Recovering Pokemon from Broken Platinum Save

I've been reading through the forums here trying to come up with a solution for my problem. It first happened like this:

I was using the GTS to trade when my DSLite powered off. This damaged my copy of Platinum and now the game doesn't work. I can power the DS on and the game works fine all the way up to the menu screen but when I press 'A' to continue all I get is a black screen.

Is there any way to recover the Pokemon in that game?

I know you can store and send Pokemon using .PKM files. And according to this thread you can extract individual Pokemon from a .SAV and save them for later use.

My understanding is a little scattered concerning the hardware. Can you use an Action Replay (specifically this one) to create a .SAV of a Pokemon cart? And then either fix the save file or extract the Pokemon from it?

Any confirmation/alternate solutions would be much appreciated.

Thanks for your time,

Sam

Action replays are not for backing up cart data. They are just meant for importing small bits of code to manipulate existing data. There are other devices that will work however such as: R4i save dongle (~20$) or NDS Adapter Plus (~35$) or an actual flashcart like an R4i (~20$). Flashcarts are much more difficult to use, but there is a lot more you can do with them.

That's very helpful, thanks!

Really impressive response time too.

You were using GTS? I thought you couldn't since Nintendo shut down WiFi for DS/Wii. I have the NDS Adapter Plus, and it's been a godsend. I recently discovered my Platinum cart was pirated, despite owning it for 6 months. I bought another one and was able to extract the save from the pirated one with the R4i SDHC. The NDS Adapter wouldn't read the pirated cart unless I held it in a very specific manner. Doing so though, my fingers would shake, but luckily got the save from there. It's not worth the trouble, so R4i proved to be a suitable backup for faulty carts like that one. The R4i also allowed for GBA cart backing up (if you have DS/DS lite), which was neat.

This happened years ago. I'm really attached to the save though so I haven't deleted it. It's only now that I've looked a little more deeply into trying to recover the Pokemon on the cart. It's an awfully large mix of GBA imports and trades which I'd like to get a hold of.

I'm a little confused though. Are you advocating the NDS Adapter or the R4i? It sounds like the R4i will accomplish the task of grabbing the .SAV from any cart, pirated or not and the Adapter Plus was just for migrating the data to your new cart.

Moving this thread to the Save Hardware Help forum.

This happened years ago. I'm really attached to the save though so I haven't deleted it. It's only now that I've looked a little more deeply into trying to recover the Pokemon on the cart. It's an awfully large mix of GBA imports and trades which I'd like to get a hold of.

I'm a little confused though. Are you advocating the NDS Adapter or the R4i? It sounds like the R4i will accomplish the task of grabbing the .SAV from any cart, pirated or not and the Adapter Plus was just for migrating the data to your new cart.

How about both? I got the Adapter first, and the interface is a lot easier and simple. Just plug game into USB dongle, back up into PC or download sav into cart. The R4i's backup involves wireless internet communication. Since DSLite's configuration isn't compatible with WPA, I had to set up a wireless hotspot with a USB wireless router thing, so the sav would be downloaded into my PC. The process is kind of long, when the sav's only 512KB. If you have legit carts only, use the Adapter. If you somehow got pirated ones, use the R4i, and know how to set up an open wireless connection that the DSLite can pick up. If you want to backup GBA saves, R4i and DS/Lite.

Hope that helps.

It does help, thank you! I can freely change the encryption on my router to WEP so that will expedite the process. I'll let you know how it goes.

[February 5, 2015 update!]

My Save Dongle arrived in the mail today. I plugged it in, upgraded the firmware and then it was ready to use. I loaded up my Platinum cartridge and exported the files from the cart to my PC as a .SAV which I then opened in PokéGen.

Unfortunately, it seems the entire game is corrupted.

No Pokémon can be detected in the PC or in my party. Even PokéGen is confused when I load up the .SAV - it prompts me to clarify what game it should think it's loading. To make sure this was not a hardware fault I ran a test. The transfer worked fine for my Heart Gold game though and everything can be viewed perfectly well in PokéGen. It seems I'll just have to reset. Any further suggestions/refutation are welcome. I'm going to look around just a little longer for a solution.

Once again, thanks for all the help!