Thanks for making this video. I remember having to do this 4 years ago to fix my cousin's crystal version and the only videos i could find at the time were these kids prying the arms off the battery, putting a new one in, and covering it in electric tape. Good to have a professional looking video now.
Pro tip: Even if your soldering iron is at the proper temp it will not properly melt the solder if the tip is not clean. Make sure you clean the tip of your iron with a sponge or a brass sponge. Also, make sure you clean off the left over Flux with isopropyl alcohol.
Really love these types of videos. Love seeing the systems taken apart and games as well. Did you ever take apart a dream cast? I would love to see that video or see you do one.
Thank you for this. I have the Golden Sun collection, and they won't save. However, with your method, I can finally play those games on my ds lite again. Thanks for this!
The batteries for Red, Blue, and Yellow actually outlast the Gold, Silver, and Crystal carts. GSC have an RTC circuit attached to keep time, which means their drain is much quicker. RBY will last around 20 years, but GSC will last only 10-15 years.
@@bfapple yes this is true but I'm sure there are plenty of people that don't have much experience in soldering that will go in at max heat say 300°c and definitely end up causing this as it would only take holding it for a second or two to hit that why I still use leaded solder in most electronics as it has a much lower melting point I do have lead free for some applications.
I love loving in the future! Thank you for this video! I literally have Pokemon Silver and found it while moving out of parents and loaded it EMPTY FILE and wouldnt save I was like noooo but this will make it playable again yay
Nice video. I just did my donkey kong. I like to use soldering wick and suck the old solder right off the board. Eliminates the risk of solder splattering on other components.
OH MY GOD. Silver was my first Pokemon game and I was not able to save on it. I finished the game multiple times as a kid but I had to leave my gameboy turned on.
I remember just lifting up the tabs and replacing the battery itself on my copy as a kid, put it back up with some tape lol and now I’m thinking on doing the same with this copy of Saphire I just got
Yellow is the worst. You're guaranteed one useless pokemon for the first gym battle, plus, if you really are trying to catch them all, you need to catch a second one because you can't evolve him. He also takes up a slot better served by something like Zapdos, who outclasses it in every single stat.
I melted a plastic pen on a candle and pressed it against the screw and used that as a screwdriver. Then I just taped on a new battery. Budget, but it works 😄
Im here bc i just got a pokemon gold from amazon, and i did the starter glitch so i thought it was fine. Got a shiny hoot hoot. went to sleep and now my save disappeared ... i hinestly wanna die.
Surprisingly I have a Pokémon Silver cartridge from a flea market. A few years later, it stopped saving to the point I played it on my Gamebody Advance SP without turning it off (keeping it charged at night) back when I was a kid. Now I regret doing that because I think that was the reason why my GBA SP only lasts for a few minutes before it needs recharging again, plus its L and R buttons are broken, even though I barely used those (Plus, there are no L and R buttons required for GameBoy games)
I changed my battery, it saves but the save gets randomly lost after some time. Maybe I don’t have enough salder on the board? The positive and negative part is in the right place.
Watched this video just trying to find the temperature to use lol, managed to fix Pokemon silver, links awakening DX and Pokemon emerald in a little over an hour and it was my first time soldering
The battery only last 15 years? Does that mean my 19-year-old Pokémon Yellow lost its pokémon? I haven’t played it in years, but I had all 151 pokémon on it.
EPS5000 you could be lucky and it might still have it's save file, but I would replace that battery whenever you can. (Transport the pokemon you want to keep to a working save cartridge before you replace the battery)
Wish i wouldve seen this video a few months ago. Started a new game because my original one was gone from years ago. When i started playing a new game it would save succesfully as far as turning it off and on again throughout the first day. But then the next day it was gone. Same issue i assume?
My local retro game shop replaces batteries on all pokemon games before selling them. I miss pokemon silver so much. My copy dissappeared a long time ago.
My son found my old Pokemon games. He's been playing silver and he got all the way to the elite four and beat them and it won't save after that. Keeps putting him back to where he saved right before he fought them. I'm guessing this is the issue.
