PokéBase - Pokémon Q&A
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I'll try to be as detailed as possible.
I was playing Pokemon Sapphire Version (developed for the GameBoy Advanced) on my DS Lite. During a battle with a wild Pokemon and while I was choosing another Pokemon to use for said battle, my screen went black right after selecting one out of my collection (to clarify, only the top screen was in use, due to this being a GameBoy game). It isn't that the screen turned off, it just stopped mid transition from my Pokemon collection screen to the battle screen. The battle music continues to play and I have tried pressing multiple buttons. I haven't turned it off yet out of fear of losing my data, as I have multiple badges and mid-level Pokemon, which is pretty good considering that I'm not very far in the game. I guess this means I have two questions:

  1. How do I fix this/ why did this happen
  2. If I turn off the DS now, as I haven't have the ability to save, will it fail to keep data up until my last save, or from my playtime entirely?

This is by no means a game or DS I have recently purchased, I've had the DS since it's model came out and the game was owned by a family member who has had it for a long time and has played through it without a problem, so also owning it since release, so I don't think this is due to it being a fake game.

I have tried searching this up or looking on forums for this problems but can't find anything like it.

edit: at time of posting, screen has been black/stopped but music playing for around half and hour
edit 2: I answered my own second question and found that games Gen III and farther will have backup saves. Thankfully from my last save I was only on a few minutes! :D

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Believe it or not, I've actually experienced something like this issue as well, a long time ago. Granted, it was with Pokemon Black instead of Sapphire, but whatever. Can you tell if the game can still recognize and execute button inputs, or is it effectively frozen?
(Not sure how to reply so sorry I'm new)

It was pretty much completely frozen. No buttons that had to do with the gameplay (for example, volume worked) gave any response whatsoever from what I could tell. I did end up answering my own second question though. With some more digging through the interwebs, I found that games gen III and after did backup saves and I would not lose all my data.
But no, no buttons registered.
Do you have a local game store? Have you tried asking them what the problem is?

1 Answer

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By the looks of it, there is nothing you can do except turn it off. It SHOULD take you to your previous save, which hopefully isn't too far away.

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