Cartridge Batteries and Game Saves

[marurun]

I'm most likely to [stop playing an RPG] on Saturn, where my saves will get wiped anyway because the battery is so long dead.

[Ziggy]

Luckily I had a friend give me his old Saturn Backup Cart back in high school. He also gave me his model 1 Saturn which no longer worked. It works, it just doesn't read discs. I held on to it anyway, and now I have a Saturn ODE on its way. I'm kind of excited to get back into the Saturn, I haven't played it in years.

[marurun]

My Saturn backup cart isn't holding saves and I'm not sure what to do about it. It's a genuine article I picked up in Tokyo 20 years ago.

[Ziggy]

Well IIRC, the official Saturn Backup Cart uses flash memory and doesn't have a battery. I suppose it could be that the flash memory needs to be replaced (not that big of task if you can solder) but I would check easier things first. Like if the cart pins are dirty. The Saturn cart slot is especially fragile and finicky. Do you own any other Saturn carts? Are they working?

[marurun]

Well IIRC, the official Saturn Backup Cart uses flash memory and doesn't have a battery. I suppose it could be that the flash memory needs to be replaced (not that big of task if you can solder) but I would check easier things first. Like if the cart pins are dirty. The Saturn cart slot is especially fragile and finicky. Do you own any other Saturn carts? Are they working?

My other Saturn carts work just fine. The system sees the cart, but it doesn't retain saves.

[Ziggy]

Well IIRC, the official Saturn Backup Cart uses flash memory and doesn't have a battery. I suppose it could be that the flash memory needs to be replaced (not that big of task if you can solder) but I would check easier things first. Like if the cart pins are dirty. The Saturn cart slot is especially fragile and finicky. Do you own any other Saturn carts? Are they working?

My other Saturn carts work just fine. The system sees the cart, but it doesn't retain saves.

Do you know anyone that can solder? You can try reflowing all of the pins and see if that does anything. Or swap out the memory chip in case it went bad. I would also clean the cart edge pins REALLY well, just to be sure.

[RCBH928]

I'm most likely to do this on Saturn, where my saves will get wiped anyway because the battery is so long dead.

You are scaring me...I have a list of N64 carts to go through...what should I do? I am not willing to play 20hrs for my saves to disappear.

[alienjesus]

I'm most likely to do this on Saturn, where my saves will get wiped anyway because the battery is so long dead.

You are scaring me...I have a list of N64 carts to go through...what should I do? I am not willing to play 20hrs for my saves to disappear.

I wouldnt panic. Most old game cartridges batteries are holding up just fine. The exception tends to be games with real-time clocks, but the only one of those on N64 is the japan-only Animal Crossing game.

The Saturn battery is inside the console, and is used to store the internal clock too. It has an infamously short lifespan and needs replaced maybe every 2 years or so, as it's just a common watch battery.

[Ziggy]

I'm most likely to do this on Saturn, where my saves will get wiped anyway because the battery is so long dead.

You are scaring me...I have a list of N64 carts to go through...what should I do? I am not willing to play 20hrs for my saves to disappear.

I wouldnt panic. Most old game cartridges batteries are holding up just fine. The exception tends to be games with real-time clocks, but the only one of those on N64 is the japan-only Animal Crossing game.

The Saturn battery is inside the console, and is used to store the internal clock too. It has an infamously short lifespan and needs replaced maybe every 2 years or so, as it's just a common watch battery.

Actually, a lot of N64 games use flash memory as oppose to SRAM with batteries.

You can backup your saves, there's a couple ways to do this with the N64 but the most modern being a Retrode. I'd be more worried about losing a save while in the middle of playing the game rather than after I'm finished with it.

The first time I played Final Fantasy 2 on the SNES, I was maybe halfway through the game when it glitched and froze. When I reset, my save was gone. The battery was fine, it's just that the SRAM got corrupted. I've had this happen a few times on the SNES. My original SimCity cart would always drop my saves. A more recent copy of SimCity that I have, same thing with FF2, I was in the middle of a game when it froze and when I reset my save was gone. My Super Mario All Stars cart would always drop my saves, ever since I've owned it from the 90s. My Link to the Past cart once lost all of my save files, just magically from sitting on a shelf. The battery is still strong, and I now have 3 save files back on the cart with the same battery. And I lost all my saves on my Donkey Kong Country 3 cart because I knocked the cart in the slot while it was powered on. This caused the game to freeze and when I reset all my saves were gone. Now I backup all my SNES cart saves with the Retrode.

I've only ever had one problem with saves on an N64 cart, but I think it was an isolated problem. My original Goldeneye cart stopped holding saves. This was still during the lifespan of the N64, so I took it back to the store and exchanged it for a new copy.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I'm impressed by how well most save batteries seem to have held up. I have carts from 1986 and 1987 that hold saves just fine.