Since Nintendo announced they won't make a revision any time soon and will instead focus on expansion hardware through USB C, I wonder it they'll make some form of the Wii U gamepad device for the Switch for certain games, like Mario maker Like in docked mode it would be Bluetooth or connected to the switch dock and it portable it would clip on and it would kinda look like a DS/3DS
I used gameshark or Game Genie now ever since i stopped The Cartridge wont ever save properly anymore & Its Messed up come back file is gone I wonder if this method works
I still have the Pokémon Silver (Gameboy color) game, and at first, it was working good, but until as I tried to play it again on Nintendo 64, it doesn't allow me to play it, the file didn't cooperate, my saved files didn't even automatically stayed on Gameboy Advance after turning it off and back on again
Where's the best place to buy the batteries I'm not to big with buying repair stuff but I recently got a copy of pokemon yellow and I would like to try it out
hi! im waiting for a gamebit to arrive to replace the battery of the gold cartridge i just got. I have a question thogh. Does thegame warn me about the battery running low? so i know when to change it again?
its so hard to find anything these days i want to do some gardening but none of my local hardware stores don't stock sickles or scythes O.o i got some serious weeds and normal cutting tools don't work
My sonic advance has never saved. As a kid i always thought it was odd that every time i turned on the game it asked me to choose my language but i just assumed it couldnt save cuz ofc sonic 1 and 2 couldnt. Im now seriously considering buying a soldeeing iron.
I just found my game boy color after years of not playing it then saved like 10 times and turned it on this morning and my game was gone I had just beat Faulkner in the gym smh now I have to buy materials to fix it it’s going back in my game boy bag for awhile this is a project I have to do at a later date
I wish that battery switching didnt involve Soldering its like, you gotta learn how to do one extra thing to replace the battery for your favorite Pokemon game.
I bought silver from my local game shop, it didn't save, they replaced the battery with one from frickin Mario Paint. Didn't save again. Took it back, it magically saved for them and they wouldn't refund me. I never went back
+Ethan Well, obviously it does save. Just replace the battery with a new one. Buy one yourself, bring it to them if you don't have the tools or want to buy them, and maybe they'll do it as a courtesy.
callak _ yeah, this was years ago when I was in highschool, didn't wanna buy all these tools or know where to get the battery to play Pokemon. They should have just used a new battery not an even older one. Ended up trading it in for store credit and getting emerald.
+Ethan Well, all the old games required batteries and actually replacing all of them for a store is a pain in the butt. They sell games at an as-is price. People with knowledge about the battery should request them to put in a new one and they should, for an additional cost of course. Like just the price of a battery. Remember that a retro game store has hundreds of games to deal with though, and they aren't usually staffed with the most proficient employees. They might not want to take the risk where the game actually gets damaged and unplayable, thereby costing them possible profit.
I tried to solder a fake Fire Emblem cartridge when I was younger. The battery was coming of and not making contact with the other parts. I did it terribly and put way to much soldering iron and now it doesn't even turn on. Is it dead forever?
My mom completed silver and I'm trying to do it too, I have an emulator so this isn't a problem but I wanna do challenges like dark mode silver aka all lights off and night time.
3 years later and this video still coming in clutch. Thanks for the instructions!
The amazon link doesn't work anymore though
Yeah....don't want to mess mine up I'll take it somewhere to see if they can do it
These types of videos are awesome! :D
@5A1F bot probs
@5A1F its the only comment that got a heart like
Dude thank you. You save my childhood game for 8mins and 34 sec. Now I need to order the proper tools to revive my GB Silver fun.
I'm trying to play my Pokemon silver O found from when I was a kid and was wondering why it's not saving. Thankyou
Thanks for making this video. I remember having to do this 4 years ago to fix my cousin's crystal version and the only videos i could find at the time were these kids prying the arms off the battery, putting a new one in, and covering it in electric tape. Good to have a professional looking video now.
Anyone here from 2024?
Since this video came out, it's been 6 years! By 2024, my Save Battery is dry again! I keep needing this video!
@@RandomComputerOnTH-cam ikr
Pro tip: Even if your soldering iron is at the proper temp it will not properly melt the solder if the tip is not clean. Make sure you clean the tip of your iron with a sponge or a brass sponge. Also, make sure you clean off the left over Flux with isopropyl alcohol.
I just found my Silver version. It was my very first video game ever & I’m excited to replace the battery & play it again. Thanks for the help.
Really love these types of videos. Love seeing the systems taken apart and games as well. Did you ever take apart a dream cast? I would love to see that video or see you do one.
