Ancient game saves on Genesis carts with battery backup

Post by **Scooter** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 1:57 pm

How is this even possible? I have a couple of Genesis games I bought new back in the day, Shining in the Darkness and NFL Footbal '94. Both games have a battery back up to save statistics and game progress. I checked both last night and my SitD game save is still there and my NFL statistics and game season save is still there. I recall having sent my NFL game into Sega for repair after the battery back up failed a couple of months after I bought it. I checked the receipts for SitD and I've owned the game for nearly 15 years!

How is it possible that the battery back ups continue to function after all this time? Not that I'm complaining of course....

Is it possible to replace the batteries without also losing the content before it is all gone for good? Or are the save devices not truly battery driven and I have nothing to worry about?

Post by **gradualmeltdown** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 4:30 pm

I've got my original version of Phantasy Star on Master System with the original save files. No idea how that works.

Post by **Mozgus** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 4:32 pm

You will lose your saves when you change the battery, unless you are very clever with a backup power source that you can attach before you take the battery out and remove after you put the new battery on.

I may have said this before, but my Zelda 2 cart on NES held my save for 10 years solid, and then 3 years later I checked it and it had gone senile on me. It took abilities away, but it gave me some new ones. Basically it took away a vital ability I needed to progress in the 6th dungeon or so, and none of the new abilities it gave me were any use in this situation. Another year or two later I started and finished a new game in 1 day with the help of a friend.

Post by **Scooter** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 5:04 pm

gradualmeltdown wrote:I've got my original version of Phantasy Star on Master System with the original save files. No idea how that works.

Maybe they used some kind of flash memory instead of a battery, though I heard plenty of people talk about changing batteries on these games and I would guess that such memory would have been prohibitively expensive back in the early '90's. I just got the gamebit drivers so I can now take apart carts and systems without much trouble, perhaps I need to take a peek inside one of them and see what I can find.

Are there any how-to pages on the 'net that show how to replace the batteries in such games?

Post by **Pullmyfinger** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 5:59 pm

Mozgus wrote:You will lose your saves when you change the battery, unless you are very clever with a backup power source that you can attach before you take the battery out and remove after you put the new battery on.

I may have said this before, but my Zelda 2 cart on NES held my save for 10 years solid, and then 3 years later I checked it and it had gone senile on me. It took abilities away, but it gave me some new ones. Basically it took away a vital ability I needed to progress in the 6th dungeon or so, and none of the new abilities it gave me were any use in this situation. Another year or two later I started and finished a new game in 1 day with the help of a friend.

My Zelda 2 also went crazy on me, 2 of my files have the sword in level 0, which means I kill everything except for the final boss with 1 hit, but one file can progress normally and the other has no items inside the castles, the third one was unaffected and probably blank at the time, it's been like 7 years like that. You are the first that I know of that has also experienced something similar.

Also, it happened after powering up the NES without an AC adaptor, but I don't know if it had anything to do with it.

Post by **Scooter** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 12:38 am

I peeked inside NFL Football '94 and it does indeed have a battery. It's still putting out 3V. Wouldn't an easier solution be to simply attach a new battery to the posts while leaving the existing battery in place?

Post by **Mozgus** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 9:36 am

Pullmyfinger wrote:
Mozgus wrote:You will lose your saves when you change the battery, unless you are very clever with a backup power source that you can attach before you take the battery out and remove after you put the new battery on.

I may have said this before, but my Zelda 2 cart on NES held my save for 10 years solid, and then 3 years later I checked it and it had gone senile on me. It took abilities away, but it gave me some new ones. Basically it took away a vital ability I needed to progress in the 6th dungeon or so, and none of the new abilities it gave me were any use in this situation. Another year or two later I started and finished a new game in 1 day with the help of a friend.
My Zelda 2 also went crazy on me, 2 of my files have the sword in level 0, which means I kill everything except for the final boss with 1 hit, but one file can progress normally and the other has no items inside the castles, the third one was unaffected and probably blank at the time, it's been like 7 years like that. You are the first that I know of that has also experienced something similar.

Also, it happened after powering up the NES without an AC adaptor, but I don't know if it had anything to do with it.

Glad to see that it wasn't just me. Thanks for sharing.

Post by **grittykitty** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 8:54 pm

i replaced my beyond oasis battery early this, oops i mean LAST year using electrical tape with some trial-and-error and it works fine. here's a guide that might help you if you're feeling crazy:
http://sega-16.com/feature_page.php?id= ... 0Batteries

Post by **The Apprentice** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 12:45 am

We had Zelda 1 since 1990 when it came with a used system and it worked perfect until 2006. Now it works great aside from the fact that the game can't save at all.

Post by **Gamerforlife** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 3:23 am

Just played some S-NES games yesterday. Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country still have working saves. That surprised me.