The game you are thinking of here is Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor. They did release a patch for the uninstaller, but I have to wonder if that game went through any testing at all because the first thing you do when you get a new build is that you uninstall the old build. It's going to be really blatant when uninstalling the game causes the Windows operating system to just not function. It is known that the publisher was stubborn about the release date and just shoved it out.

True, but if you lose progress it's about the same as a crash too.

But no, i was referring to a real implementation in the trucking industry, or so i've heard.

Reminds me of Final Fantasy 4 Advance. The Japanese and North American releases were rushed out for the holiday season (December release IIRC), and it showed, as there are a lot of bugs in these versions. For example, there is a way to hardlock the game in the bonus dungeon, and there's even a *save deletion* bug that can be triggered simply by re-arranging your party and then trying to use an item (or something like that).

Japan got an updated 1.1 release that fixed the worst bugs, and Europe got the fixed version, but said version never made it (officially) to North America, so people living there who want the fixed version had to import. Also, since the game was released on cartridge, existing copies of the game could not be updated.

(Dragon Quest 1 spoilers? To the extent that anything about that game could be a spoiler, since it's not exactly known for its plot. Also some Dragon Quest 2 spoilers later.)

I remembered another example. In Dragon Warrior, if you reach the Dragon Lord, he asks if you want to join him to rule the world. If you agree, then the text turns a deep red, and the game locks up. He claims that progress would be saved (IIRC), but it isn't, and you have to reload from your last save after resetting the console.

In the Japanese version, the Dragon Lord would give you a password. Entering that password would apparently put you back at the beginning of the game, but with worse stats. (When the game got translated, the password system was removed in favor of a battery save, so unfortunately, this little feature was lost in translation.)

The remakes removed this hardlock. Now, when you agree to join the Dragon Lord, you will wake up in Rimuldur (I think), as though you had just gone to the inn there, but the innkeeper will say something about it having been a long night or something of that sort. This way, you keep your XP, but lose your progress in the dungeon (which can't be permanently saved, anyway).

By the way, I believe the original Dragon Quest 2 has a potentially nasty softlock. If you're saved at the final shrine, have no Yggdrasil Leaf handy (note that you can't have more than 1 at a time, so this isn't that unlikely), you threw away the Jaulor's Key to make room (the princess has a spell that can unlock doors), the Princess is dead, and the Prince of Canock either doesn't have the revive spell yet or is dead, then you're basically stuck. At this point, you can't go back to town to revive your dead characters, because you need the Jailor's Key or the Open spell to do that, and you don't have either available. Also, you can't finish the game, because you need one of the two in order to progress past the first floor of the final dungeon (and if you don't have the Charm of Rubiss, you won't even be able to get that far).

In the US version, they fixed the softlock by making it so that the priest at the final save point will revive all dead party members. Aside from fixing this softlock (though, if you threw away the key, you'll still need to get the Princess to a high enough level to learn that spell), this made the endgame a bit more fair. Thing is, the enemies in this final overworld section are among the most dangerous I've seen in an RPG, with one enemy with a multi-target instant death spell, and one enemy that, if it's low on health, may cast a spell that's *guaranteed* to wipe out the entire party. Being able to bring everyone back to life makes a huge difference here. (The remakes also made this change, and I'm not sure if you can still drop that Jailor's Key, though putting it in storage may be possible.)

Might and Magic 2 spoilers, but it might be worth being spoiled about this even if you do plan to play the game:

Might and Magic 2 does something that might actually be worse than a hardlock. If you steal Murray's treasure, you get a message about being punished, but nothing bad seems to happen. You check your stats, and there's nothing amiss. So, you decide to go back to the inn to save the game.

You decide to play some more, and then quickly realize what happened, and all desire to play the game has left.

Thing is, the penalty for stealing was to reduce the base value of all your stats to 3. Checking your stats only shows you the current values, which are (initially) unaffected; the stat loss doesn't manifest itself until you either rest or finish a battle. So, it's not obvious that something has happened, and since you just got some money, it's perfectly reasonable to save the game.

The game gives you only one save slot.

Worth noting that, even if you do realize what's happened before you go to the inn to save, you still have to reboot the game, and on period hardware, this can take some time, as the game has to reload from the floppy disks, and floppy disks are slow..