Seems like an odd question but hear me out

p33jay

Obviously. Save the game. Right?
Yet a couple months back, I made sure a LTTP Save battery worked by making & starting three separate files.
Everything seemed fine on my end, yet a week after I sold it locally to a friend he called me saying his file got wiped, yet the other two were fine.

I have a Pokemon gold i'm thinking of selling. And a retro store nearby has a metric crapton of Pokemon Red & Blue carts @ $9.99! I wanna buy them all & flip (the guy said he'll refund me any purchases w dead batts)

But after my experience with LTTP how can I be sure? Cause LTTP was fine and my friend wouldn't lie, he didn't even want his money back.

NES Kingpin

I had that happen to me on eBay. sold a Pokemon red that saved, buyer said he got the game 3 days later it wouldn't save.





So this is good question

Luke00016

Can you do a longer test? Maybe buy everything, make save files, then wait a week to start selling them? After a week you should feel pretty comfortable with the save battery. As far as a more scientific test, I dunno.

PowerPlayers

I have no idea, but I feel you may want a multimeter to test the battery itself and replace any that read too low?

p33jay

Originally posted by: JosephLeo

I have no idea, but I feel you may want a multimeter to test the battery itself and replace any that read too low?

I have no idea what that is or how to use one..

Holy-SNES

You should be able to tell within a few hours of creating a save game.

A dead batt will not save at all. A batt going dead will keep the charge for a few hrs... 24hr max based on experience.

From past experience, 80% of the Pokemon games I sold needed batt replacements.

I would buy the lot, grab yourself a stack of replacement batts from HK (theyre very cheap) and change every battery.

Lincoln

I did some experimenting with a nes Legend of Zelda cart a while back. The battery was dead so I took it off the board and started a new game to see how long it would last in ram unpowered. It would take around 12 hours before the game would disappear from the menu. I imagine it's a probability thing, where as time goes on random bits will be lost, and the chance of your savegame being corrupted due to lost bits increases as time goes on, until you get to some point where the save is not usable. With my LoZ, there wasn't much to save as I just started the game and maybe picked up the sword before saving. I would guess if you have a save with more hours into it and a bunch of items gathered and quests completed, there's a higher chance the save is corrupted due to losing bits that are part of your save.



So with all that said, regarding your LttP cart, I wouldn't suspect the battery. I would expect all 3 saves to disappear together if that was the case. I'd chalk it up as a fluke unless it happens repeatedly.



The surest way is to get a multimeter to measure voltage of the battery. Red lead on the + tab, black lead on the - tab, and a good battery should be 3 volts or higher.

gwyndion

Games can also be damaged if someone just powers it off without holding reset first.

p33jay

Thanks for the tips. I'm a little iffy on these Pokemons at 9.99 a pop plus the price & labor of new save batts. But at least I know I can get this Pokemon gold out the door.

theguy1962

I normally call it good if it already has a save when I get it in hand. If it doesn't then I assume the battery is dead.