Visual Boy Advance Unknown File Type Error on MAC

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I am on a MacBook Pro running Maverick and I recently downloaded Visual Boy Advance v. 1.7.6 and am having trouble loading saved game states.

I was playing Pokemon Emerald and saving via the in-game save option (not using the "Freeze state"). The saves seemed to work successfully and no errors popped up when I saved the game. After quitting the emulator and returning later, however, I had only the "New Game" and "Options" selections at the main Pokemon menu.

The "Save States" folder has a file labeled "Pokemon Emerald1.sgm" that gives me an "Unknown file type" error when I try to open it with VBA and the "Battery Saves" folder has a file labeled "Pokemon Emerald.sav" that also gives me an "Unknown file type" error when I try to open it with VBA.

Can anyone help me pinpoint the problem, please? I apologize for the lengthy description but wanted to be thorough.

Best Answer

The file "Pokemon Emerald1.sgm" is the save game that you have. There are two types of saves in VBA:

  • Battery save (extension .sav)
  • Save state save (extension .sgm)

To load your game from the save state save, first open your ROM (you already did), then in the game, at any point, you can Load it ("File" > "Load ...") or pressing Ctrl+L then browsing for that .sgm file.

If you want to load a battery save file, you again load the ROM first, then use "File" > "Import Battery" > "Battery file". This will restart the emulation and you should get the "Continue" option available.

Depending on how far you want to get, you would prefer using the .sav save file. This is the 'normal' way to save and will enable you to continue playing even after you beat the league. To create one .sav file, you save in the game normally from the start menu, and a .sav file should be created in the folder you usually save the saves.

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