Cant wait to learn how to fix my Gold! I was about to hunt down another copy. Now I have to find the other GameBoy I had been given
Thank you for this. I have the Golden Sun collection, and they won't save. However, with your method, I can finally play those games on my ds lite again. Thanks for this!
GBA games don't use battery to retain the save. Are you sure they are legit carts?
@@bfapple some early GBA games did use batteries (Castlevania circle of the moon, for example), but golden sun definitely didn’t.
@@zidane6520 thought that Nintendo switched to flash storage (as opposed to RAM) for all GBA carts.
@@bfapple GBA carts can actually have four different types of save mechanisms:
EEPROM chips , flash chip, battery saves, and ferroelectric RAM (FRAM)
My Red and Yellow cartridges are *_still_* working perfectly somehow.
The Blue one on the other hand........ Imma need this video...
Fulken if you wanna retain your saves and the battery still works but its like 10-15 yrs old replace the battery while the game is in the gameboy
@@buttcracksniffer74 Isn't this dangerous? There is voltage on it then, you could damage something.
The batteries for Red, Blue, and Yellow actually outlast the Gold, Silver, and Crystal carts. GSC have an RTC circuit attached to keep time, which means their drain is much quicker. RBY will last around 20 years, but GSC will last only 10-15 years.
@@buttcracksniffer74 Does this really work?
My Pokémon blue doesn’t go through as a game :(
absolute life-saver (and game saver! lol). can't wait to try this for my copy of pokemon gold! Thanks, dude!
Awww Spawn, thank you for this video. It was a nice trip down nostalgia lane :)
hey spawn you had to give pokemon a good scrubbing with a qtip and alcohol to clean the pins, just to make it extra clean with a new battery 😀
Idrees willz87 you can also use a eraser and clean the pins lightly but you need to remove the case first.
Please make more of these videos! We love them so much!
Thanks for taking the time to make this man.
Also becareful as to not overheat the battery as it could result in thermal run away. Awesome vid.
The only risk is if the iron temperature is >250C, or if somebody heats the tab for far too long.
@@bfapple yes this is true but I'm sure there are plenty of people that don't have much experience in soldering that will go in at max heat say 300°c and definitely end up causing this as it would only take holding it for a second or two to hit that why I still use leaded solder in most electronics as it has a much lower melting point I do have lead free for some applications.
Excellent video Jon(SW). Very useful knowledge, good stuff man.
Thank you! My Link's Awakening doesn't save anymore and now this just saved me... literally.
I love loving in the future!
Thank you for this video! I literally have Pokemon Silver and found it while moving out of parents and loaded it EMPTY FILE and wouldnt save I was like noooo but this will make it playable again yay
I love videos like this
I enjoyed watching you fix the save. :) Merry Christmas!
Nice video. I just did my donkey kong. I like to use soldering wick and suck the old solder right off the board. Eliminates the risk of solder splattering on other components.
This is why GameBoy Color should have cloud saves...
boi if you dont
Maybe he means vc Gameboy.
I know, what were they thinking leaving that feature out in the 90s? Shocking really!
OH MY GOD. Silver was my first Pokemon game and I was not able to save on it. I finished the game multiple times as a kid but I had to leave my gameboy turned on.
I remember just lifting up the tabs and replacing the battery itself on my copy as a kid, put it back up with some tape lol and now I’m thinking on doing the same with this copy of Saphire I just got
Awesome man! I'm waiting on the battery for mine then I'll be good to go! Clutch AF!!!
i love how you think oh this friendly fella is a bit over weight, then you realise that he is absolutely jacked
1:23
This guy said “go to radioshack”
XD 😂
We need ‘SpawnWave Fixes Sundays’!!
SehxualPanda Thompson yes please
My Sunday’s aren’t broken though.... it’s Monday’s that’s the problem /:
This will help me fix my old pokemon gold that i've had forever.
thanks a lot man, Tech Waves are awesome, hope you can eventually fix your old Switch and make a Tech Wave about it.
You look so healthy and natural in these older videos. Hope you're doing okay man
Appreciate the video. This worked for my silver.. for almost a week 😭
is there anything you can't do?
Bring his switch back to life... too soon?
Bread Crumbs bro
Get his switch saves
Drop an F-bomb.
He can't get pregnant jrjrjr
Pokemon yellow! Is the best.
