Hacking My Mother 3 Save File Was Erased!

[LeonardoGolden]

Is this a common problem?
I loaded it up today and there was no LOAD option...
Is there any way to prevent this? Because since I'm starting the game again, I don't want it happening every time.

 

[Lubbo]

i would like to know about this too my GBA saves allways get erased

 

[aphirst]

Have you got "Patch Load" enabled?

 

[LeonardoGolden]

No, I've got Fast Load.
Does Fast Load erase saves?

 

[aphirst]

Not as such. Some games need some more magic to allow the saves to work properly, and with the M3 this magic is contained within "Patch Load". It's separate from the main way of loading because it's a fair bit slower, and isn't needed on most games.

I can't guarantee this, however on all the games I've needed to have ran in Patch mode (Pokemon and Advance Wars), once I've ran it in patch mode and saved, it seems to continue working perfectly for me in Fast mode. This may be just complete luck or something, but that seems to happen for me.

 

[LeonardoGolden]

Well, I'm gonna run it in Patch Mode from now on, even if it means waiting a little longer.
I'd use your saving-with-patch-mode-and-then-run-fast-mode method, but that's what I did when I got my M3 and was playing around with the settings, and it obviously didn't work.

OFF TOPIC:
Weird... I have the same exact things you do, except for the Black case

 

[Archimdae]

From what I've read on posts here, the GBA saves don't actually save to your m3 until you turn the system off and turn it back on. When you turn it back on it moves that save from the GBA expansion pack to the M3. Not long ago someone was saying they believe the save deletes occur for one of two reasons.

1: You play GBA game A, save, turn it off and remove the expansion pack before turning it on again.

2: You play GBA game A, save, turn it off then on (so it saves to m3) but then before actually running anything else you turn it off remove expansion pack and when you turn the system back on it sees the last thing you did was play said GBA game so it tries to copy to save from the expansion pack (which isn't there so it's blank) and erases your save.

I haven't used my expansion pack much, but this is what I've picked up from other peoples posts over time. Anyone feel free to correct me.

So just make sure when you play a GBA game to shut the system down after your done, turn it back on, then run some other game (prolly homebrew or an NDS game) before turning it off again.

 

[aphirst]

@ LeonardoGolden - Well, I must have not tried any games which need Patch Load to be enabled on each execution; I must have only tried games that needed it to initially generate a proper save file. Or something like that.
Wow.

Great minds must think alike. The side-loading M3 kicks ass, no?

@ Archimdae - Yes, you are precicely correct - shadow21x and myself have been discussing these in this thread. Nice to know word is getting around.

 

[Dark]

I know that RTS can make the game save. I haven't played with my DS for a while or used the M3 firmware so I'm not sure if there is RTS for gba games. You can always use the emulator

 

[LeonardoGolden]

I know why it was erased now... I probably did what Archimdae mentioned

Well, at least now I know what to do so it won't get erased!

 

[Skyline969]

From what I've read on posts here, the GBA saves don't actually save to your m3 until you turn the system off and turn it back on. When you turn it back on it moves that save from the GBA expansion pack to the M3. Not long ago someone was saying they believe the save deletes occur for one of two reasons.

1: You play GBA game A, save, turn it off and remove the expansion pack before turning it on again.

2: You play GBA game A, save, turn it off then on (so it saves to m3) but then before actually running anything else you turn it off remove expansion pack and when you turn the system back on it sees the last thing you did was play said GBA game so it tries to copy to save from the expansion pack (which isn't there so it's blank) and erases your save.

I haven't used my expansion pack much, but this is what I've picked up from other peoples posts over time. Anyone feel free to correct me.

So just make sure when you play a GBA game to shut the system down after your done, turn it back on, then run some other game (prolly homebrew or an NDS game) before turning it off again.

So what we can learn from this is... if you have a GBA expansion pack, leave it in and you don't have to worry about losing saves and whatnot, right? I'm getting a EZ-Flash 3-in-1 and chances are I'll have it stuck in my DS for the rest of its days. Will I ever have to worry about losing saves, even if I don't switch to a DS game before turning off my DS for a while?