I was playing Mario Party 3 on story mode, on the Mr. Mover duel map against Mario. I reset the game to replay a turn -- which I had done before, with no problems -- but this time, when the game came back on, it displayed all the save files as new, although it hadn't displayed the language screen that it's meant to display if there's no save data.

How can I restore the data without taking the cartridge apart?

I don't know if this had anything to with the data loss, but I had had 2 files and had recently erased one of them.

1 Answer

It sounds like your save data got corrupted. As far as I know, there is no way to recover your save data once this happens. There's not a store anywhere that can restore corrupted save data on a cartridge. You'll have to start over from scratch, unfortunately.

Resetting the game, especially when it is in the middle of reading or writing your save data, has a chance to cause this type of corruption. Also, as the cartridge ages, the memory is likely to become less and less reliable.

Most cartridge games that feature save slots also contain a small coin cell battery that keeps the data in the cartridge's memory alive. Usually this is only used when the console is off, so I wouldn't think it would come into play during a reset. However, if you find that your save games are consistently erasing themselves when you turn the console off, it might be worth getting the battery changed.

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