Battery-backed videogames

[A Black Falcon]

What were they to do? EEPROM really was not an option back then. They only switched around the time of the PS1 when Sony (and everyone else soon after) realized very quickly that a memory card really needs to last a long time. Now, that said, GB and GBC games still used batteries.

But they just don't seem to have considered lastability... I mean in NES/SNES days flash was more expensive so you can understand it, but on N64/GBA... the only consideration seems to be 'which size save space is best for the game / how small can we make the save file so which save format should we use', not 'sram should be a last resort because of batteries'... N64 controller paks using batteries (third-party ones are confirmed to... first-party? I've been looking, but just can't find any more information... it's frusterating... what do I do, buy a new n64 memcard from nintendo.com, a gamebit screwdriver, and open it up and see what's inside? Expensive way of doing it... there must be something somewhere on the internet!) is pretty annoying too, but as I said, at least for that there's gameshark/dexdrive...

As for a method of replacing batteries that doesn't wipe your savefiles... good luck, but I bet the only way to do it would somehow get your hands on a "backup" hardware thing... same for GBA. (GB/GBC doesn't seem to be supported by most GBA backup flash things (that are 99% used for playing roms)... there is obviously something, but the farther back you go the harder it is to find the hardware... not to mention how Nintendo would really rather that people didn't get this stuff. Even if backing up your own stuff is legal.)

And of course, there's the problem that you don't know the battery is dying until it dies... and once it does it's too late.