My 9 month game file gone - what happened?

Question

So I bought a copy of the Japanese copy of the ancient 1999 Gold, I played it for about nearly 10 months now, and when I woke up this morning, I turned on my GameBoy Gold, and it said in Japanese: “New Game.” All that effort - what happened? grrrrr...

Comments

Does anything on this page explain it? https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Save

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"A save file can become corrupted due to various factors:

interruption of the saving process by shutting down the system or removing the Game Card
cheating
abusing certain glitches
Physical damage to the game cartridge, such as from dropping it, may result in corruption of the save file in games of the first three generations. Improperly set cartridges (and memory cards in the case of games for the Nintendo GameCube) may cause data to be read as corrupt. In such instances, turning the system off and reinserting the cartridge properly will cause the data to be read correctly. In the first two generations, save data is stored on a RAM chip powered by a battery when the game is turned off. If the battery runs dry, the save data is deleted constantly due to the RAM not being powered on."

https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Save

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Did you use any hacks or something like that?

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I’m pretty sure that in Gen 2, your save file is erased if the internal battery runs dry. Although I’ve never owned a GSC cartridge, so I could be wrong.

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What about making a new save? Does that work? Maybe it can give a clue

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Well, I never hacked.

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Did you read the Bulbapedia article?

Answer 1

A save file can become corrupted due to various factors:
interruption of the saving process by shutting down the system or removing the Game Card
cheating
abusing certain glitches
Physical damage to the game cartridge, such as from dropping it, may result in corruption of the save file in games of the first three generations. Improperly set cartridges (and memory cards in the case of games for the Nintendo GameCube) may cause data to be read as corrupt. In such instances, turning the system off and reinserting the cartridge properly will cause the data to be read correctly.
In the Generation I and II core series games, save data is stored on a RAM chip powered by a battery when the game is turned off. If the battery runs dry, the save data is lost due to the RAM not being powered on.

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