SNES/GBA game saves erasing due to batteries 😭
Weren’t the batteries in GBA cartdriges only for the clock?
But it’s still playable
GBA? The kids these days. I have an original Zelda cart for the NES that still holds save data.
My Atari VCS (this was before they were calling it the “2600”) was manufactured in 1978. It’s 48 years old, and if I slap E.T. into that son of a bitch, it plays.
I have a Rev B gold Zelda cart for NES and I am curious its battery state. But my NES was lost in time.
the og atari and nes were video game consoles.
a ‘modern’ console is just a required hardware device to access a subscription service and game rentals falsely advertised as purchases.
if I slap E.T. into that son of a bitch, it plays.
But why would you do that?
To be contrarian.
My only dead battery so far is Final Fantasy NES!
Oh, saves are saved on the cartridge, not the console? Or am I misunderstanding something?
Nearly every cartridge-based system up until the 3DS n the cartridge. But many older cartridge games from that era (SNES, GBC, sometimes GBA) used volatike SRAM that needs to be constantly powered with an internal battery. When the battery dies, the save is wiped and it can no longer hold a save, though you can always open the cart up and replace the battery.
You’re telling me I’m going to have to replace the batteries and replay chrono trigger and Pokémon emerald again? Oh the horror
Pokemon Emerald’s battery is only there for real time clock functions. Saves remain intact even after the battery runs dry.
Gen I and II games used the battery for save data, however.
Yeah you’re right. Bad example.
Looking at the list on Console Mods I’m actually surprised how many GBA games do use a save battery when a lot of games clearly didn’t need it for saves. Did the battery allow for faster saving, or maybe just cheaper cartridges?
It was a cost/availability thing. SRAM was used all over the place prior to the GBA (and for some early GBA games) because FRAM and flash memory was expensive at the capacities needed.
Funnily enough, most games that use SRAM can have the chip swapped out for an FRAM chip, and they will no longer need a battery. (Actually you move the ROM chip from the SRAM board to the FRAM board) The two types of RAM present identically to the game’s software, so it just works.
The Pokemon games use Flash RAM with 2x-4x the capacity of the SRAM and FRAM chips most other games used. There was also EEPROM for games with small save files.
It sucks when you borrow a friend’s SNES and didn’t realize that was a problem and their saves suddenly disappear (along with your current playthrough on a different save file) and you worried you somehow did something to cause it.
Just play on an emulator. Save states anywhere you want.
If you have VR, I highly recommend EmuVR for all console emulator needs.
Plopping yourself on the ground in front of an actual CRT is such a different and incomparably better experience than playing them on flat LcD screens, it really pleasantly suprised me.
I’m guessing the VR applies some type of CRT like filter to the virtual CRT? Or is it just a nostalgia thing?
Kind of both. It’s basically a frontend for emulators, where you are in a most archetypal 80s room, with a large CRT TV that runs the emulator, and you get all your roms as physical discs/cartriges on your shelf, with emu cores being actual consoles you connect to the TV, put a disk/cartridge in, and then you can sit in front of the TV and play.
It’s extremely immersive, the games feel so much better on an “actual” CRT TV.
https://youtu.be/73XVOeRuu9A?t=237 It’s not as apparent in 2D without VR, but you can get an idea at this timestamp.
And with how small most save files are, you can even store them in a folder on a cloud service without taking much space. So if something happens to your computer for drive with your legally backed up personal cartridge and disc images… You still have those save files.
If I drop an RPG for a month I have difficulty picking back up my ongoing savegame. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to continue a 30 year old savegame.
I’m mostly referring to completed saves of Kirby and DKC-franchise. The first is a collection of games you have to unlock, so if you just wanted to play in the arena mode, then you’d have to play through a whole lot more just to unlock it.
I could start up sonic on my sega genesis right now.
If the PSN account was deleted, this is less a PS3 issue and more a digital software licensing issue.
i would say that it’s a PS3 issue due to being dependent on licensing issues prevent a user from playing games they own
But the PS3 isn’t preventing them. The fact that their PSN account is deleted is preventing them. I can play my games on my PS3 still.
