Problem with Pokemon Sapphire - no moves left - Struggle in every battle

[BaronMaki]

Hi guys. I recently bought an original copy of Pokémon Sapphire in my local marketplace and, when I played the game, I noticed that something strange was happening.

When in the first battle, against the wild Poochyena to save the Professor, the game indicate that my chosen Pokémon has no moves left, as you can see in the image. Therefore, both Pokemons start to struggle in every turn of the battle. This happens to every battle in the game, whether trainers or wild Pokémons.

I did not play too much; I only reached the first gymnasium. Everything other than this problem works fine inside the game.

I searched this problem in Pokémon game copies in my native language (Portuguese) and in English, but I did not find anything similar. So, I am asking for help:

• Has anyone seen anything like this before?
• Is there any solution or is it a lost cause?

I hope someone comes saying there is a solution for my copy.

 

[SAIYAN48]

Sounds like a fake cartridge.

 

[BaronMaki]

Sounds like a fake cartridge.

 

[SAIYAN48]

Looks nothing like mine... @Jayro Do you think this is fake?

 

[BaronMaki]

Ignore I'm an idiot lol.

Lol the cartridge had a extremely damaged label, so I removed it. Unfortunately I don't have a Tri-wing screwdriver here right now to open it.

 

[AmandaRose]

Lol the cartridge had a extremely damaged label, so I removed it. Unfortunately I don't have a Tri-wing screwdriver here right now to open it.

Yes I confused myself with the lack of a label. For some reason I thought it was the back of the cartridge. Can't even blame being drunk for once as I haven't had a drop tonight .

 

[Jayro]

Looks nothing like mine... @Jayro Do you think this is fake?

No, it's real. Fake carts don't have an RTC crystal like that.

 

[ghjfdtg]

Looks real to me. I would try deleting the savegame and starting over to see if it helps. Go to the title screen and press up + SELECT + B.

 

[KitChan]

If cleaning the contacts in both the cartridge and GBA doesn't work then the ROM is corrupt.

 

[rantex92]

how about you dump the cart and take a look at the rom via vba hexeditor and compare it to a good dump

and if there are some difference then try to do a reflow (its an very easy task even if you dont have any soldering experience)

just gently reheat the contacts on both chips (one is under the battery) till the solderpoints starts to melt

with this technic i could rescue many old gb and gba cards

 

[The Real Jdbye]

No, it's real. Fake carts don't have an RTC crystal like that.

Not guaranteed. Some fakes operate the same as the original.

Hi guys. I recently bought an original copy of Pokémon Sapphire in my local marketplace and, when I played the game, I noticed that something strange was happening.

When in the first battle, against the wild Poochyena to save the Professor, the game indicate that my chosen Pokémon has no moves left, as you can see in the image. Therefore, both Pokemons start to struggle in every turn of the battle. This happens to every battle in the game, whether trainers or wild Pokémons.

I did not play too much; I only reached the first gymnasium. Everything other than this problem works fine inside the game.

I searched this problem in Pokémon game copies in my native language (Portuguese) and in English, but I did not find anything similar. So, I am asking for help:

• Has anyone seen anything like this before?
• Is there any solution or is it a lost cause?

I hope someone comes saying there is a solution for my copy.

Sounds like your cartridge is cursed man.
This could make for good creepypasta.
Maybe your cartridge came from this guy:

Jokes aside, you might have a one of a kind cartridge, I'd keep it the way it is just so I could say I have a cursed Pokemon Sapphire cartridge. Might even be worth money to somebody.
I'd be curious if some YouTuber would be willing to take a look at the cartridge if you sent it to them and try to figure out what's wrong with it. It might make for an interesting video.

My suggestion is to dump the cartridge ROM and save and try them in an emulator. See if the issue still occurs there. Then try the save with a clean, known good Pokemon Sapphire ROM.
If it's happening on the ROM dump but not on the clean ROM, you know the cartridge ROM has gotten corrupted somehow. Either it's a bootleg using a bad ROM, or the ROM chip has gone bad and there is corrupted data. Something you could actually easily check by using a GBA tool to verify the checksum in the ROM.
If it's happening on both the ROM dump and the clean ROM, there's something weird with the save data that is not getting cleared when you start a new game, and it's causing the game to glitch, and flashing a new working save made in an emulator to the cartridge would likely fix it.
If it's not happening on either ROM, something else has to be wrong with the cartridge. Perhaps dirty pins that need cleaning, perhaps corrosion from liquid damage, hard to say.

