WTF?! Berry Glitch on Emerald?

[Fishaman P]

This is WEIRD. First off, I know all the signs of the Berry Glitch, but this is different. My Ruby and Sapphire both fell victim and were patched, although my Ruby's battery is dead now.

Anyway, I got a used Emerald cart about 2 months ago with about 80:00 on it. I myself have about 50:00 on it so far. I know the cart is legit; there are no saving problems, and the PCB is correct and everything.

Lately though, strange things have been happening: While the clock in my room works fine and shows the correct time, the Lilycove Lottery lady keeps telling me to come back tomorrow, even 2 days later. Also, the Battle Tower apprentice is gone for good. But some things do seem to work: the Pacifidlog TM guy just gave me Return (again), although I don't remember the last time I got one from him. I haven't checked the Berry Master, but the Mirage Island guy has never seen it, and no odd events occur on TV like Energy Guru sales.

What's up with my cart? It doesn't give me the internal battery message, but time events are wacky! Should I sit in Shoal Cave? Are Elgyems tampering with my cart?

I should probably mention I use my DS flashcart to backup and restore saves for faster Breeding RNG, but that hasn't stopped the clock or messed it up or anything.

[Kyogre1]

Did you ever load this particular savegame file in another game or emulator? Then your clock based events are broken for good.

[Fishaman P]

I have loaded up the save in VBA-M with RTC enabled, but never saved, and certainly never restored it back to my cart after being touched by that filthy inaccurate piece of software.
Also, my saves have only been restored to their original cart. I don't like people copying my l33t mons.

But it's weird that the clock still moves as normal...

[Kyogre1]

I'm not sure if just restoring is a problem, but I know VBA breaks the game events if you save it there and then put it back on cart.

[Fishaman P]

Just checked. The lottery woman still hates me, but the Pacifidlog TM guy seems to have a calendar, as he changed from saying 7 days to saying 6, and now 5.

[MrEobo]

I'm not sure if just restoring is a problem, but I know VBA breaks the game events if you save it there and then put it back on cart.

So do you think it's just a problem with VBA? Might there be an emulator that doesn't break the game events?

[MrEobo]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that disabling the "Real-Time Clock" feature in VBA might *prevent* the problem. VBA won't affect the time in-game, and when you transfer it back to a cartridge with a running battery, normal time events might ensue?

[MrEobo]

I played the Emerald U ROM on VBA with my cartridge save file *without* enabling the Real-Time Clock, injected the save back into the cartridge, and timed events still resume normally. I even watched news on one of the televisions for the Berry Crushing Master!

[Kyogre1]

I wonder what exactly is changed in the save file when VBA's RTC is set to on.

[MrEobo]

Yeah :0
It's probably just such a different method than the actual Pokemon game cartridges, so it completely distorts it, or something :P

[Pingouin7]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that disabling the "Real-Time Clock" feature in VBA might *prevent* the problem. VBA won't affect the time in-game, and when you transfer it back to a cartridge with a running battery, normal time events might ensue?

That's possible, I had the same problem in Ruby and it came from having restored a save file to the cartridge.
My game thought I had 9999 rocket launches at Lilycove (so 9999 weeks played, which is impossible) and time was wacky.

[MrEobo]

That's possible, I had the same problem in Ruby and it came from having restored a save file to the cartridge.
My game thought I had 9999 rocket launches at Lilycove (so 9999 weeks played, which is impossible) and time was wacky.

Before you restored the save file to the cartridge, did you use it on VBA with the "Real-Time Clock" feature enabled?

[Victini Victory]

Hm. The only things I can think of is its either hacked or glitches out to the max