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Being a completely newbie of Game Boy architecture,I got surprised to see the cartridge had a battery.
by snickmy 6y ago
Being a completely newbie of Game Boy architecture,I got surprised to see the cartridge had a battery.
- tapland 6y agoIt's for keeping save data =)
- willis936 6y agoAnd losing it. I’m sure many people are surprised to come back to their GB, NES, and SNES games after a few decades to find that their save files are gone.
- HeckFeck 6y agoI've plugged in SNES cartridges that are 30 years old and the save data still persists. I'm guessing they got the same man who designed the everlasting Casio digital watch battery to design those.
- lacavao 6y agoI've heard about this for years, but I've never had it happen, and I don't know anyone else who's experienced it. I don't doubt it happens, but what could cause such a discrepancy in the time it takes to degrade?
- NegativeLatency 6y agoDifferent battery manufacturers? Batteries stored in different conditions?
- NortySpock 6y agoAnecdata
- stickmangallows 6y agoI was surprised last year to find my saves on Zelda 2 and others were still intact. Zelda 1 had been dead for years though.
- aidenn0 6y agoMy 33 year old final fantasy cart still holds saves; other newer ones have died. There's a huge variance there.
- armadsen 6y agoI recently got my old Game Boy games out so my son could play them. They've been in a box in storage for 20+ years. My saved games from the 90s are still there on all the ones I've checked.
- piyh 6y agoBack them up on a old gameshark or something. I lost all my gamesaves and wish I still could revisit them.
- ChrisRR 6y agoFlash wasn't cost effective in the 90s, so most save games were stored in RAM with a battery so that it never lost power.
- richeyryan 6y agoI've changed the battery on my copy of Pokemon Gold twice. I wonder if whoever designed those cartridges expected anyone to still be playing the game twenty years later.
- aidenn0 6y agoI've seriously considered replacing the SRAM with MRAM so as to not require battery replacement. It would need level shifters though.
- treesknees 6y agoMeanwhile my Blue version is somehow still ticking along on its original battery nearly 23 years later.
- genocidicbunny 5y agoGen II (Silver/Gold/Crystal) had a time-of-day thing going, which I expect probably required more battery power due to also needing to maintain a clock along with the save data. Gen I only needed to hold the save data. That would be my guess for the difference in battery life.
- meowster 5y agoMy red and yellow carts still have original batteries too, and the saved games still work perfectly (as of two years ago when I last checked). The only thing I might say "oh well" about losing is the official Mew I got from some Pokemon event at a mall, but I don't even have the certificate that it came with so it doesn't really matter.