But in order to dump the cartridge, you need some extra hardware, you have a few options here:
A DS Phat/Lite with a DS flashcart in order to load GBA Backup Tool (https://www.gamebrew.org/wiki/GBA_Backup_Tool)
A DS Phat/Lite and a hacked Wii/Wii U/DSi/3DS so that you can use DS Download Play to load gbaxxdumper (https://github.com/RattletraPM/gbaxxdumper)
A hacked GameCube or Wii with GC ports and a GBA-GC link cable to use gba-link-cable-dumper (https://github.com/FIX94/gba-link-cable-dumper)
Special dumper hardware (a Retron5 or similar could work) such as https://bennvenn.myshopify.com/products/usb-gb-c-cart-dumper-the-joey-jr (there are other dumpers that support more consoles as well). Or send it to someone who can.
Paying $60 for a dumper just to check this is of course probably not worth it but a cart dumper is good to have around anyways especially for the numerous GB/GBC/GBA games using SRAM saves, which will be lost once the integrated battery dies.

Edit: Updated with more options for dumping

 

[rantex92]

Not guaranteed. Some fakes operate the same as the original.

Sounds like your cartridge is cursed man.
This could make for good creepypasta.
Maybe your cartridge came from this guy:

Jokes aside, you might have a one of a kind cartridge, I'd keep it the way it is just so I could say I have a cursed Pokemon Sapphire cartridge. Might even be worth money to somebody.
I'd be curious if some YouTuber would be willing to take a look at the cartridge if you sent it to them and try to figure out what's wrong with it. It might make for an interesting video.

My suggestion is to dump the cartridge ROM and save and try them in an emulator. See if the issue still occurs there. Then try the save with a clean, known good Pokemon Sapphire ROM.
If it's happening on the ROM dump but not on the clean ROM, you know the cartridge ROM has gotten corrupted somehow. Either it's a bootleg using a bad ROM, or the ROM chip has gone bad and there is corrupted data. Something you could actually easily check by using a GBA tool to verify the checksum in the ROM.
If it's happening on both the ROM dump and the clean ROM, there's something weird with the save data that is not getting cleared when you start a new game, and it's causing the game to glitch, and flashing a new working save made in an emulator to the cartridge would likely fix it.
If it's not happening on either ROM, something else has to be wrong with the cartridge. Perhaps dirty pins that need cleaning, perhaps corrosion from liquid damage, hard to say.

But in order to dump the cartridge, you need some extra hardware. Either a DS Phat/Lite with a DS flashcart in order to load GBA Backup Tool (https://www.gamebrew.org/wiki/GBA_Backup_Tool), or special dumper hardware (a Retron5 or similar could work) such as https://bennvenn.myshopify.com/products/usb-gb-c-cart-dumper-the-joey-jr (there are other dumpers that support more consoles as well). Or send it to someone who can.
Paying $60 for a dumper just to check this is of course probably not worth it but a cart dumper is good to have around anyways especially for the numerous GB/GBC/GBA games using SRAM saves, which will be lost once the integrated battery dies.

its just a bad cardridge i thought i had a haunted pokemon blue and it was special and something worth but nope
https://gbatemp.net/threads/the-case-of-the-haunted-pokemon-blue-cartridge.602543/

there are plenty of those "cursed" / "haunted" editions out there just search for it on yt

and its always been the same problem that some solderpoint is broken

 

[BaronMaki]

Looks real to me. I would try deleting the savegame and starting over to see if it helps. Go to the title screen and press up + SELECT + B.

I've already tried that, but it didn't solve the problem "/

 

[The Real Jdbye]

its just a bad cardridge i thought i had a haunted pokemon blue and it was special and something worth but nope
https://gbatemp.net/threads/the-case-of-the-haunted-pokemon-blue-cartridge.602543/

there are plenty of those "cursed" / "haunted" editions out there just search for it on yt

and its always been the same problem that some solderpoint is broken

Most likely, although the fact that it has that one weird bug but otherwise seems to work fine makes it rather special. Usually a corrupted/faulty cartridge wouldn't boot at all, or it would crash repeatedly.

 

[BaronMaki]

If cleaning the contacts in both the cartridge and GBA doesn't work then the ROM is corrupt.

If cleaning the contacts in both the cartridge and GBA doesn't work then the ROM is corrupt.

