I have a few tips for anyone wanting to complete this game, they helped me beat it after losing my save at Researcher 5-3. First of all, it's not a save glitch, it's a load glitch. If you load the game and it gives you the introductory message about dusting off an old book and all that crap, immediately use the Xbox Guide to return to the dashboard then reload the game. One time I had to do this four times before the game loaded my save.
Now, some information before I reveal the awesome strategy. As you may know, the game lets you skip a level whenever you run out of time or get no more moves three times in one level. It costs one life to do this. If you press start then choose to restart any board and you have made less than five moves, the board resets and you do not lose a life, plus your points roll back to what they were when you entered the level. If you make five moves or more and choose to restart, the game deducts one life, but this will cause your points to stay at what they were when you chose to restart.
Here's the juicy part. Load up a game, it doesn't matter where you are at. Make five moves, near the top of the board if possible, because the combos/chains that occur after your move don't count towards what we want to do. After making these moves, restart the board. Perform this process three times and you should be presented with the choice to proceed to the next level at the cost of one life. Do this of course, then continue to do the same thing on the next level.
At some not too distant point, you are going to run out of lives. Simply choose to continue and it puts you at the same level you ran out of lives on, and you begin with four lives. Plenty lives to cruise through the levels. You can ride this all the way to Researcher 1-1 where you have to beging playing for real, but I have a trick for this too.
When you get to researcher, play until you get to just under 50,000 points, the amount at which you are rewarded with an extra life. Be very careful not to go over this amount. When you are close, restart the board, which will cost you a life, you will need to have at least one extra so that you don't get game over at this point. After restarting, make four moves or less until you pass the 50k mark and get the extra life. Restart the board, and since you made less than five moves, it moves your points back to what they were at (less than 50k), but you keep the life you just received. See where I'm going with this? Repeat this process until you have 20 lives, which is the maximum you can have at one time. I recommend making the moves near the bottom of the screen for this if you need extra point because the combos/chains after you make a move count towards your score, and getting the life, but only each move you actually make counts towards the 'five moves or less' counter.
Word of caution!!! Do not restart the board until all combos/chains are done because if you do, any chains/combos that are not done will occur while you restart and you will have over 50k points and be unable to do this trick until just before you reach 100k points. This obviously can be done at every 50k interval. This method can also be used to get the 500,000 score achievement. Any time you get down to about five lives or so, just get yourself back up to 20.
I hope that this guide will help you beat this game, I know how terrible it feels to lose your save. I know that some of the information about save vs. load glitch has been posted on this forum, but I don't believe that any of the other information has been. Credit goes to McCarrick for telling me about the 20 lives glitch, except his method was to let the time run out. Everything else I discovered on my own. If you find this guide useful, please rate this topic five stars. Thanks!
