Well, I've got a Sonic 3 european cart, who has been working perfectly untill today. It has always saved well, and yadda yadda. I lent it to my cousing a few days ago, and he returned it to me today. All the saves were deleted. I thought he had deleted them himself ( he is only 6 years old), so I decided to have a go and replay it, getting all the emeralds. At first, I started a new game on a blank lot, but by some reason, the bonus rings didn't appear in the game, like if they were already used. I repeat, it was a fresh start save game. I turned my megadrive off, and started again. Deleted the already deleted savegame again, just beacuse. Then I played the game normally, got 6 chaos emerald, finished the game. Went back to Angel Island zone to get the last emerald easly, but failed misserably at the special stage, so I resseted the console and....the save was gone. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU I tried starting a new game again, to make sure the game saves, got one emerald, commited suicide, and yes, the game did save.But when I turn off the game and try again, the save is gone. Is my cart corrupted or something? Can it be fixed someway? Is this a common bug? It did work OK until I lent it to my cousin..an I bought it back in 1994. I heard sonic 3 carts doesn't use batteries like other cart, so they were " undeletable", but...why did this happen? Can you help me? It's time to buy another sonic 3 cart? Sorry about my english, I'm spanih and I have trouble with english.
Activating the level select cheat will ruin save files forever. I wish I had known that when I was 8, because I am still mad at myself, now with a forever corrupted cartridge of Sonic 3. So, did you ever use any cheats in the game?
...what? Can anyone else confirm that? And are you talking about the Sonic 3 level select or the S3K level select? I'm sure I've done the Sonic 3 one before and my save files are good...
The FRAM in the Sonic 3 cart doesn't last forever. It CAN be replaced - there's a thread on replacing the FRAM in the S3 cart over at SEGA-16. http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10037
Thanks for all the aswers. No, I didn't use any cheat. I highly doubt my cousin has either, as I said before, He is only 6 years old and he is starting to play videogames now, he doesn't know what a cheat is. Abou magnetic field...I have always stored it in a big closet, under my CRT tv, and it has been working perfectly. My cousing has been playing it in a room with no magnets around, but his megadrive is quite close to his CRT TV. He uses to left the cartidges on the console and around it in the table it is located. This is getting suspicious, as his megadrive has recently died, in a strange way ( the one he is using right now is mine, I'e lent it to him untill I can buy another one for him). It did turn on,red bulb and all, but no image appears on the TV. I've checked the RF out, and the cartidge slot, and they're fine. It's the console. It also does NOT start up the mega CD bios whent I put it on mine. Maybe has anything to be with this?
I've also never heard of this, and while I'm no authority I think I would've by now if it were true. All this talk of actual hardware has made me nostalgic. Ah, simpler times.
That happened to mine too. I used gamegenie back in the day... Why did it do that? I was really gutted that I couldn't save at all :/
I've used the cartridge swap method and Game Genie several times to access the level select in S3, and the button code in S3K, and still have perfectly working saves in both S3 and S3K.
Yeah, I used to do the level select frequently in S3 alone and never had any problems with it screwing with the save files. Dunno what happened to your cart.
I've never known of any save bug with cheats in sonic 3 or 3k, if there is any I must have been lucky to avoid them. Sure it's just not a dead battery in the cart? they only last several years before they die. *edit* I see that has already been discussed.
You can make Sonic 3 erase it's saves though I don't think this could be done with a real action replay. 1. In Emulator (Fusion) enter this code: 00C324:601E 00C338:6002 2. Choose a cleared game and pick Zone 5 (Flying Battery Zone) 3. Let the game crash. 4. Soft reset the game. 5. Let the game crash again and let the music finish. 6. Soft reset the game again and head back to the save select screen. 7. Bye-bye saves. WARNING: Back up your SRAM file first. Not tested on real hardware. May damage game.
Gotta wonder if there's a way to do a hardware mod that replaces the FRAM with a standard battery backup system, my cart's FRAM is dead as well (and has been for a long time).
