Pardon me for asking this, but is it true that it's possible for the game to lose all saved games (possibly through corruption?), and the witch will tell you this and the "Enemy Hits" music will play? I ask because I remember several years (possibly more than a decade) ago my sister swore blind that she saw this exact thing happen one time, without warning. I doubt she did anything specific (if indeed anything at all) to cause it. I'd love to see this for myself but I haven't a clue how this would be possible under emulation. I don't know if it was some kind of anti-piracy trick (like with EarthBound), or some trick involving the SRAM, but if anyone is very knowledgeable on this game it'd be great if they could help confirm it. I'm not sure if the same applies to Shining Force 1, what with me never having played that game originally. And though we did play Shining In The Darkness, I don't know if that game has something similar also.
I can confirm this happens, I had it happen with my SFII cart when I decided to play through it again.
I'd say the SRAM battery died, does it do this every time you play or was it a one off event? Also, Shining Force 1 has the exact same thing happen (Except with the 'cursed item' theme), so I can confirm that. However, if it is one off, I cannot possibly think what could have corrupted it, perhaps the game got interrupted when writing to the SRAM, corrupting it? Also, fun little tidbit, the SRAM will break if you make the ROM bigger then 2 megabytes, mainly because it addresses it at the address 2 megabytes hits, I can't recall it off the top of my head but like I said, fun little tidbit.
Just gave a look at the code and here is what happens exactly : At the very beginning of the witch screen, the SRAM integrity is checked : - first, the string "Taguchi New Supra" () : its presence in SRAM confirms battery's still alive. If battery is dead, then the game just reinitializes SRAM content with this string, without any notification ! - more interesting now : there is a checksum byte for each save slot. If checksum is invalid, then it plays a quick jingle beginning like the "Enemy attacks" music, and shows the following message : "Ooops! Record # has vanished!", with # being 1 or 2 obviously. So yeah, it happens only if save data is corrupted, but I've no idea of what can corrupt save data exactly. Of course it would corrupt your game to turn off while saving but I doubt you could do that even on purpose considering how fast it can copy data from RAM to SRAM ... Does anybody knows other way SRAM could be corrupted ?
Yes this is exactly what I did to confirm the behaviour : - for the first check just change a character of the Taguchi new supra string - for the second check just change any byte of a save slot So you can edit an srm file and ask your sister if that's what she saw
This happened to me on cartridge recently; I think it happened because the Cart came loose when I was playing, leading the save file to corrupt. I don't know about the technical side of it, but I can guarantee that it happens on hardware.
Running a Game Genie between the Mega Drive and the game also breaks the SRAM. I wonder if it does this for other battery backed games? And yes, I am aware this is a late reply.
