The Gamer's Quarter

[dessgeega]

so the battery in my copy of metroid zero mission has stopped working. i turned it on yesterday and all the saved data was missing. i started a new file and played through about half of the game. then i came back today and my file was gone.

back in the day i could play through the whole game in an hour with no saves. but it's not back in the day anymore. and wasn't "the day" 2004? this game has only been out two years and my battery's dead? what's up with that?

thread topic: what's up with that? what is the deal?
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[OtakupunkX]

You probably got a faulty battery. There are ways to replace it, apparently, so all hope is not lost, but I really don't have any idea how you would go about doing this. Maybe someone else does? I remember seeing a tutorialor something somewhere where a guy replace the battery in one of his NES games (I think it was Zelda 1) with a AAA battery.

[SuperWes]

You might have a bootleg copy. If you don't happn to have a bootleg copy I'm sure Nintendo will replace it if you give them a call. Do it! I wanna see what happens.

-Wes
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[GSL]

I'd second the bootleg copy theory. Back when I first got my GBA SP, I found an incredible deal on eBay for imports of Super Mario Bros. 3 (this was before it was released in the 'states) and Link to the Past--something like $10 each before shipping. When the games arrived, I thought they looked a bit dodgy--the box artwork and game labels looked a bit fuzzy, and I thought that it was rather odd that they shipped with the boxes flattened (to supposedly protect them during shipping; the boxes looked like they had never been assembled) and no instructions. I got curious so I opened a cart up and compared it with my Wolfenstein 3D which I knew to be legit. Of course, both imports were lousy Hong Kong pirate games, and I discovered later that they had the singular ability to completely wipe out my saved data on a regular basis. I've come across a few pirate carts since then, and none of them will retain data worth a darn.

Also, the moral of the story is never buy GBA games off of eBay, especially if the price seems too good to be true.

[dessgeega]

so, uh, what does the label art for this game look like? in a perfect world?
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[GSL]

Just look for something that looks like it came out of someone's printer. The image will be a little blurry--maybe it'll be hard to read the Nintendo logo or the small print in the Seal of Quality. The colors will just look a little, well, off and the image might not entirely be centered and may look like parts of it got clipped off at the edges. You can compare the label to a legit copy of the game if you have a friend with one or whatnot, but they're pretty easy to spot on their own once you know what to look for.

ALSO!

You can apparently take a flashlight and shine it down where the connectors are, if the Nintendo logo and copyright year are there, it's legit. As mentioned here.

[dessgeega]

yeah, i just realized my cartridge says "nintondo" on the back.

well, i cleared the game like ten times, and cleared the original metroid my first ever time on it, so i guess i got my money's worth.
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[GSL]

Double check the above-mentioned contact area, which to my knowledge pirates haven't taken the time to do properly--the pirate carts I own have the Nintendo logo and AGB-002 or whatever stamped on the back, and for all intents and purposes look pretty legit. That really threw me off at first because I couldn't see how they'd be pirate carts and have the real logo, until I remembered that these guys profit by looking like the real thing.

[Mister Toups]

[GSL]

SUPER EDIT:Um, so I totally mis-read Dess' post as saying that the GBA cart had an official Nintendo logo (as opposed to "Nintondo") stamped on the back and thus continued with my irrelevant warning not to be decieved by the physical cart appearance.

The pirates would have had me fooled!

[Lockeownzj00]

[dessgeega]

[Cycle]

It's a good idea to excluded tems from Hong Kong while ordering games from eBay. If I buy a pirate game locally, atleast I can do something about it. If it's from HK they are all like mesa no understandah english!! despite previous e-mails that imply otherwise.

[Harveyjames]

[Shapermc]

I see copies of Zero Mission quite frequently at EB for $9.99 if you want a copy that doesn't suck.

Also, yeah, bootlegs.

