I entered the 3rd Generation of Pokemon on Easter Sunday of 2003. After finding my easter basket I got Pokemon Ruby Version! I played the shit out of that game. Sometime in 2004 however, I started receiving this odd message. "The internal battery has run dry. The game can be played, however clock-based events will no longer occur." I didn't really understand what that meant; I didn't know the games even had internal batteries. I googled for answered and all I got was information on "the berry glitch." After getting FireRed and LeafGreen for my birthday in 2004, I decided to try to patch my Ruby Version. I did EVERYTHING correctly and got an error message "the berry program could not be updated." Dammit. I tried again in 2005 with Emerald Version; same message. I'm still pretty pissed that my game is defective. I'm even more surprised that there's an error message programmed in the game for this too. How could this happen? Was it because I jumped in a creek with my Gameboy in my pocket and my GBA and Ruby Version got soaked with creek water? Now, in 2010, I'm going to try to fix this problem. Has anyone changed the internal battery in RSE before? I've changed plenty of internal batteries for Generation I and II games, but never a Generation III game. What I'm really afraid of is losing my saved data. But if the battery is dead like the game says it is...that wouldn't happen right? What's the "03-01" stamped on the battery mean? Right now I'm transfering all my important Pokemon to LeafGreen, should anything happen to my saved data after I change the battery, I'll still have my favorite Pokemon.
I never got the glitch. I patched my Ruby with a friend's FireRed, and haven't had any unusual behaviour. I don't know much about this, but you can still save, right? It's not like in GSC when the battery dies? Because I don't think the berry glitch affects the ability to save, or I haven't read that anywhere. If it can't save, it probably is because it got wet like you said. It does seem weird that the patches don't work. Oh, wait, is the link cable in the right way round? I vaguely recall having problems when I was doing it, I think because I had it the wrong way round. Apparently the game with the patch has to be on player 1's side.
I tried multiple times, following directions very closely. I even used the link cable BOTH ways. It's not the berry glitch, it's a dead internal battery. Now that it isn't 2004 anymore I'm getting a lot more information about this on Google because more people are getting dead internal batteries (since battery death is inevitable anyway). I can still save. I still have the original saved file from 2003. The clock just stopped working...so nobody will re-battle me, I can't get Espeon, no more sales in Lilycove, etc. Basically anything to do with the clock is stuck. edit: Jirachi, Celebi, Deoxys, Lugia, Ho-Oh, and Butterfree are going to LG right now...still got a few more Pokemon to go but I should be finished soon and I'll pry the battery out of my game.
That battery is to make your clock run while it's not being playied, as I recall it won't affect your save. Just take the info from the batteries, remove them, check their number and google them so you'll buy them. That's so simple. If I got batteries for Pokémon Crystal on 2007 you can get batteries for Ruby in 2010.
I'm only saying this from knowledge I have from pulling apart gameboy cartridges although I would think the same applies to the gameboy advanced. Gameboy cartridges used SRAM chips to save game data, this means they would need to be battery backed in order to keep the data from going byebye. Also doing a quick google on this glitch. It seems its about a game counter getting stuck are you sure that a side effect of this glitch is not the battery message, because your save still works although if they battery was dead your save wouldn't work? If you could get the part numbers off the ICs I could tell you if its SRAM, although it looks like they stuck a battery on top of it :P
Alan: I changed the battery and it still has my saved data, so I guess the battery really doesn't have anything to do with the saving ability. I guess that solves the mystery....because now I don't get the "internal clock blahblahblah" error anymore
You get this message on emulators a lot if certain configuration settings with the emulator aren't set correctly. Likewise, with Firered/Leafgreen/Emerald, you get a sub circuit board problem message and I have yet to be able to permanently hold a save file, even with the correct emulator configuration. I have actually got this message on my old corrupted and unstable Leafgreen version I traded to my cousin for his Dragon Warrior Monsters 2 game. The cartridge connector was damaged due to overuse of my Gameshark SP on it. Eventually, one day my save file was deleted because the game froze while saving. I had a complete Pokedex and everything. (I caught most of the pokemon fair and square though except until the very end. I only had a complete pokedex for about 5 months when this happened.) I was completely bummed out and ever since that day, my Leafgreen would give me trouble which is why I traded it away.
Glisp, I have actually got the sub circuit error message on both FireRed AND LeafGreen, but it seems like LG gets it more frequently. Do you know what causes it? I have to take out the cartridge and fiddle with it because if I don't, it won't let me save....
