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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."
Personally, I'm glad Nintendo of Japan is providing this service to their users. Maybe things like this will get fewer buggy console titles out the door if it becomes expected that you'll exchange them for working titles.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
sounds like a variable is used to store how much time has passed since the beginning of the game, after a while (a year in this case), the variable will reach its limit and things start to go wrong, something similar to Y2K bug.
The IT section color scheme sucks.
First X box live allows it, and now gameboy games are getting patched. I think it's great that Nintendo is going the extra mile for it's customers, but as soon as console game makers get the idea they can rely on patching, shipping games broken will be as prevelent as on the PC.
Hooray. At that point, consoles get added to the list of vices i'll be able to cut out of my budget.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
this problem doesn't appear in March. To play a single game for a substantial portion of a day everday for a year is... yikes.
How many people can his possibly affect? How much can you do in a video game in a 8,544 hours? It boggles the mind.
In their defense, it must be said that this is the sort of bug that's somewhat hard to predict... obviously the playtesters didn't have an entire year to test the game, or we'd only just now be getting it. And at least it isn't a show-stopper - only certain parts of the game stop working, not the whole thing.
--- Bwah?
Sounds like the cartridge might be flashable, then? If so, it's a cheap way to get a flash cartridge, if we can figure out how to program it.
Is the real time clock in the cartridge itself? It must be if you can use the game on one gameboy, then resume gameplay on another gameboy. Could make for some interesting hacks.
-Adam
When my xbox controller died (the right analogue stick thought it was going left all the time) MS covered the postage and it was all handled easily and quickly. I too was expecting it to be somewhat painful, especially as I was within the last month of my warranty, but it ended up showing that customer service can be done right.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Food would not grow, and Pikachu began to look for new food sources...
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.
Of course I'm talking about NOA, but every experience I've had with them has led me to believe that the NOA tech people really put the customer first. They'll chat with you about games, etc. and tell you whats up with bugs and things on the line. They even replaced a couple of N64 controllers for me (one with out me even having to send it back!)
My personal favorite console tech support thing is when Capcom's Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo for the SNES would freeze older SNES machines; they sent me a new model SNES and asked for the old to be shipped back to them, all free of charge for me. I did so and they sent a little token; coins featuring the SF2 characters. It's a cheap little thing, but I was a kid back than and really enjoyed it.
It's not the same thing, but PC publishers could learn a thing or two from the guys over on the console side.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
This sounds like a fairly minor problem, one in which a small parrt of the game ceases to function coorrectly after the player has played the game for a *year!*. And Nintendo are going to absorb a massive cost to fix this!
There are many PC titles released this year which did not function correctly out of the box (including ETM, Halo, DE2, etc etc etc...). They have had varying levels of support which range from "deplorable" to "barely scraping through". Maybe some of these titles will be fixed over the next six months, maybe not. But one might argue that the cost of diistrivutting upadtes to PC consumers is far less than that to GBA players, so one might aargue patches to fix major, much less minor issues would be far more readily available.
If only the PC developers would a take a leaf out of Nintendos book.
Before I start, I have to say that I am a pokemon fanatic (and proud of it too). I own a copy of Ruby, a copy of Sapphire, two Golds, one Crystal, one Silver, one Yellow, Blue, and Red. The wallpaper on all my computers is Pokemon themed, and I'm currently listening to the song "The Game" from the Totally Pokemon music CD.
Okay, rant mode on.
As soon as RS (Ruby/Sapphire) were released, I just *knew* there were going to be problems with the internal clock. I mean, how long could that battery last? And now we find out that there is a year limit to the berries? What idiot thought this up, or didn't plan for the eventuality that the game could surpass a year in usage? I have several thousand hours of play on my games (split among all my games, of course). For those of you who don't know, berries are a VERY important part of the game. Berries allow a pokemon to regain health by itself; otherwise, you have to skip a turn in battle to pull a potion out of your pack and apply it. And berries have to be mixed to create PokeBlocks, which up a Pokemon's stats. The PokeBlocks are also necessary in the Safari Zone, where you can't battle pokemon - pokemon to capture a pokemon, you have to throw stones and pokeblocks to entice the pokemon into getting into a pokeball.
*deep breath*
Okay, rant mode off