And, I felt the urge to play through this again like... just the other day. As much as I hate the game for shitting on all my nostalgia, it's really well constructed (baring the Metroid Gear Solid addition) and controls very well. I have finished it three times, the last of which was a speed run. I don't do speed runs...
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[dessgeega]

i feel like the "metal gear solid" segment is well-constructed, particularly after seeing it completed with no alarms set off. you're definitely intended to get spotted a few times and have to run away the first time you do it, though.

it plays with themes of vulernability and invincibility. i like it.

though the searchlights are dumb. i never understood why the space pirates would need to install seachlights on the inside of their ship.

also matt if you pick me up a copy i'll totally pay you for it.
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[Shapermc]

[dessgeega]

those black pirates make the whole escape sequence. i was not expecting the end of the game to work me as hard as it did, even after fusion.

it's a pity someone found a way to trick them into an easy pattern.
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[Shapermc]

[dessgeega]

>:|
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[OtakupunkX]

So one time my NES Super Mario Bros. cart booted up and it said something like Nuntendo or something. It's not a bootleg or anything, but it's really old (I think my mom and dad got it right after they got married) and doesn't like to work right all of the time. In fact, playing that cart is like talking to someone who's really burned out because they've been using drugs for too long... sometimes the levels won't load correctly or they'll continue forever and one time the whole game just turned black and white for no reason at all.

[Swimmy]

I have a copy of Zero Mission I won't play any more. I should probably mention that in the trading thread.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[Harveyjames]

It kind of bummed me out the way Samus can jump just as spectacularly even if she's not wearing her power suit. I thought she was going to control a bit like Prince Of Persia, out of her suit. Then it would be even more gratifying when you get the suit back and get that freedom of movement again. Plus it debases the whole concept of the power suit- 'oh, she had those abilities anyway.' It makes the power suit look like no great shakes.

I probably shouldn't place so much importance on stuff like that, but I do : (

[JasonMoses]

She can jump pretty well and shoot a gun that deals almost no damage. Then you get the suit back and the way back you tear through the formerly invincible space pirates just by jumping into them. I dug that part even though it didn't really feel necessary in the slightest.

[dessgeega]

[Shapermc]

Roger!
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[Lackey]

Does she do the double jump without the suit? The morph ball would be hilarious.
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

[Swimmy]

[Ryan - SuperWes' Bane]

I didn't know they still used battery back up for saves in the GBA cartridges. Is that in everything? And they definitely don't use that in the DS games . . . right?

[Harveyjames]

Nope, DS carts are like little flash cards.

I'm pretty sure they use battery backups for saves on all the GBA games. In the NES and SNES days only the AAA titles would get batteries and the rest would have to rely on passwords, to cut manufacturing costs, but I don't think I've ever seen a GBA game that doesn't have proper saves.

I still don't fully understand how it works or why it needs a battery.

[dessgeega]

[Shapermc]

[ApM]

Urban Yeti!

Though perhaps they only used passwords so that they could add another thing they did wrong to the list.

[dessgeega]

the longer that list gets, the righter it feels.
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[SuperWes]

Apparently Namco Museum doesn't have a battery backup. Your scores are meaningless! Nintendo has made it mandatory for all developers to use a backup in DS games.

-Wes
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[dessgeega]

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[Gouki]

I have four bootleg GBA carts. Two of them my parents picked up for me, when they went to Thailand for a few weeks (Metroid: Zero Mission and Fusion), both of these are Nintondo as I just found out thanks to this thread! I was wondering why they didn't save.

The other two are Aria of Sorrow and Metal Slug Advance, which I purchased in Bali because I assumed they would never ever get released over here, and this would tide me over until it turned up in an import store or I decided to get it for my Birthday. These two say Nintendo on the back and, in fact, do save. I was very pleased with the quality, despite the dodgy labels. I really need to replace my Aria of Sorrow with the Harmony/Aria two-pack that was recently released, though.
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... Maybe Later.

[Winged Assassins (1984)]

You just have to banner that.
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[dessgeega]

looking at the zero mission cartridge swimmy sent me i realized that the label was entirely different from the one on my nintondo cartridge. which looks like this:



that's artwork of samus from the original metroid (which zero mission is based on). it never aroused my suspicions because i thought it was awesome - perhaps too awesome for the real nintendo. in fact, i think it's better than the official label art, which is just the game's title floating in space.
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[Karoshi]

[antitype]

[shnozlak]

[Lackey]

I hope some pirates have used the name "pretendo" before.
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

[a_plus]

oh, i had a dream the other night. my dad got a wii and i kept trying to play games on it, but they wouldn't work, in a dream logic kind of way that i don't fully remember - wouldn't connect to the net, games didn't start, etc. i took it apart and sure enough, it was a nintondo.

[Nana Komatsu]

I'm amused that even the bootleg GBA games have the tri-wing screws in the back.