Does a gamesave on say, a pokemon blue cartridge , get transferred to another gameboy? Basically I don't know if my cartridge has deleted all of my data or if I am using the wrong gameboy (it might be one of my friends and we have misplaced them).
The saves stay in their cartridges, it doesn't matter on which gameboy you play it on. Chances are the battery died in the cartridge and thats why it didn't keep your save file.
Justin's right. The Pokémon games in particular are known for having their batteries die after a number of years, eliminating the cartridge's ability to retain a save file. It's possible to replace the battery if you find some tutorials online, though.
Yeah, lot of the old Pokemon games are going to start seeing drained batteries pretty soon. Like if anyone here plays Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald, by now a lot of the clock features are probably dysfunctional. And with Red/Blue and the second Gen- I'd imagine your issue isn't uncommon.
Yeah, my Gold's save file died a few years ago. The battery's fairly cheap to replace, but that data's gone forever.
Different game cartridges used different methods of keeping the ram alive. Most used the cheaper method of battery-backed ram. A limited few used capacitor-backed ram (they used a charged capacitor to keep the memory alive). Capacitor-backed ram theoretically would work indefinitely IF the cartridge was used regularly to recharge the cap. Battery-backed ram will work until the battery dies. The other technology of the time that could be used for power-down storage without any moving parts was (relatively new and expensive at the time) flash storage. This type of storage was much slower than RAM both to read and to write. Flash memory does tend to fade with time, just much much slower. I suspect your NES Zelda cartridges use Flash
Yeah it was definitely very sad loading up my old Pokemon Red Version I received as an 8-year-old as a Christmas gift back in 1998, having spent years on that game catching them all with my beloved level 100 Charizard nicknamed "Firepower" leading the pack ....and then finding it all gone, only memories remain. :tears: But Game Boy cartridges do eventually lose their battery power and ability to save. But actually Red and Blue weren't so bad. The versions that were really notorious for losing battery, erasing saves, and eliminating ability to save, were the Gold and Silver versions. My Gold and Silver versions lost their saves years before the older Red and Blue finally died. I was still actively playing my Silver version, it was fairly new, when it suddenly erased. I think there was actually something defective in the batteries for the Pokemon Gold and Silver versions.
You can replace the battery though. My brother did it with his pokemon silver cartridge and it works fine now. It takes about 8-10mins, but its possible.
I was so pissed when this happened to me. I knew I had a saved game on there and it was all gone. Happens on my Gold, Blue, Yellow, everything. I haven't played in forever but I'm gonna have to look up how to fix the battery. Didn't even know that was possible :')
Yeah, hoping Crystal doesn't have the same issues. I didn't really start playing Pokemon until Ruby/Sapphire came out so luckily, managed to transfer over all the Pokemon I was fond of to my newer games (I still have the level 100 Blaziken I started the game with about 10 years ago). But still. Gonna be weird if that battery ever dies. I was like, two Pokemon away from finishing the Pokedex (damn you Feebass!)
There's a way to fix them so they'll regain the ability to keep a save once the battery's died, but there's no way to get your old save back. Apparently it's a cheap fix if you want to play the game again.
