My favorite game died... How!?

[Pokemaster Ash]

I was playing one of my favorite games, Mega Man Battle Network 2, earlier. In fact, I was playing it in the unlockable Hard Mode as a fun challenge and was making HUGE progress. Unfortunately today I mysteriously lost both save files, the regular game and the Hard Mode game. Dismayed, I restarted so I could get back to pwning the game, but...

I COULDN'T SAVE THE GAME!!!

It seems the save function's dead on my game, and I want to know how the hell it happened. The game was functioning PERFECTLY, and out of nowhere my save files are gone and I can't make a new one. Did the internal battery or whatever die? This was one of my all time favorite games, too...

EDIT: ....okay, my game just faked me out. I just checked again and BOTH files were back and fully intact. Okay, something weird just happened...

[Andrew]

Yep, internal battery died.

Unless you want to try some hack and slash operation on your cartridge, it's gone.

[Pokemaster Ash]

Actually, if you read my edit, my saves came back. How, I don't know, but boy am I glad they did.

Still wonder what the hell happened, but at least my progress hasn't been lost. Also, talking to someone on AIM, do GBA carts have internal batteries? He thought they had some other memory function...

[Jeff]

Yeah, it's weird. I've had the same thing happen on Super Mario World (original SNES version) on more than one occasion. In fact, I swear to God, one time I actually created a new file when all the old files were automatically erased, saved, then went back to play again only to find all the old files back! Maybe as the carts get older they start to have problems with loading and saving files before they can no longer hold them. Seems to be the most logical explanation.

Edit: It looks like GBA carts use flash or at least something similar. I just peeked inside my FireRed cart through the clear bottom part, and I don't see a battery in there.

[Pokemaster Ash]

Maybe it was just a random glitch... I just hope I never see that happen again. Mega Man games are somewhat....treasured by me (case in point, my avatar being Forte/Bass.EXE from the aforementioned Battle Network series). I don't want to see anything bad happen to them.

[Austrian ViceMaster Alex]

The battery dying is really rare in cartridges. Nintendo must have put some quality ones into those games cause after all those years the only one not properly working anymore in my games is the one in Zelda 2, and that one is close to 20 years old now.