Pokemon Emerald - Save file erased due to corruption or damage

[IoriXVI]

Hey everyone! I could use some help here.

Me and some irl friends were having some fun times, with RNG manipulation and battling one day. Everything was running smoothly with no issues. The next day I turned on my gameboy advanced, I was greeted to the message mentioned in the title. It seemingly happened out of nowhere. I will say when we did a 6v6 single battle, the game autosaved and after we left the battle room, I turned the gameboy off immediately. not sure if this had any effect on it, but since it had saved, I didn't think too much of it(Note that we use wireless adapters and we both play Emerald)

Back to the issue, I was a bit devastated that it this came out of the random. I used to get the error of "The save data has been corrupted. The previous save will be loaded" if I did something wrong, but now, it's completely different, since it didn't give me this message now.

Any possible way to recover the save file? At the least, maybe get some of the pokemon off of the game? Would be a shame to lose everything.

Just for reference, I've had Emerald a year after it was released. I got it in 2006 for my birthday and have had it since, so the cartridge is 100% legit. 19 years later, maybe something inside could've caused this, but I'm not sure. Didn't want to tamper with the code in case I might screw something up. I dumped the sav file and the actual .gba save(though I don't think that was needed but did it just in case) through my Wii.

Any help would be appreciated and thanks in advanced!

POKEMON EMER [BPEE01].savFetching info...

[Kaphotics]

Open your save file in a hex editor and you'll see it's a repeating pattern of FF FF 00 00 (with the latter 2 bytes sometimes being FF). There is nothing that can be recovered from the save file that you have uploaded.

Try cleaning your cartridge's contacts, and dump again. If it looks the same in the hex editor, then all data is truly lost.

[IoriXVI]

  On 3/14/2025 at 1:34 PM, Kaphotics said:

Open your save file in a hex editor and you'll see it's a repeating pattern of FF FF 00 00 (with the latter 2 bytes sometimes being FF). There is nothing that can be recovered from the save file that you have uploaded.

Try cleaning your cartridge's contacts, and dump again. If it looks the same in the hex editor, then all data is truly lost.

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appreciate the help!

yeah I ended up opening the cartridge and cleaning it. still got the same repeating pattern data. that's so unfortunate. there goes 19 years. was close to getting the gold card, too. guess I'll have to start anew again 

[IoriXVI]

Hey everyone! I thought I'd give this a bump in just one more attempt to see if this could be solved as something has changed.

so instead of using the Wii to dump my save file (not sure why it gave a persisting pattern when I dumped the sav), I ended up getting an R4, dumping my save, and just in case, I also ended up cleaning inside the entire cartridge once more. I then dumped my save file and opened this in a hex editor and now the file displays different lines instead of the reoccurring FF FF 00 00 lines. I figured it could be different with Wii as opposed to DS, so I didn't give up. There are tons of reoccurring FF lines, but I hope that this could be solved instead of the other sav I posted.

Any help would be appreciated as always!

POKEMON_EMER_BPEE00.savFetching info...

[SkyLink98]

RecoverSaveGen3 managed to partially recover the save file. Some blocks/mons would be missing, but at least the save file should be usable

 

Rename the save file removing the .fixed at the end before using

POKEMON_EMER_BPEE00.sav.fixedFetching info...

[IoriXVI]

  On 3/22/2025 at 12:47 AM, SkyLink98 said:

RecoverSaveGen3 managed to partially recover the save file. Some blocks/mons would be missing, but at least the save file should be usable

 

Rename the save file removing the .fixed at the end before using

POKEMON_EMER_BPEE00.sav.fixed 128 kB · 2 downloads

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Thanks so much! really saved my can there. unfortunate that a good amount of the pokes that were roamers are gone, but I can get the others I RNG manip'd back. Really appreciate the help!

[Race]

Pokemon emerald save corruption usually happens when saving gets interrupted. That "FF FF 00 00" pattern means the file's probably gone. Clean the cartridge and dump the save again, but no guarantees...

Since pokemon is from japan, going for japanese names with J makes perfect sense. So the next time you play the game, change your username for a unique vibe.

Edited Monday at 06:32 AM by Race