For anyone who expects their retro console to boot up and be playable, check to see if your console has known capacitor issues before powering it up. Even caps not part of the plague can leak if they’re old enough. If they’re powered on with leaking caps, it can be much harder to fix than if the caps were replaced before being powered on
The original Xbox has a capacitor thats prone to fail.
Who wouldn’t? It’s such a weird thing to assume it shouldn’t just work (assuming no hardware failure at least).
If I turn on a PC from 10 years ago it’ll boot up and run the applications installed on it.
Because we’ve been conditioned to think that putting in a disc means a quick 5GB update to install…come back in 20 min
It’s been incremental but the landscape of gaming is now a casino with games, not games with betting.
Gen Z grew up in this broken world. They don’t know any better. They don’t understand what it means to own something.
That’s the plan, actually.
Many Gen Z grew up with Wii’s and Xbox’s which used physical media. I was never allowed to own an Xbox, but I did have a Wii. I think a lot of us have memories of putting in game CDs. The cutoff for that might be Gen Alpha.
Yeah, there’s definitely a range. I’m gen z and we never really had game consoles, so I grew up mostly gaming on a Mac (do not recommend, although I think the translation layer situation has improved since then). I also have memories of putting in tapes, cartridges, and floppy disks to my parents’ old Atari and Commodore computers (both of which actually worked great after having not been used for like >30 years)
Could be.
Specific age boundaries aside, the younger people are, the less experience they have of owning physical things, and the stranger the world as it used to be sounds to them. They live in a curated world of continually obsoleted technology they don’t own fed a diet of propaganda pushing technology and its proponents as saviors and not oppressors.
Gen Z is a wide spectrum.
I started on the PS1 and I am Gen Z
My PS2 resumes like normal
Finds old psp in the closet
Holy shit it still works, can’t say that about the memory card though
Sadly not much to be done about bit rot
Easily solved with a cheap microSD->pro duo adapter. Can’t save the lost data, but, can make it work again!
Don’t be Toblin
Toblinweb3 🤢
was it one of Nintendo’s own love hotels?
My Sega Genesis from 94 boots up and plays the games That were purchased back then whenever I want to…
I just bought Shadow Dancer and whaddayaknow, it just started after I plugged in the cart. Great game btw.
I’ve never heard anybody else talk about this game. But on Sega Genesis, there’s this puzzle game called zoop. It takes a second or two to teach yourself how to play it. But it’s crazy Addictive
I’ll check it out
Paradoxically, I’ll open GOG to replay Riven or Ultima Underworld, and I’ll find my last save, and feel silly seeing the last place I got stuck.
I still have an old cracked Doom 2 CD. No problems whatsoever… We’re talking 30 years there
Doom 2… CD?
I thought it only came on floppy…
I love how you apparently think that Doom 2 is some obscure game that was only released once for MS-DOS on floppy disks.
My Atari 2600 still works!
Sony is legit the only company I know of that stores shit you bought on their servers and will delete your shit if you’re not active on the account for over a set period of time (in their case it’s 3 years, if I am remembering right). Nobody else has a time limit for inactivity.
I’ve been using my Hotmail account since 1998. I can log in right now and go back and read all the stupid emails my friends and I were sending each other in high school 28 years ago. And I’ve never paid a cent for that Hotmail account. And my cartridge games still have my saves.
So yeah, I do expect that.
You shouldn’t. Microsoft locked me out of my 2001 hotmail account a few years ago.
And my cartridge games still have my saves.
they might not much longer, batteries and finite life and all that.
but at least you can slap new batteries in them and the game will still fucking work, and not permanently taken away from you because you took to long to go back and replay it.
Not all cartridges have batteries in them.
also, cartridges are repairable.
Battery dies?
Easily replaced.
save ROM fails? Easily replaced.
board eaten by corrosion? 98% chance someones reverse engineered it and posted the pcb design files online for you to get made via one of the PCB companies.
Hell, even if the chip holding the game itself dies, you can replace it and flash the new game from a rom file and be back to playing on your console again, at relatively minimum cost.
But modern disk gets scratched? Hope it still works… If it doesnt, well, you’re only hope is modding the console to boot a burnable disk or buy a new copy.