As soon as I put my hands in a Tri-wing screwdriver (next week), I'll do that

 

[rantex92]

Most likely, although the fact that it has that one weird bug but otherwise seems to work fine makes it rather special. Usually a corrupted/faulty cartridge wouldn't boot at all, or it would crash repeatedly.

nope thats the magic of the pokemon games they would still be able to play but with heavy/minor glitches
like my pkmn blue i could still go around the world speaking with npcs would have glitched texts sometimes it would freeze but it would work ( if you dont believe me search for my pokemon blu rom on pastebin you can test it yourself what all is still possible with a broken card)

 

[BaronMaki]

how about you dump the cart and take a look at the rom via vba hexeditor and compare it to a good dump

and if there are some difference then try to do a reflow (its an very easy task even if you dont have any soldering experience)

just gently reheat the contacts on both chips (one is under the battery) till the solderpoints starts to melt

with this technic i could rescue many old gb and gba cards

That’s a possibility. Looking at the rom may be the solution to understand what's happening. And I do have a solder iron here. If nothing works, I’ll try this process.

 

[rantex92]

That’s a possibility. Looking at the rom may be the solution to understand what's happening. And I do have a solder iron here. If nothing works, I’ll try this process.

while comparing your rom with a good dump watch the adresses that differ you can lookup those on the net
they are an indicator of wich chip needs to be reflown

 

[BaronMaki]

Not guaranteed. Some fakes operate the same as the original.

Sounds like your cartridge is cursed man.
This could make for good creepypasta.
Maybe your cartridge came from this guy:

Jokes aside, you might have a one of a kind cartridge, I'd keep it the way it is just so I could say I have a cursed Pokemon Sapphire cartridge. Might even be worth money to somebody.
I'd be curious if some YouTuber would be willing to take a look at the cartridge if you sent it to them and try to figure out what's wrong with it. It might make for an interesting video.

My suggestion is to dump the cartridge ROM and save and try them in an emulator. See if the issue still occurs there. Then try the save with a clean, known good Pokemon Sapphire ROM.
If it's happening on the ROM dump but not on the clean ROM, you know the cartridge ROM has gotten corrupted somehow. Either it's a bootleg using a bad ROM, or the ROM chip has gone bad and there is corrupted data. Something you could actually easily check by using a GBA tool to verify the checksum in the ROM.
If it's happening on both the ROM dump and the clean ROM, there's something weird with the save data that is not getting cleared when you start a new game, and it's causing the game to glitch, and flashing a new working save made in an emulator to the cartridge would likely fix it.
If it's not happening on either ROM, something else has to be wrong with the cartridge. Perhaps dirty pins that need cleaning, perhaps corrosion from liquid damage, hard to say.

But in order to dump the cartridge, you need some extra hardware, you have a few options here:
A DS Phat/Lite with a DS flashcart in order to load GBA Backup Tool (https://www.gamebrew.org/wiki/GBA_Backup_Tool)
A DS Phat/Lite and a hacked Wii/Wii U/DSi/3DS so that you can use DS Download Play to load gbaxxdumper (https://github.com/RattletraPM/gbaxxdumper)
A hacked GameCube or Wii with GC ports and a GBA-GC link cable to use gba-link-cable-dumper (https://github.com/FIX94/gba-link-cable-dumper)
Special dumper hardware (a Retron5 or similar could work) such as https://bennvenn.myshopify.com/products/usb-gb-c-cart-dumper-the-joey-jr (there are other dumpers that support more consoles as well). Or send it to someone who can.
Paying $60 for a dumper just to check this is of course probably not worth it but a cart dumper is good to have around anyways especially for the numerous GB/GBC/GBA games using SRAM saves, which will be lost once the integrated battery dies.

Edit: Updated with more options for dumping

It definitely is one of a kind. I'm also curious to know more about this "broke" copy. It looks like an original one for me, looking by the circuit board it has. I didn't try using TM/HM yet, since I didn't go ahead more than the first gymnasium, but I'll try it. (Using the only-move "struggle" against rock/ground types is a pain, and I'm already thinking how could I beat ghost Pokémon only with Struggle?? ). What really got me is that I didn't find anything similar in the internet. No one with the same problem until today.

Your dump suggestion... I'll definitely try it. Unfortunately I only have a 3DS and a DSi XL with me, but a friend of mine has a DS Lite, I'll try get it next week to dump my copy.

Yeah, a cart dumper will be really interesting in order to save my Pokémon Red and Silver saves.

Thanks for your time and info!!

 

[BaronMaki]

while comparing your rom with a good dump watch the adresses that differ you can lookup those on the net
they are an indicator of wich chip needs to be reflown

Thanks for this info!