P.s. great video!
Yellow is the worst. You're guaranteed one useless pokemon for the first gym battle, plus, if you really are trying to catch them all, you need to catch a second one because you can't evolve him. He also takes up a slot better served by something like Zapdos, who outclasses it in every single stat.
Keep up the good job spawn , love your vids :3
I melted a plastic pen on a candle and pressed it against the screw and used that as a screwdriver.
Then I just taped on a new battery.
Budget, but it works 😄
God damn hill billy
Might have to do that where could I buy a new battery
This pretty much happened to my Pokémon Crystal a couple of years ago but I never got around to changing the battery.
Im here bc i just got a pokemon gold from amazon, and i did the starter glitch so i thought it was fine. Got a shiny hoot hoot. went to sleep and now my save disappeared ... i hinestly wanna die.
This might be a stupid question but can I use the same flux and soder I use for soldering copper pipes together?
Nope
Are you stalking me? First i sent my GC for repairs and you post a disassembly video, and now I just stumbled upon my old pokemon gold version xD
Surprisingly I have a Pokémon Silver cartridge from a flea market. A few years later, it stopped saving to the point I played it on my Gamebody Advance SP without turning it off (keeping it charged at night) back when I was a kid. Now I regret doing that because I think that was the reason why my GBA SP only lasts for a few minutes before it needs recharging again, plus its L and R buttons are broken, even though I barely used those (Plus, there are no L and R buttons required for GameBoy games)
I’m here in 2020 and wow what a different look.
I changed my battery, it saves but the save gets randomly lost after some time. Maybe I don’t have enough salder on the board? The positive and negative part is in the right place.
Thanks for the video - bought the tools I needed and fixed the game so I can share with my boy!
Can you review other types of game cartridges and how to replace the battery on those?
Watched this video just trying to find the temperature to use lol, managed to fix Pokemon silver, links awakening DX and Pokemon emerald in a little over an hour and it was my first time soldering
The battery only last 15 years? Does that mean my 19-year-old Pokémon Yellow lost its pokémon? I haven’t played it in years, but I had all 151 pokémon on it.
EPS5000 you could be lucky and it might still have it's save file, but I would replace that battery whenever you can. (Transport the pokemon you want to keep to a working save cartridge before you replace the battery)
@@Tony12097 i saw a video on how to keep your save when changing the battery also games with passwords will never lose there saves :)
It happened to my Pokemon Yellow with 151 pokémon. It could happen to you too.
Damn son... better transfer all the pokemon you have
Ada Martin thanks ada
I've never used a solder before, is there a certain type of metal wire you have to use when replacing the battery?
Thanks! I've got a Pokemon Gold experiencing the same issue. Now I can fix it!
Defo gonna give this a go. Cheers dude 👍🏼
Thanks for the help buddy!
What kind of battery is it? I see many variations online (CR1616, CR2025, CR2032)
Wish i wouldve seen this video a few months ago. Started a new game because my original one was gone from years ago. When i started playing a new game it would save succesfully as far as turning it off and on again throughout the first day. But then the next day it was gone. Same issue i assume?
every time i try to soder, the solder wire would just melt into tiny little balls instead of how you would do it, im not sure what im doing wrong
My game saves but it won't save after elite 4 I've now beaten Lance 3 times now and it's not saving
great video's man, keep up the good work :)
My local retro game shop replaces batteries on all pokemon games before selling them. I miss pokemon silver so much. My copy dissappeared a long time ago.
My son found my old Pokemon games. He's been playing silver and he got all the way to the elite four and beat them and it won't save after that. Keeps putting him back to where he saved right before he fought them.
I'm guessing this is the issue.
Will this restore the pervious save ? The data that was lost ?
What if you replaced the battery while the game was running?
Like with one of those soldering free mods?
How about the game Lemmings? I changed the battery and won’t save still
How do i find the screwdriver that opened the cartridge
hey spawn, what if you wanna change the batery before it is gone but you dont wanna lose your savefiles in the process?
