So close, yet so far.

I bought Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time for Gamecube back in March or so, and since then, I haven't really had time to play it much. Well, that's changed because now it's the last days of summer, and I'm trying to get in all of my gaming that I can before I don't have time anymore. If you don't know what the game/series is about, it's about this Middle Eastern (?) Prince who acquires this dagger that can hold the Sands of Time. Something goes horribly wrong at the Sultan's palace, and everyone's turned into sand... except for you (the Prince) and this beautiful princess named Farrah. You wander through this "obscenely large palace" with lots of booby traps and walls to scale. Whoohoo. This game is time consuming because one usually has to get a full view of the huge room to see where to jump to next.

I was happily playing along, and I even got to see this cute cutscene where Farrah says, "My love" to me (although I'm like, knocked out). Whoohoo, I'm 69% done with the game! Shortly after, I attack about 30 of these "sand creatures," and when I'm done, I go and save at the save spot.

When I come back from the short scene, my screen says "GAME OVER." I thought it was a joke, so I hit "retry." Hey, wait a minute, what is Farrah doing in that pit full of spikes? "GAME OVER." Okay, you've told me that once already.

I thought the disk had a problem, so I took out and brushed it off gently. I even blew on my memory card because Gamecubers know how much dust that thing can accumulate.

No avail. Everytime I start the game again, it says "GAME OVER" because Farrah is being impaled on the spikes. Great.

I even went back to a previous save... at 33% completion. GUESS WHAT- that has a glitch, too, and with Farrah! She disappears, and then the game is over.

I am very mad at you, Ubisoft.