2d ago

Building Pokémon Blue save games

So..

...even though the battery light was a bright red, I saved the game and it crashed. Now the save is predictably in a broken format and can't be read (at least without extra hardware).

I was rather enjoying my 10hr game, just before the SS Anne and grinding my 'karp to a Gyarados, with a recently evolved Sandslash.

I can see that there are save editors for use, but does anyone know if there are save builders - that put you in a particular location at a particular level with progression flags automatically set to your point in the story?

I can't say I'm big in to Pokémon lore - my introduction to the series was with Go - so some of the intricacies are beyond me but I'll faff with editors if I need to and import them into an Android emulator if it comes to that.

Thanks in advance!

14 comments

Probably the closest you'd be able to find is a premade save from someone who took periodic save backups (untested example)and put that through a save editor to change the important details.
Although, like the other commenter suspected, you may see a repeat of the same issue.
- Oh nice one yeah, never thought about someone's interim saves. I'd only done a cursory search and saw a couple of "ALL lv100 POKEMON INCLUDING MEWTWO!!1!" saves which are awesome but obviously have the game story completed by that point. I'll do some digging!
  Thank you 👍
What does crash mean in this case? Did it lock up during the save? Did it save normally and you turned back on to this? Is this fully original hardware including the cartridge?
If so, these old cartridges use batteries/ram for saves and likely won't work unless the battery has been replaced. Easy enough to do with a beefy soldering iron (big ground planes) and the right parts.
No suggestions on save editors as I haven't used them, sorry.
- It was ever so strange - during the save, the battery light flickered and the screed faded away, like the off switch was flipped - all during the save process.
  The red light returned to a strong bright red light when it was switched back on. The hardware is likely to be original hardware - I bought the cartridge pre-owned so there is a possibility that it's a repro or a fake as I've not physically opened the cart.
  My initial assumption was that the power draw on the battery was a bit too much during the save function and interrupted the power to the console, which is obviously suboptimal when the program is performing a write operation.
  I suppose that's the risk one takes when playing a thirty year old game nearly, which is why I think I'd rather hack together a save at a rough point of where I was in the game, and emulate the rest!
  
  Did it get bumped or jostled at all? If you turn it on, can you reproduce the issue by turning it to a certain angle or by tapping it, or by rolling the batteries with the back cover off? There could be a loose contact.
  I do think the power draw theory is solid, though. The GBC might need a new power capacitor (example found via Internet search, tailor to your region). Surface-mount components can be a pain to work with so try everything else first.
  Does this happen with any other games? There's something in Link's Awakening that causes extra power draw and screen flicker on my backlight-modded DMG (i.e. already has extra power draw), something like that might help isolate the problem. For Link's Awakening, I think it was screen transitions, but my memory's a little fuzzy about the specifics.
  The most likely (and easiest to fix) might just be the battery contacts. Any corrosion or looseness could break the circuit and bad luck had that happen during saving.
You should just play Nintendo games on your phone. Their hardware is trash. I honestly can't wrap my head around why you'd carry something that old around when your phone can do the same or better. With an emulator it is trivial to make backup, saves or have saved states to fall back on, with a Nintendo product... Nope.
- In fairness, the backup issue is era-specific. One would have that issue with a Game Gear or a Wonderswan.
  The issue of carrying around old tech is personal preference. The debate between emulation and original hardware will rage on all day long and is far too big for a thread like this.
  I'm no fan of Nintendo, but the fact that both my GBs and my NES work okay is an entirely anecdotal but personally convincing argument.
  As for more modern games... then yeah I can't really argue, particularly with Ninty's asshole approach to game preservation; creating false scarcity; and legal-heavy approach to mods.
  
  but the fact that both my GBs and my NES work okay is an entirely anecdotal but personally convincing argument.
  This conversation wouldn't be happening if that was true.

14 comments