Did the same on my Ruby half a year ago. Fun times.
Comment on I can now save my game in Pokemon Yellow again after 25 years.
early_riser@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Update: Now I’ve replaced the battery in Pokemon sapphire. Luckily since it uses flash memory my 25 year old save file is intact.
Dremor@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
ifmu@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Wait… can you confirm that these things don’t use volatile memory for game saves?
charizardcharz@piefed.world 13 hours ago
Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald only use the battery to power the onboard clock, the saves are on flash. If you loot at the PCB you can see the flash chip on the left, it’s the one that’s not under the battery.
It’s safe to replace the battery, but since the RTC will be starting from 0 again you won’t see time based events happen until the it catches up to the time stored in the save. If you’re not planning on starting a new game or fixing the save file using a cart reader and save editor (alternatively a DS with GBA slot and a flash cart) there’s no point in replacing the battery.
ifmu@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Thanks, that cleared things up.
early_riser@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
The only thing I can tell you is my save survived the battery replacement, which tells me it’s flash and not SRAM.