Slashdot Mirror
Pokemon GBA Bugs Out, Internal Clock To Blame
Thanks to 1UP for their article revealing the popular GameBoy Advance titles Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire have a time-unlocked glitch that's just been activated in Japan, since the game has features based on how long it's been played, and Nintendo have discovered there's "...an issue with its internal clock that can disable certain gameplay systems after a year's worth of playtime." Specifically, you can plant trees in-game which "eventually bear fruit, which you then feed to your pet monsters to cause them to evolve in useful and interesting ways." Unfortunately, after a year from the game's start date, "those trees are unable to grow." Nintendo has "...invited Japanese players to bring or send their game cartridges to one of many service centers around the country. The service centers will apply a patch that corrects the issue and return the fixed copy of the game free of charge." Finally, Nintendo of America have commented "The earliest the issue could appear [in the U.S.] is March 2004, which is the one year anniversary of the first sale in North America."
Please see Unreal Championship, Capcom Vs. SNK 2 EO, NFL 2K3, Crimsons Skies, and a host of other Live games that have been patched. UC and CvSNK were the only two games that were publically announced as having patches (tarnishing MS' promise of no patches on XBL); but Microsoft does mandate that all XBL games have the ability to be patched.
Instead of announcing a patch, publically, what will happen when you try to connect to XBL when a patch is available is that you will get is a screen that says "Xbox Live has an update available, you will not be able to connect to Xbox Live until this update is installed." Yet, if you pop in another XBL game, you can connect fine. That's how they're hiding the patches now.
XBL has patches. You just didn't realize you were seeing them.
Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal and Ruby/Sapphire have two internal clocks actually--one records total playtime, and the other regulates the day cycles in the game.
The berry system in either case is dictated by the Daily clock, and in all the history of Pokemon, I can't think of a single thing based on the total playtime. I think it's just there to remind kids when they've been playing too much and for bragging rights.
In fact, most of the game's timed functions are either based on the daily clock or the number of steps taken between the trigger of one event and its resolution. I remember, in the first series of games (Red/Blue/Yellow), the step number system was the only way they could keep track of time for game functions.
So the amount of gameplay is completelty irrelevant... though that other reply is right: If you give a kid a Pokemon game, they don't put it down. When I was little I played constantly--while on the toilet, while eating, while on the computer (though after a week or so of that I'd leave it alone for a month or so). And even in the last year there was an incident where I played for a total of over 80 hours over the course of six days.
And for the record, it takes a long time to truly conquer a Pokemon game. You have to spend hours outside of the main plot training for boss battles, organize all your 150+ Pokemon into neat boxes, and of course collect all 151/251/182, many of which are nearly impossible to obtain.
It is not flashable. They simply copy the saved game over to a new cart.
http://fasastudio.com/games/crimsonskies/Update+Ne ws.htm
One of the big issues we addressed was a problem with losing progress in the single player game if you adjusted settings in multiplayer. You should now feel free to adjust all the settings in multiplayer without worrying about affecting your single player game.
Other fixes we've provided in the AutoUpdate include:
Made Invert settings persistent for all controllers.
Updated to the latest and greatest Xbox libraries (new and shiny is always good).
Fixed incorrect turret scoring in multiplayer (kills and deaths were not always scored correctly).
Fixed a sporadic hard lock in the stats screen that occurred when the trigger was pressed.
-PainKilleR-[CE]