Cartridge Save Batteries + Replacement

[pastiche]

This morning I woke up and wanted to play my old copy of Wario Land for Game Boy, which I've had since the early 90s. It's been a few years since I touched it last, but I had beaten the game inside and out back in the day. I turned it on today to find that all my save files were back to zero. And I knew--though this was my first experience with it--that this was the dreaded "internal save battery wearing out" issue, where the small battery in the cartridge had expired and would no longer be capable of keeping save data. Turning the game off and back on confirmed this, as after making some progress, the game reset brought everything back to zero once more.

So my question is, have any of you had this experience before, and what steps have you taken to replace the batteries? There is a plethora of information on the internet about this, of course, but recommendations from firsthand experience would be especially valuable, just to start off in a reliable direction.

The other question is the suatainability of my other games. Is there a way I can pre-emptively replace batteries without losing my save data? Wario Land, for example, is a platformer, and while losing allllll that progress and secrets and coin counts really sucks, it isn't something like my Pokémon Blue, which has god-knows-how-many hours of experience and personalized Pokémon, not to mention the Mew I got from the Pokémon Expo back in '99, whose data would be a far more tragic loss (and I've been afraid to even check it for years because of it).

That's also a sub-discussion in itself--the sort of empathy you feel for the experiences you've had in a game, the personalization that went into shaping it (even if it was just a filename) or the characters involved. Especially on cartridge-based games, where there are no means of screenshotting or making digital archives of your experiences to be backed up on computers. And no memory cards either, whereas disc-based games themselves aren't carrying those bits of *you* in the same way. Your memories and a little bit of the other lives you've led are still alive in that box, and so with that in mind it gives me all the more motivation to want to preserve them.


TL;DR VERSION - Ey bruh, what are some good methods you know to replace the save battery in Game Boy cartridges?

And can you replace a battery before it dies and keep your saved game data?

[pastiche]

I have consulted with a hardware geexpert I know about the idea of doing a "live swap", which I've seen explained in some youtube videos. Basically you'd slide the top half off your GB cartridge, stick the game in a GBA, where the extra cartridge space at the top gives you extra room to work with, and you pop out and replace the battery while the game is on and running. The idea is that once the game is on, the memory is running in SRAM and does not require the cartridge battery power for the time being. Then when the game is turned off again, the new battery is in place, and it can go back to storing memory as usual.

He greatly discouraged this idea.

Originally Posted by MewChan

If I'm not mistaken, there are third party GB memory cards that you can back your saves onto. I've never personally used them though so I can't vouch for their swagginess.

Seems like the best option is, yes, the Mega Memory card for the Game Boy. I was not aware that this existed, and now I'm going to start looking into more details about how it works and what kinda h0t dEaLzZ I can get for one of them.

Fingers crossed, fam--there may be hope for the world yet in the form of uploading consciousness to achieve a relative sense of immortality.

[pastiche]

I've had a pal assist me in replacing some cart batteries. Also got my original Game Boy fixed. More fun than a barrel of monkeys, and way less biological terror to boot!

If you're in need of a good place to get save batteries or related hardware on the cheap, I would glowingly recommend Console5.com

As far as backups go, the Mega Memory Cards for Game Boy seem to vary wildly in price and availability on Amazon and eBay. I've been a worrying combination of indecisive and procrastinatory on getting around to purchasing any. But I'm looking into this little gadget over here:

https://www.tindie.com/products/JRod...-for-gameboy-/

Currently on a waitlist since they're custom-makes, but the ability to back up saves to computer seems astoundingly nice.

[pastiche]

My Pokeymans are backed up and my batteries getting replaced

Also my Game Boy is fixed

I lost my Donkey Kong Land original saves though because battery seemingly died on it

But that's okay because it has given me a lot of motivation to get back to playing