I'm not really sure either. The best thing I can guess is that the cartridge is either dirty (I got this message on my old Leafgreen and cleaned out my cart and everything was fine.) or the cartridge is starting to die and many things on the sub circuit board are starting to become unstable and losing their abilities to function. I don't really know to be honest. It might be a flaw in version 1.0, if that's the version of the game you had. There are two revisions of Firered and Leafgreen. I'm not sure what's different about them but if bought your game brand new, you'll be able to identify them more easily. Version 1.0-came with Wireless Adaptor. Its the original game release. Version 1.1- lacked Wireless Adaptor. Released sometime after 1.0. There are some coding differences but as a whole I have noticed no differences between them graphically or game play wise. 1.1 might fix the rare thunderbolt/Ice Beam glitch but I'm not sure as the glitch was so rare that I never got it on my old 1.0.
I would make the contacts clean (use a pencil on them) , but if you really want to know my opinion, get HG or SS and use your FRLG on it with PalPark, I mean HGSS's Kanto is much more similar to FRLG's than GSC's Kanto was to RBY's. HGSS doesn't have any internal battery so no errors, no battery shit, no anything =D. And with FR/LG inserted on the bottom you get new wild pokémon on it, that is just my opinion. I really want to get an original copy of Emerald to transfer Deoxys, Groudon (and with some cheating) Mew to HeartGold =P.
For Deoxys and Mew in Emerald and FR/LG, there is a problem. You can't just simply find them with a Wild pokemon modifier code. If you do and catch them, they simply will not obey you at all. There is a 0% chance of them attacking due to Game Freak putting in a method to check if this pokemon was caught with a wild pokemon modifier code. You can't trade them to other games either because of this little lock Game Freak put in also. Fortunately, there is a way around this. There is a Game Shark SP code available that allows you to find them by pressing a series of buttons while talking to a person or checking something. These codes will trigger the battles from the actual events, including music. With emerald, if you are talking to a person with this, they'll do whatever animations the overworld sprite of the pokemon you are using the code of before the fight begins. There are also codes for some of the other legendaries with events as well. Alternatively, you can use a warp code to warp the islands these event pokemon are on. However, I might just say that Deoxys' island wouldn't play music and the event wouldn't start up in Leafgreen. The Mew event can only be activated in Emerald so this is the only way you can get an obeying one (besides a few other codes.) in FR/LG.
=P. I don't want FRLG XD. The music hurts my ears. I thought I just needed the key Items for them and no problem.
The GBA Pokémon games actually use Flash memory to store your save data, unlike the older games which used SRAM. The major difference is that SRAM requires continuous power to hold its data. Flash memory does not. The battery in the GBA cartridges is only used to run the internal cartridge's clock. Luckily, there aren't many time-based events in Ruby and Sapphire (evolving Eevee into Espeon (day) or Umbreon (night) and growing berries, I think), so you can perfectly play the game without them even if you've got a flat battery/berry glitch.
Or you could just access the Old Sea Chart via another cheat to get Mew legit. (m) D8BAE4D9 4864DCE5 A86CDBA5 19BA49B3 DMA Disabler: 06122196 8FE98260 65DA389A 09D8882C Old Sea Map in PC: 5B1CB4D7 10FA9D05 Emerald only, Action Replay, All on at once.
Glisp is right about the Mew/Deoxys thing. Gamefreak was smart about it and fuck them for that. So what if I want Deoxys and Mew and I don't want to go to their shitty events? S'ok though, I used a code to get them in Emerald Version and now I have a good Mew/Deoxys. Oh and I got my FireRed and LeafGreen games the day they came out (my birthday was September 13th and they were released a few days before that, but I begged my mom to take me to Walmart and buy them for me anyway ) and I'm pretty sure they came with wireless adapters. Never heard of the Thunderbolt/iceBeam glitch....
I think we should change the topic title to "Pokemon third Generation games programming and technology" Just so our little discussion can be considered on topic.
I don't know what caused it but I did have a similar error on my doomed Leafgreen version. (which will probably be mentioned a lot in this thread.) It started doing this a lot after the first savefile got deleted. There were even times where the game would attempt to save but failed and it would check the back up memory board and shit and it took hours for it to do this. I can't remember the full message but it was something like "Save failed. Checking back up memory sub board. Please wait...."
I've got that error before, in Sapphire; however, it was paired with that distinctive "crashed GBA sound", so I just shut it off, since I didn't think it'd end up getting anywhere. Man, though, the devs sure thought of a lot of obtuse sorts of scenarios that could have occured, huh?
