GBA Game not saving

[bowser123]

I've sold a GBA game and the buyer has informed me it doesn't save.

I know for a fact it wasn't a fake and was a totally legit game- it has the proper things like Nintendo stamped on the connectors, tri-wing screw, came with a full colour manual on proper paper with warranty and reg cards etc

The buyer has said:

Hi, I just recieved the game Lufia The Ruins of Lore, thought i'd have a
quick go on the game and noticed a rather bad issue with the game, the game
doesn't 'save' i've tried both quick save and saving in the church but both
times the game will say it saved but when you go to load the save data, its
not there.

Any ideas on what the issue is? These things are called battery backup, is it really a battery and do they die? I'm sceptical as I have older games that save fine.

Basically I'm asking for any suggestions on how to make it save or specific info about the game would be great as in honesty it's years since I've played it.

[Jei]

From the sounds of it the battery will need replacing inside the cart. Here's someone who had the same problem with a pokemon game on GBA, halfway down the page the battery was replaced and it started saving again.

http://www.askdavetaylor.com/pokemon_and_nintendo_gameboy_advance_cant_save_dry _battery.html


Also a quick Google shows that the majority of GBA games use flash memory however some older ones use battery backup, lufia included

[bowser123]

Ah right, thanks for the answer. I bought it years ago and don't think I played it, certainly not much. I'm thinking it's that lack of play that might have done this, it's certainly not down to overuse and maybe that's why older games work fine.

Ah well, thanks for the help.

If you don't mind could you please post up that link which shows which games uses what save type please.

[Jei]

Your best bet is to go to this site that I just found and type the name of the game you're interested in.

If it comes up saying that its SRAM then it has an internal battery. Flash etc are all OK.

http://offlinelistgba.free.fr/index.php


Edit : - Bit of extra info about GBA Cartridges here...
http://www.reinerziegler.de/GBA/gba.htm#How does the

[bowser123]

Thanks for the links, very informative. I will have to have a look through all my games and check which are batteries, see if they're ok.

The buyer has been understanding which is nice. He wrote this back:

first i mave a quick save, it dissapeared

then i made a permanent save and ended the game, save dissapeared
then i made a permanent And quicksave both dissapeared

then i made a permanent save, overwrote straight away then made a quicksave and
both were there

loaded up the quicksave and made a new permanent save
(made sure the game clock was different so i could tell it was a new save)

the quicksave goes because i 'used it' and the main save was there.

i turned the game off and on and that main save disssapeared

i started a new game again and made a quicksave, the quicksave stayed and VERY ODDLY the
permanent save that dissapeared earlier (the one above) re-appeared
from then on all saves i have made have 'stayed'

That still clearly not correct, but to me sounds like it's getting a bit better. I suggested maybe leaving it charging and paused, thinking maybe the cart needs a current flowing through it to "wake" it up and recharge it?

Not really sure if there's any more tips or tricks he can try, but it's certainly strange behaviour from the game. Don't think I've ever seen anything like it, the buyer said he hadn't.