hello! i'm a new member of this forum and i would like to express the deep sadness i have felt in the past twenty minutes. you see, as a busy person i forget to check my town for long periods of time. after one week of not checking my town, i start up the game to find not my own villager, but a cow. my save file was gone without a trace, without reason. i always save my game carefully and there was no apparent message to say the data was corrupted. many bells, items and my favourite villager, diana, are now all gone, just like that!
i have two questions; how did this happen, and can it be fixed? it is a retail cartridge and was bought new from the store, so that might help in some regard. thank you so much!
When you started up, did you hear the theme from The Twilight Zone? OK, I know that wasn't helpful but a cartridge can corrupt or go completely south at any time without a warning of any kind. Sometimes, cleaning the cart's contacts will restore it but, more likely, that cow is not a fan of Shrunk.
Is it possible you could have accidentally deleted your file? Sometimes I find myself almost accidently deleting my town trying to change the game time etc. like when Isabelle asks you if you need anything from her instead of putting wrong time, I go for deleting home because I'm not paying attention.
I had this happen to me once with a town I'd worked on for over two years. Intro screen showed a town I didn't recognize, and the option to open my town simply wasn't there. I had a moment of sheer terror before trying the cartridge in a different 3DS. My town was there, safe and normal, and when I put it back into is original 3DS, it was fine.
I have no idea what caused that huge glitch, but my advice would be to exit out of ACNL, power down your 3DS, blow on your cartridge (even though that's not supposed to be great for them...) and/or check it for any hairs or dust on the contacts. Then turn your 3DS back on and try again.