Since Nintendo announced they won't make a revision any time soon and will instead focus on expansion hardware through USB C, I wonder it they'll make some form of the Wii U gamepad device for the Switch for certain games, like Mario maker
Like in docked mode it would be Bluetooth or connected to the switch dock and it portable it would clip on and it would kinda look like a DS/3DS
I used gameshark or Game Genie now
ever since i stopped
The Cartridge wont ever save properly anymore & Its Messed up
come back file is gone
I wonder if this method works
I still have the Pokémon Silver (Gameboy color) game, and at first, it was working good, but until as I tried to play it again on Nintendo 64, it doesn't allow me to play it, the file didn't cooperate, my saved files didn't even automatically stayed on Gameboy Advance after turning it off and back on again
Kind of a dumb question, but are all Gameboy colour batteries the same? Or would I need a "game specific" battery?
No hammer :(
Where's the best place to buy the batteries I'm not to big with buying repair stuff but I recently got a copy of pokemon yellow and I would like to try it out
Yeah I did this when I was a little kid. You can also buy the 2024 battery and be careful when bending the contacts I think.
Edit:2025 was the battery
so what is the name of the batteries because the link won't work
Nice, excellent video.
hi! im waiting for a gamebit to arrive to replace the battery of the gold cartridge i just got. I have a question thogh. Does thegame warn me about the battery running low? so i know when to change it again?
Damn. This dude lost alota weight. 👍
Will this fix work for all other game boy games? My game and watch gallery 2 has the same problem.
How long will a new battery last?
My old pokemon gold cart needs to have this done, has the same issue.
What kind of battery do these GBC games use? The link isn't working anymore.
What temperature should I set my iron at?
bro say a radio shack! i don't live within a 50 mile radius of a radio shack
One day i saved my game and gameboy just turned off. so i re started and ten the save got deleted. Is that because of the battery?
its so hard to find anything these days i want to do some gardening but none of my local hardware stores don't stock sickles or scythes O.o i got some serious weeds and normal cutting tools don't work
I wish I knew how to do this back then when I had crystal
My sonic advance has never saved. As a kid i always thought it was odd that every time i turned on the game it asked me to choose my language but i just assumed it couldnt save cuz ofc sonic 1 and 2 couldnt. Im now seriously considering buying a soldeeing iron.
3:18 What are those four chips for? One is for the game and one is for the save data, but then two are left.
I honestly had no idea GB games had batteries, so the lifespan of all games basically have an expiration date?
I just found my game boy color after years of not playing it then saved like 10 times and turned it on this morning and my game was gone I had just beat Faulkner in the gym smh now I have to buy materials to fix it it’s going back in my game boy bag for awhile this is a project I have to do at a later date
my favorite generation pokemon game
is there a new link? for the amazon stuff?
I wish that battery switching didnt involve Soldering its like, you gotta learn how to do one extra thing to replace the battery for your favorite Pokemon game.
Should have used solder remover or take some copper wires and press it to the solder
I use roms so I don't have to worry about this anymore but still cool vid dude
If I replace the battery while I already have a save, will it keep my previous save or will it delete it
Delete
I bought silver from my local game shop, it didn't save, they replaced the battery with one from frickin Mario Paint. Didn't save again. Took it back, it magically saved for them and they wouldn't refund me. I never went back
nowonmetube gameroom, Lincoln, NE
well you gotta see it from their point of view lol
+Ethan Well, obviously it does save. Just replace the battery with a new one. Buy one yourself, bring it to them if you don't have the tools or want to buy them, and maybe they'll do it as a courtesy.
callak _ yeah, this was years ago when I was in highschool, didn't wanna buy all these tools or know where to get the battery to play Pokemon. They should have just used a new battery not an even older one. Ended up trading it in for store credit and getting emerald.
+Ethan Well, all the old games required batteries and actually replacing all of them for a store is a pain in the butt. They sell games at an as-is price. People with knowledge about the battery should request them to put in a new one and they should, for an additional cost of course. Like just the price of a battery.
Remember that a retro game store has hundreds of games to deal with though, and they aren't usually staffed with the most proficient employees. They might not want to take the risk where the game actually gets damaged and unplayable, thereby costing them possible profit.
I tried to solder a fake Fire Emblem cartridge when I was younger. The battery was coming of and not making contact with the other parts. I did it terribly and put way to much soldering iron and now it doesn't even turn on. Is it dead forever?
Why ain’t my games still on my Pokémon game from when I was a kid I just turned it on and it’s not there anymore
My mom completed silver and I'm trying to do it too, I have an emulator so this isn't a problem but I wanna do challenges like dark mode silver aka all lights off and night time.