I'm not sure if this has been posted here already but this happened to me and I thought I would mention it. I went to play Pokemon Silver a few months back and discovered that my save file was missing and when I tried to restart the game it wouldn't save. Apparently, the game pak's battery died. I also discovered the same thing happened to my wife's Pokemon Gold.

After some searching, I found out how to switch batteries. I used a pair of needle-nosed pliers to unscrew the wierd shaped screw (it wasn't easy) and then I had to use a sharp pocket knife to cut the battery away from the spot welds. It sounds easier than it was since the connector arms are welded to both sides of the battery.

Once I got the battery loose and got the new on in place, I used a piece of scotch tape and draped it across the game pak to hold the battery in place. I then placed the cover back on the game pak and then screwed it together with the pliers. The game is working fine now. It makes me a little concerned for my Pokemon Blue since I have almost the entire collection of pokemon and my favorite (Blastoise) has been at level 100 for a long time.

Yup, that's happened to my Gold and Silver cartridges, too. That's pretty sad too, they were my favorite Pokemon games. (although Crystal hasn't for some reason!)

I wouldn't worry about any of the other Pokemon games though. Red, Blue, and Yellow used different batteries or something. It has to do with the fact that G/S/C have a clock, and R/B/Y don't, I believe.

The same type of thing happens to NES and SNES cartridges it's happened a lot to people that i know.

It actually recently happened to the motherboard on my computer luckily I had enough sense to replace the battery rather than buy a new motherboard.


by the way nice technique for replacing the battery sounds like you're very careful.

A copy of Gold Version I bought from an ex-friend has that problem.

yeah they are pretty sensitive.so... did you try to boot up and hack it

Every cartridge-based game with save options is going to have this problem, due to the batteries. Only way around it is to find a way of backing up the save file to a PC for later recovery, if possible.

Interestingly, I very recently bought all three original Pokemon games second hand, and they haven't yet suffered from dead batteries.