How did my friend edit my Ruby cartridge?

[Escalibor]

Hello, I see these forums are hardly used but I'm not sure where else I could ask this. So when I was in middle school I played a copy of Pokemon Ruby version. A friend at school said he could get me any pokemon I wanted if I let him borrow my game so I gave it to him and when he returned it I had pretty much everything. 99 of every item and TM. Multiple shiny legendaries. My pokedex was completed (386) and he also changed my player name. I just want to know how this is possible - I had a cartridge.

[theSLAYER]

6 minutes ago, Escalibor said:

Hello, I see these forums are hardly used but I'm not sure where else I could ask this. So when I was in middle school I played a copy of Pokemon Ruby version. A friend at school said he could get me any pokemon I wanted if I let him borrow my game so I gave it to him and when he returned it I had pretty much everything. 99 of every item and TM. Multiple shiny legendaries. My pokedex was completed (386) and he also changed my player name. I just want to know how this is possible - I had a cartridge.

 

GameShark Advance, and replaced your save with a premade save or something.

edit:
I don't know what year it was when you're in middle school,
but other options using homebrew on DS flash cart to extract and import a save to a GBA cart, etc etc.

[Escalibor]

Everything I had accomplished in the save file was still there. ie. I had all my old pokemon and my hall of fame record was untouched

[theSLAYER]

2 minutes ago, Escalibor said:

Everything I had accomplished in the save file was still there. ie. I had all my old pokemon and my hall of fame record was untouched

Few things:
1. GameShark codes to catch Pokemon and get duplicates of items
2. using some tool to extract your save, edit the entries, inject it back

It's not uncommon.
IIRC back in 2005, I had an Action Replay, to hack in codes to gain access to Birth Island and stuff, on a cart..

[Escalibor]

2 minutes ago, theSLAYER said:

Few things:
1. GameShark codes to catch Pokemon and get duplicates of items
2. using some tool to extract your save, edit the entries, inject it back

It's not uncommon.
IIRC back in 2005, I had an Action Replay, to hack in codes to gain access to Birth Island and stuff, on a cart..

 

Do you know what sort of tool would allow me to extract my save and inject it back? I would be interested in doing something like this.

[theSLAYER]

1 minute ago, Escalibor said:

 

Do you know what sort of tool would allow me to extract my save and inject it back? I would be interested in doing something like this.

 

Depends on what you have access to.
1. NDS phat or lite & DS Flashcart. (to use a homebrew game to extract save from GBA cart, and it dumps the save into the DS flashcart)
2. Gameshark Advance is able to backup memory saves. (I think for usage, it may need to be converted via VBA)
3. Action Reply Max Duo. I had one of these and I can't check right now, but I recall it being able to back up GBA saves.

Also, we have a guide regarding this:

https://projectpokemon.org/home/forums/topic/41730-how-to-back-up-your-save-file-gen-3-for-use-with-pkhex-or-emulators-tutorial/

 

[Escalibor]

9 minutes ago, theSLAYER said:

 

Depends on what you have access to.
1. NDS phat or lite & DS Flashcart. (to use a homebrew game to extract save from GBA cart, and it dumps the save into the DS flashcart)
2. Gameshark Advance is able to backup memory saves. (I think for usage, it may need to be converted via VBA)
3. Action Reply Max Duo. I had one of these and I can't check right now, but I recall it being able to back up GBA saves.

Also, we have a guide regarding this:

https://projectpokemon.org/home/forums/topic/41730-how-to-back-up-your-save-file-gen-3-for-use-with-pkhex-or-emulators-tutorial/

 

Thank you, this has pointed me in the right direction.

Edited September 29, 2017 by Escalibor
Grammar