SNES Game Saves not deleting/saving?

[Raiiban]

Hey everyone, first time poster here.

I ran into an oddity recently with a pair of SNES games and was wondering if anybody has seen or heard of this happening, can't find anything specific off google so I thought I'd ask here.

I have two SNES games, Soul Blazer and Breath of Fire, they both are working alright, original battery still. I've had a game or two with a dead battery in the past and replaced them no problem. But these two games are giving me something a bit... weirder. When the battery died on other games I would save and power off the system and the game save would be gone, that's normal.

However both of these games will not allow me to save OR delete saved games. It's like the portion where save data is held is marked read-only. Old game saves from years ago are still on there, I can load them, play the game, but I can't delete them or save any progress on them. I can't even start a new save file on Breath of Fire.

I've never seen the behavior before on a game, let alone finding two of them in the same day. Has anyone else seen this happen? It is the battery or something possibly wrong with the cartridge?

Thanks for any help.

[Hobie-wan]

It is possible the save ram is having issues. I had a Mario Kart that wouldn't cave even with a new battery. If the actual ram chip is damaged, it would obviously have to be replaced if possible. Although if the saves have just gotten corrupted, perhaps disconnecting the battery from the board for 15 minutes, then reconnecting might help. Check the battery voltage while you're at it.

[Raiiban]

I might have to try that, on related note I've been pulling out all of my SNES RPG games that I know have saves on them and testing them out. It's a bit weird, I'm seeing this issue all of a sudden on a lot of these carts.

Final Fantasy 2 and 3, Secret of Evermore, Secret of Mana (I just played through this last year and it was fine!) all show this same thing. Can read the data but will not write to it.

Oddly enough Super Mario RPG saved just fine, possibly crushing my theory/hope that it was the SNES and not every cartridge in my collection all of a sudden.

I'm totally at a loss with this one. I guess I'll need to dig around the toolbox for the bit to open these carts up and just disconnect the battery for a bit. I can't see how 6 games all suddenly have bad RAM simultaneously. Unless it's a problem on the SNES side that just doesn't seem to affect SMRPG.

[Hobie-wan]

Yeah, maybe it is your SNES. Perhaps it uses a certain pin or two to send the signal to save data and that pin is just dirty on your console. Clean the cart slot, the games, and/or try it on someone else's SNES.

[Raiiban]

Took me a bit of time but I finally found my old cleaning kit for the SNES and ran it through the console, went through all my games that I mentioned above and was able to save without any problems.

Really relieved it was something as simple as that, never even heard of a dirty pin on the console causing a problem like that, bizarre!

Thanks for the suggestion.

[Hobie-wan]

Awesome, glad you're sorted.