SNES – Causes for a SNES Game to Lose Save Data

snes

I have a very old SNES and a Donkey Kong Country 3 game. The last few times I played it, it seemed to randomly lose save games. People told me it was battery. Fine, I study electronics, I can fix that.

So I put in a battery holder and a new battery; all secured nice and tight. I played it for a few nights with no problems.

This morning, I took my SNES downstairs with the game in it. I plugged it in, and woop, the save game was gone.

Does anyone have any clue why this game keeps losing its save game?

I am not able to replicate this on purpose by doing the following:

  1. Wiggle the console while the game is in it. (like I would walk with it.)
  2. Shake the cartridge heavily in all directions (to make sure it is not the battery being faulty or disconnecting.)
  3. Plug in the power after no power for at least a few minutes.

Any advice is appreciated.

Best Answer

Let's sum up what we got. Possible reasons:

  1. Battery fault.
  2. SNES fault (for some reason erases saves randomly).
  3. Cartridge fault (memory chip corruption).

So that's that you can do:

  1. Be sure you replaced battery nice and correctly.
  2. Try other games, and see if their saves are not lost.
  3. Try cartridge on some other SNES console and see if it fails there.