Hacking Help with backing up a Mother 3 game save.

[GammaGulp]

I used the tool "GBAldr" to write my English-translation-patched Mother 3.gba (32MB) ROM to the EZ's NOR. After it was written to that I could play Mother 3 without the need of the R4, the EZ became it's own GBA cartridge.

Anyhow, I'm 10 hours in the game and I'd really like to know how to backup my game save so I can store it on my PC. Also, once it is stored on my PC, is it possible for that save file to work on VisualBoyAdvance?

Thanks in advance. The whole SRAM, .SAV, NOR, PSRAM and all that stuff still confuses me.

 

[dinofan01]

I use GBA EXP loader. Thats is the best tool I know for this job. Once you use that its pretty easy to backup the GBA save to your R4s SD card. And yes the sav file can be played with the visual boy.

 

[GammaGulp]

Perhaps I suck at searching but I can't seem to find a download to the GBA EXP loader on this site. Help me out?

 

[GammaGulp]

Nevermind, I found it. But when I load GBA EXPLoader on my DS, it doesn't detect SRAM on my Mother 3 rom. What's the deal? The save is still there, how can I backup the save?

EDIT: To reiterate, I'm using a EZ Flash 3-in-1 Slot 2 pak to play Mother 3 (I wrote it to the NOR using GBAldr. I wanna backup my save now, so I use GBA EXPloader but under the green NOR tab it doesn't show a save for Mother 3. WTF? The save is clearly there when I launch teh game from the normal DS menu or from Option # 3 on my R4.

 

[Porkdish]

Mother 3 is really weird with saves. The fan translation is rife with threads complaining about it.

If you look at the rom in GBATA or any other header reading tool, the rom lists 512k as the savetype, but most emulators will not save if set to this, they will only save when set to 64k.

Now as for GBAExploader, the last few versions have been trying to fix 512k savetype support. Even with the very latest version, Mother 3 still has serious save issues. Even when I got it saving almost every time, it would not update the save menu slot data, so I was always having to remember which was the last save slot I used.

I gave up using mother 3 with my DS.


As for your problem, I can only suggest trying other tools to backup the sram save data from your Nor flashed game. The risk is yours also, given the my experience with Mother 3, its as likely to wipe itself as co-operate.

I would suggest trying Ysmenu (do NOT load any rom via YSmenu). Just use the [ sram->file ] button. Using Ysmenu's native gba features is risky if you enjoy using GBAExploader. I can no longer use rumble support on GBAexploader since copying roms to the 3 in 1 via Ysmenu. GBAexploader would just freeze on the SRAM page after I'd been using the 3 in 1 with Ysmenu.

You might also try the older GBATool by rudolph, which is what I had to do to get my 3 in 1 to stop crashing whenever loading EXploader after I'd been playing with Ysmenu.


Not a lot of help is all that, but It illustrates how shitty and risky it is to play mother 3 on the DS. It needs a decent save type hack. Roms patched with the M3 save patch on the mother 3 translation website just seems to feeze up on me when copying to Nor with gbaexploader.