PSA: if you’ve got old 3DS cartridges lying around with saves you care about- give em’ a backup! The specific type of flash memory used in (many of) the cartridges can be susceptible to bit rot over time (>10 years), and I’ve seen people talking about their Pokemon saves being corrupted because of this.

To avoid this, you can “recharge” the flash by popping the game cart in and launching it to the main menu! It’s also a good idea to backup any important saves with something like Checkpoint, as well.

@julia huh. does this apply to gameboy cartridges as well? stuff like pokémon and such…

@_r Gameboy cartridges use coin cell battery backups, which can’t easily be recharged (only by replacing)- though a handful of Gameboy Advance cartridges (basically just Pokemon) use a similar type of flash memory- I’m not sure if they suffer from the aforementioned bit-rot, but it can’t hurt to boot up the game to check!

@julia mm I see. I don’t have the games on hand rn, but I do remember switching the coin battery in my pokémon silver cartridge a few years ago. wiped the old save, obviously, but it was right after I bought it from the flea market, so I didn’t care. it’s good to keep in mind those will eventually run out of charge tho

@julia Already backed up my New Leaf save because I wanted to try it on an emulator and I figured it would be nice to have for this very reason. Pretty sure like all of my Pokémon ended up stuck in Home/Bank but maybe I should double check tomorrow to make sure there’s nothing I would miss.

Thankfully a lot of the games I played halfway through the 3DS lifespan were digital copies for uh… reasons so I’m probably safe for the most part.

@julia is that the case for DS/DSi ones too?

@luana I would assume so

@julia
Happened to my Mario Maker save 😔

RE: https://eepy.moe/notes/ahgxj2bb2sfh0061

@rotopenguin oh dear lord, really??? Wtf Nintendo. God forbid we use actual ROM.

@rotopenguin ahhh gotcha