Old NES System Game Saving Help?

Question

My old NES Zelda game isnt saving after I turn it off. Is it the game or the system that is broken?

Answer 1

All cartridge games like your NES game have a small battery inside to help save the information. Over time the battery dies and needs replacing. Your game would be about 20ish years old now.

Unfortunately, Nintendo don't have a common screw type for their carts (to avoid tampering). You will need to find a Nintendo screw driver to open it up to change the battery for the save games.

Answer 2

It is the game. Like someone else said, the battery is dead. But, there's no "corruption of files going on", and not every cartridge had a battery, just the ones like Zelda that had battery-backed-up save systems. You could try replacing the battery, but that seems like a very complicated process.

Here's one thing to let you know. If you leave the cartridge in the NES - and the NES plugged in - it will retain your saves. In other words, if you're asking about this, because you just want to play Zelda, but not necessarily in one sitting, as long as you don't take the cartridge out, it will retain its memory. Yes, even if you turn the NES off.

Now, other than that, the only thing I can recommend is getting the game on another format that doesn't depend on batteries. Like, say, the Zelda's collector's edition on Gamecube. Or maybe it's offered online somewhere.

Answer 3

I'm fairly certain that when in those days saves were made on the game cartridge, NOT the system. Even now, DS games are the same way.

Answer 4

It's the game. Zelda was one of the first games to even incorporate save data into its format and they were estimated at the time to only last about 5 years before the technology would begin to corrupt and fail to function.

Answer 5

I just gave away my snes Ive had since I was a child and I regret it so much.Now all I have is a 360 that only works half the time but the snes was almost 20 years old and still worked all the time and was a lot funner.