will be stored in. Compression can be enabled to reduce the space requirements of the save game backups.

A click on Backup starts the data transfer. Save games are stored as executable files in the save folder. In most cases, a simply double-click on the save game backup is enough to restore the game saves. The program fills out the destination path automatically and while it should be correct most of the time, it pays to double check it to make sure the save games are restored in the right location.

Save Game Backup is an excellent program to create save game backups. It has a few downsides, or missing features that would make it indispensable. This includes the ability to add custom save game locations to the supported list and to schedule backups.

The application is available for download at the Sourceforge project website. It was fully compatible with our Windows 7 64-bit test system, and should run all 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP, Vista and 7 as well.

Backing up game saves can be important before moving to a new computer system or to handle games that are known for save game corruptions. This usually is a problem in the beginning right after release and issues that corrupt those save games are usually fixed by the developers quickly after the release.

GameSave Manager is a free software program that can automate the backup process. It basically contains a list of games that it supports including the location of their save games.

The application’s main menu displays options to backup or restore saved games, schedule backups, create custom game entries for games that are not automatically detected by the software or use the options of the program to include Steam support which will also detect games that have been installed in Steam.

A click on the Backup option will initiate a scan of the game saves of the computer system. All games that are discovered are displayed by Gamesave Manager with the option to start the backup right away or exclude some of the games from the backup first by clicking on Edit List in the top menu. It is also possible to set a password to protect the backup.

GameSave Manager will then displays a save as window to save all selected game saves to a local directory.

The program supports custom game saves which is great for games that are not included in the program’s database. New locations can be added by specifying one or multiple directories, a game name and (optional) an icon. The configured locations will also be scanned by the program during backup and included in it if saves are found.

GameSave Manager is a very comfortable program to backup game sages. It can be downloaded from the developer’s website. It is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

ConvertXtoDVD is a very popular video conversion software which can turn burn pretty much any video format to DVD. One could say it is an all-purpose software program for users who want to burn video files to DVD. Supported video formats are avi, divx, xvid, mov, mkv, flv plus others including files from digital camcorders, TV/Sat or, capture cards. No external codecs are needed to operate the software.

While we are discussing technical details, the software program runs on 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP or Windows Vista. The whole process of creating a video DVD of video files on the computer is more or less foolproof. You basically only need to add the video files from the computer and start their conversion into a format that can be burned on DVD.

Experts on the other hand should not worry. You can manage every detail of the process if you like so. It is for example possible to change menu titles, aspect ratio, add subtitles or audio streams.

Several options like the selection of DVD menus, the DVD size or the encoding quality can be set in the program’s settings. This needs to be done only once unless you want to change the settings again. Support for various audio and subtitle formats is extensive as well. Some of the popular audio formats are ac3, dts, mp3, wma or ogg and some of the subtitle formats are srt, sub, idx, ssa or opensubtitles.

Another interesting option is the ability to merge videos. If you got many small video files, say Youtube videos, you might be inclined to combine them into larger parts especially if they are parts of one video.

The conversion is pretty fast. It took about ten minutes to convert three 22 minute episodes of a popular British sitcom on a Intel Wolfdale 3.0 dual core system.

ConvertXtoDVD provides one of the easiest and most comfortable ways to burn video files to DVD that can be played in software and video DVD players. It can really get easier than this. Experts will love all the settings and options that the program provides.

Blindwrite is the second product that can be won today. It is a software that has been designed specifically to copy game DVDs. The main purpose of the software is to create working backups of game (or other media) DVDs that can be used instead of the originals.

This can be important for households with children who love to play around with everything that is shiny. Can also be a great idea for traveling or holidays. Instead of taking the expensive originals you simply take a backup copy that can be destroyed after the trip.

Blindwrite offers three modes. It can copy (from disk to disk), read (from disk to storage) or write (from storage to disk) disks. The whole process has been designed to be as easy as possible. That’s excellent for inexperienced users who simply want to create a working copy of their disks.

Blindwrite supports a wide variety of disk image formats including bin, iso, mds, ccd and bwt image formats. Each of these can be burned to disk with Blindwrite.

Both applications by VSO Software are multi-lingual, small in size and easy to work with. Good luck to everyone!