Misdreavus

Thanks for the detailed post. Yes, I actually did get the cart restored very shortly after I started this thread. I took it to a local retro gaming store that does repairs. They removed some of the excess solder from my attempt at a repair, and replaced the battery. As far as I know, that's all they did, and it works perfectly fine now. As to why this resolved what was seemingly an issue with the flash memory, I have no idea. But hopefully the problem won't rear its ugly head again.

The part that confuses me the most is the multiple saves I made throughout that time playing, and even SRing to those save points successfully, only to have the game revert to what was a few saves ago. I've really never experienced anything like this. It would surprise me if I didn't let the text finish before powering off, considering how many times I've successfully saved a Pokémon game in my life, but I suppose it's a possibility. I was thinking the issue was more along the lines of a corrupt SD card or something like that. But you do make good points. I was able to get back to where I was, and I'll be sure to follow what you said.

I can't be certain, but I may have just powered it off straight away. Can that cause this sort of loss of data? I've played through multiple VC games on a different 3DS system and I have to imagine there were plenty of times I just powered it off after saving with no consequences.

Last night, I played VC Crystal for a few hours. I vividly remember saving and SRing using the VC menu multiple times along the way (i.e. in front of the red Gyarados). Eventually I saved for the final time and powered off my 3DS. I just picked the game back up, and to my shock, I was saved in the same spot where I began the night before. All my progress was lost, despite the multiple times I saved and SR'd (but never hard reset). What could possibly be the cause of this? Could it be a faulty SD card, or a problem with the 3DS?

You are correct, I missed the edit. But thanks, that's what I needed to know. Also, "voucher" is just the term that the person I was speaking with was using. I wasn't sure what else to call it.

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I've heard that some of those cheat codes can cause things like all gold Frontier symbols, etc. What I was particularly wondering about was whether this voucher would be visible in the case of an injected Old Sea Map, or whether you only get that if it was genuinely obtained from the event with the wireless adapter. The person I'm speaking with believes it's the latter, and thus its presence or lack thereof could be used to indicate the origin of the WC (2005 event vs. injected).

I'm speaking with someone who has a source for a copy of Pokémon Emerald with a supposedly genuine (obtained from one of the 2005 events) Old Sea Map. They said that as far as they know, if the WonderCard is injected using a tool such as the one offered here, the "voucher" that appears when you connect the wireless adapter and go to the Mystery Gift screen will not be there. Is this the case, or will the voucher be there even in the case of the injection? I would think (and was told on Discord) that it would be present, but seeing as how I'm getting conflicting answers, I figured I'd start a discussion so that someone who's 100% certain can help me. Thanks in advance.

Everything checks out fine on the back of the board; the multimeter appears to confirm that everything that is supposed to be connected is indeed connected. What exactly does this mean considering my game doesn't register at all after the attempted repair years ago (the GBA acts as if nothing is in it)? Are you saying to do the same thing on the front? I don't believe I'll be able to trace every connection on the front since many of them are covered by the printed text or other things such as the SRAM or ROM.

Actually, if what you're referring to is the printed text on the SRAM and ROM, mine does have that; it was just not visible with the lighting on the pic in the first post. This is what my cart looks like after the attempted repairs were done on it. I just removed the battery prongs for the time being. You may notice a small bit of excess solder on the pins of the ROM; this has been brought to my attention before, and I removed it as best I could. There may still be a small bit left (see pins 3-6, top to bottom, on left side), but I was unable to get that off, and I'm going to see if someone can help me with it. EDIT: As for the continuity tests, are there any particular origin/destination points I should check? There are obviously a lot of them. EDIT2: To go along with my question in the first edit, here is some work I did with the photo of the back to make it easier to trace the points.

Thanks for your reply. If I'm understanding you correctly, are you saying to trace the fine lines on the back and see if a point on the left and its corresponding point on the right register on a multimeter?

I do have other non-Pokémon games that I no longer play and would be willing to, more or less ,"ruin" in the name of testing the board, but I opened them up and they are structurally different inside (no battery, etc.). While I certainly did value the save file I had on this cart at the time, I know it's long gone, so at this point, the cart is all I have left, and it would be nice to have another Emerald. Your point about the cost and time of a potential repair is entirely fair though. Also, after doing some research, I found a potentially relevant thread on Reddit, and if the numbers in the first reply are accurate, it makes no sense that the flash memory would fail after 4 years. The second reply also mentions that I would need to flash the new memory first before swapping it in.

Thanks for your reply. I actually did get a new cart; however, this cart has sentimental value to me despite the save file being gone, so I'd like to get it up and running if possible. The new cart I got eventually had its battery run dry, and it still saved normally afterwards, so I doubt the battery was responsible. Here is a picture I took when I first opened the cart (prior to the attempted replacement of the battery). I believe the flash memory is the black rectangle located directly above the word "FLASH," right? The traces around it are extremely small, so I'm not even sure if someone who is proficient at microsoldering could successfully do a "transplant." Do you mind elaborating on exactly what you meant regarding the multimeter? That definitely sounds like something I could do.

I have an Emerald cart that I got from GameStop on the release date in 2005, so I'm as sure as I can be of its legitimacy. Back in 2009, I started getting a series of error messages when saving the game. Ultimately, my save file was deleted on its own. Attached are photos I took of the bizarre messages I got. I've shared these on other Pokémon sites and no one seems to have seen them before. Excuse the poor quality / blurriness; these were taken with a digital camera over a decade ago, and some were captured from video that I took. Not knowing at the time that the battery was not the home of the save file, I tried to replace the battery, only to get excess solder on my game and damage it. (I'm looking at repairing that, and it's outside the scope of this post anyway.) If I get my game running again, am I likely to have the same save corruption happen, or was what happened probably a unique case involving something going on with my particular save file? I had never used any external devices with it, though, so that would be a surprise to me. If it is indeed something that will probably occur again, is it at all possible to replace flash memory in the GBA cart?

If you get around to taking a look at it, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know what you think.

When you say you have doubts about it being legit, which save file are you referring to - the one on GameFAQs or the one I linked to in the 3rd post? The one on GameFAQs is from 2004, and being so close to the event dates (and likely before we had discovered how to to inject Wonder Cards) is a decent reason to believe it's legit IMO.