Grand Theft Auto: Vice City / GAME HISTORY

Vice City Cherry Popper Save Bug: What the Reports Actually Establish

Players have reported failed saves after using Cherry Popper, but the checked GTAForums discussion disputes a specific ice-cream-factory cause.

By Patchlo Editorial Desk · Published October 29, 2026 · Sources checked October 29, 2026

Scope: Historical original-release reports and later player tests. No conclusion here covers every PS2 revision, PC release or Definitive Edition build.

Saving there and causing corruption are different claims

A player recalled losing a nearly completed campaign after saving at the factory. That is a concrete report of a failed save following a particular action. It does not, by itself, identify which game code failed.

The 2011–2012 GTAForums discussion contains conflicting accounts. Spaceeinstein challenged the proposed special spawn logic and did not reproduce the failure in testing. Spuds725 explicitly said they did not know the cause and had saved successfully on an original PS2 copy. Later tests described in the thread also failed to reproduce it.

Protect the working file before investigating

The immediate cost is the progress between a healthy save and the failed one. An overwrite can remove that fallback before anyone has identified the cause.

1. Keep more than one independent save where the platform permits it.
2. Preserve a file that loads correctly before replacing it with a newer suspect save.
3. When reporting a failure, include the release, platform, slot and what happened on loading—not only the last building visited.

No verified final patch in this record

The thread includes suggestions that particular later releases changed the behaviour, but the checked evidence does not establish a numbered official fix. That is a limit of this record, not proof that every later edition is affected or that the original report was invented. Treat a successful test as evidence about that test, rather than a guarantee for every copy.