Battery-backed videogames

[A Black Falcon]

I also was not aware of this on the GBA. Pretty odd to say the least... I mean, I opened up one of the very first games made for it, that I bought on launch day even, Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, and it didn't have a battery to be seen. I'm surprised there's room in there honestly.

Yeah... I've tried to find the picture of F-Zero, but can't... I know I saw it though.

But as far as the same cart, or even the same game, having 3 different techs for saving.... never heard of that until now. I personally think that may be showing the steady evolution of carts on the N64, with the battery backed being the oldest and the other two being the newer ones that replaced it.

No, small EEPROM was first. S-RAM came later, when developers wanted to be able to save more data... and S-RAM (on both GBA and N64) is larger than the basic EEPROM. I believe that the large EEPROM and flash memory savetypes came after s-ram, but I'd have to compare release dates of the games each type uses to be sure... but anyway, as I said, and as the fact that Nintendo published some of those battery-backed N64 games (Ocarina of Time, 1080, F-Zero, etc)... at least half, actually (of the twelve)...
Oh, and it's not the same game having three different save types... as I said, there is one maybe, but it's more likely a mistake... all the others I saw listed use the same save mechanism in all regions. There are just a bunch of different types.

It makes sense when you think about it... just like with the ROM size, save type is a decision where money matters (as well as what the game needs), so they're going to have multiple choices.

That's what happens when you buy 3rd party... Or when you bought 3rd party back then anyway. I speak only of the 1st party stuff.

I think the best way to be reasonably sure that you've got flash memory cards is to get them from Nintendo.com... as I said, I'm not completely convinced that even the early first-party cards were all flash. But yes, even ignoring the battery thing, first party cards are much more reliable.