re: GBA games' battery life

[geozeldadude]

has anyone actually played the game so much that the game pak's battery died? just wondering how common a problem it is.

[Silvercrow]

I've had it happen with my old GBC Pokemon games (Pokemon Gold in particular, dunno where my Silver version went), which I played quite a bit when I was younger, but I've never had it happen with a GBA game. I have had the batteries get out of alignment, though, which can cause problems.

[geozeldadude]

I've had it happen with my old GBC Pokemon games (Pokemon Gold in particular, dunno where my Silver version went), which I played quite a bit when I was younger, but I've never had it happen with a GBA game. I have had the batteries get out of alignment, though, which can cause problems.

i've had dead batteries in a lot of GB pokemon games and an SNES game, but not in a GBA game yet so i was just curious.

[BlueLeafeon]

GBA games don't usually die because of use. They die because of disuse.

Or because the game constantly used the battery to keep track of time. Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire and Emerald versions were (and still are) prone to the "internal battery going dry." The only problem that occurs then is that the clock no longer works in game. (Meaning time-based events no longer happen, but you can still play the game regardless)

That being said, my FE8 cart randomly erased all data for no good reason. I was mad.

[Venusaur]

GBA games don't usually die because of use. They die because of disuse.

Or because the game constantly used the battery to keep track of time. Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire and Emerald versions were (and still are) prone to the "internal battery going dry." The only problem that occurs then is that the clock no longer works in game. (Meaning time-based events no longer happen, but you can still play the game regardless)

That being said, my FE8 cart randomly erased all data for no good reason. I was mad.

The FE8 incident happened to me too! 95% supports...

[Radiant Dragon]

The FE8 incident happened to me too! 95% supports...

My FE7 cart erased all of my data as well. Twice.

Thank god for emulators, huh?

[BlueLeafeon]

My FE7 cart erased all of my data as well. Twice.

Thank god for emulators, huh?

Indeed. I haven't played FE8 since it erased its data and I discovered emulation lol. Now I also like to play Pokemon Trading Card Game on the PC as well. That was another game prone to randomly forgetting saved data. <_< But it was a GBC game, so I guess you expect it more from those.

The FE8 incident happened to me too! 95% supports...

ugh. Same. I had all of the sound room data unlocked too. T_T

[geozeldadude]

erased your data? that's scary. any ideas how that might have happened? left in the sun or something?

[Ϲharlie]

From what I understand, it's actually somewhat common for the battery in a Fire Emblem game to die because of the way it saves. It hasn't happened to me, but I don't play FEGBA all that much.

Edited November 17, 2010 by Musashi

[Willben20]

I'm afraid my battery might be dying on FE8, because the saving is messing up now.

The other night, I never fully cleared the Ruins of Lagdou. I went in with a party that I planned to use to beat the Demon King with.
(Moulder - Bishop
Gilliam - General
Marisa - Swordmaster
Joshua - Assassin
Colm - Rogue
Kyle - Great Knight
Knoll - Summoner
Neimi - Sniper)

I cleared the first floor easily enough, in the second floor however, I was careless and left Knoll out in the open, where he got swarmed and killed. I hate losing units, so I did what I always do there, turn the game off and start the fight over. It was late when Knoll died, so I took a break and went back to it in the morning. Next day, I load up the game, re-enter the Ruins, replacing Knoll with Cormag (Wyvern Lord)

I easily make it to the third floor, decide to take a break, and I suspended and went to do something else for a bit, then when I came back to it, I hit 'Resume' and when it loaded up, it loaded the save where Knoll died. I return to the main menu, I restart, and before I enter the Ruins again, I decided to use the Skill Books and Angelic Robes I got from my last Valni run, sell some items I didn't need, and saved and entered the ruins again. Knowing I was having issues, after the first floor I back out to see if it'd happen again, and sure enough, when I hit Resume, the Centaur-thing killed Knoll again. But when I restarted, it didn't even keep my previous manual save, I still had the Skill Books.

Well I ended up biting the bullet and overwrote my other save where Ephriam was leading, and it seemed to fix it, because the Suspended data where Knoll died finally went away, so I start going through the ruins again, this time I got pretty far. Once I reached level 7, I decided to take a break to go play something else, suspend, and as I was about to shut my DS off, it went to the main menu....there was no 'Resume' option. So the characters that started the dungeon at level 5-10 that were now all level 20, all the good equipment and gold I acquired, all the time I spent methodically going through the dungeon to level everyone equally without any chance of losing a unit...gone.

I was furious, I had a fairly strong urge to throw my DS across the room =(

I don't know if it's the internal battery or not, but I'm going to be annoyed if I have to start all over with either a new cartridge or an emulator. I'll still do it, I mean this is one of my all-time favorite games (I'm in fact in the process of making a board game inspired from FE8, using the calculators and stat information on this site) But it'll be a bit of a pain to have to start over from the beginning.

[X-Naut]

Non-battery saving was figured out partway through the GBA's lifespan. Here's a list of games that use battery to save: http://gbatemp.net/threads/gameboy-advance-gba-games-requiring-batteries.322803/

Bear in mind that this list doesn't include anything other than permanent saves, the Suspend data could be tied to battery saves. Try booting it up again and resuming and then jump to conclusions depending on whether or not your data's still there.