How Zelda Saves Your Game

[@ChrisBrunner]

For what it's worth, I just cracked open my childhood Zelda cartridge yesterday and checked the voltage on the CR2032--still just over 3V! Game still works and saves just fine, despite getting it over 34 years ago.

[@NesHacker]

Yeah I think a lot of them still do work, it's amazing... but those SRAM chips just draw such low power the batteries will last quite a long time!

[@rfmerrill]

@@NesHackerMy suspicion is that the current drawn by CMOS SRAM is so low that the battery life is dictated more by just shelf life than draw. I.e. a coin cell backing up SRAM will last about as long as that same coin cell still in the packaging. I have also noticed that Nintendo-produced cartridges from around '92-'94 seem to have unusually long lived batteries--almost every NES or SNES cart I've opened with a 92-94 marked battery is still alive.

[@thewhitefalcon8539]

​@@rfmerrill Probably yes. An SRAM cell is like a locking mechanism that sticks in one of two different states. It requires (electrical) pressure to keep it stuck that way, but it doesn't actually have any (electrical) movement which would consume power. Only leakage power is used.

[@milesaway1980]

Same. I found my NES in a box in the garage last year and pulled it out and fully restored it. All of my games with saves states still worked! Not sure for how much longer, but that was pretty cool to see those saves still there.

[@anon_y_mousse]

@@milesaway1980 It'd be a cool project to build a cart reader and save them for emulation and sharing.

[@FairPlay137]

I find it interesting that Nintendo opted to not use battery-backed SRAM for the cartridge version of Metroid, despite the FDS version operating on the three-save system like Zelda. Maybe MMC1 was still in development? EDIT: I forgot that Metroid also used MMC1, which makes this a little bit stranger to me that they went with the password system for Metroid. Maybe save batteries were on the more experimental side back then?

[@NesHacker]

Maybe...? That definitely came up when I was researching this video. My assumption was that it was a cost/design issue. Saves in Zelda were kind of huge, where on Metroid the passwords would suffice. But I don't know for sure... 🤔

[@ClassicTVMan1981X]

The original Legend of Zelda, or The Hyrule Fantasy: Zelda no Densetsu (lit. "Zelda Legend"), was released on February 21, 1986 along with the Famicom Disk System accessory itself. Metroid came out in August 1986 for the FDS, and then Kid Icarus (or "Light Myth: Palutena's Mirror") that December; the NES Kid Icarus also used a password save system. All three of these in their cartridge forms, when released here in July and August 1987, used the MMC1 mapper.

[@hicknopunk]

Well Zelda was a Taiwan hack to put it on s cart. Same with Castevania. Was Metroid a non Nintendo hack?

[@kirby0louise]

@@NesHacker You are correct. The save files in Metroid and Kid Icarus are 117 and 256 bytes respectively. In Zelda 1 it's 1308 bytes. Even if you divide by 3 to get a rough estimate of a single save file size, you can see how encoding a password is viable for the first two but not Zelda.

[@lander77477]

I'm glad they didn't, otherwise we wouldn't have "justin bailey"

[@henrysanecdotes5323]

Dang this is a well put together documentary. It goes all over the place talking about various games/systems/methods of saving, all while staying on a clear and defined path.

[@duuqnd]

This has to be the first Zelda save system video that actually taught me something new

[@PotatoFi]

Whoa. The pacing, ambiance, and information in this video are just awesome. I’ve been casually watching your channel for a couple of years, and it has been great, but this one feels like it’s on a whole new level. Great work!

[@imclearingit4149]

One (and a half) comment on the Famicom disk system taking so long to load, part of it is because the FDS disks (and Mitsumi/Roland Quick Disks, and Smith Corona Data Disk, all the same thing) are a magnetic spiral record where it's all sequential, and if the drive alignment is off it may need to scan a sector two or three times to get it right

[@NesHacker]

That's incredible information, I had no idea and didn't come across the details of the format when researching. Very cool, and thanks for sharing!

[@rfmerrill]

​@@NesHacker It also varies a lot depending on the game. I've done playthroughs of both Zelda 1 and Metroid on FDS recently and the Metroid loading times are horrid compared to Zelda. Unlike a PC diskette which has concentric circular tracks, there's no arbitrary seeking on an FDS disk. If you want to read a certain sector you have to seek to the beginning, and read the whole disc up to and including that sector. Metroid ends up seeking back to the beginning _three times_ every time you load or transition between areas. Zelda never does it more than twice. So Zelda must have been designed to get the most out of each pass, while Metroid didn't quite get to that point. This is with an emulator btw, so there's no retrying involved--the reads are "perfect".

[@rfmerrill]

@@NesHacker You can kind of think of FDS disks as disk-shaped tapes. The read/write head is mechanically geared to the spindle, so as the spindle turns the disk moves steadily inward, then quickly back out and repeat. Kind of like an automatic turntable (but the stylus on a turntable is moved by the record itself). This is very different from PC diskette drives where the head moves independently. Also since PC diskettes have data in concentric rings instead of a spiral, the head has to move slightly each revolution when reading a lot of data--thus the "tick....tick....tick" sound they make.

[@rfmerrill]

One distinction that needs to be made here: Not all SRAM has the low power draw needed to make battery backup feasible. What you need is *CMOS* SRAM. Unlike older logic families, CMOS has little to no current flowing in steady state, so a CMOS SRAM will draw microamperes if it's sitting idle with no reads or writes occurring. Maybe Pop & Chips was using older SRAM tech and that's why it needed replaceable batteries? Consequently, this is why the NVRAM on PCs is commonly called "CMOS"--originally CMOS was only used for low-power applications because it wasn't as fast as other logic families, but that has since changed. On modern PCs pretty much all logic is CMOS and the "CMOS" is actually flash.

[@netsendjoe]

There is a port of NES Metroid to SNES where the hacker managed to apply the save function from the Japanese version and added it to the US version, while still having the password system as another option. It looks and works similar to how the Zelda save feature was implemented.

[@kri249]

As a kid I always remembered the terms "Battery save" and "Battery back up." Having no understanding of electronics at the time I never understood what batteries would have to do with saving. Especially when I'd see saving on a floppy disk. Little did I realise the battery was an actual coin battery I could buy at the store.

[@NesHacker]

Yeah when I was little I too didn't know why a battery mattered at all 😅

[@jovetj]

I understood it pretty easily early on, as I had used computers that had a battery-backed CMOS and computers that did not. The ones that did have them did not force you to enter the date and time each time they booted up!

[@bslprints9935]

when I was a kid, the kid down the street powered off my zelda 2 one day without holding reset and it destroyed my save - and I had just finally gotten the power glove :'-(

[@NesHacker]

Oh no... that's tragic :(

[@alemswazzu]

The powerglove was such a massive disappointment

[@MDLuffy1234YT]

Did you keep the power glove?

[@DoctorNastyy]

@@MDLuffy1234YT i believe he may be referring to the handy glove item in zelda 2, also referred to as the power glove by players

[@MDLuffy1234YT]

@@DoctorNastyy oh

[@kellyhpdx]

Great deep dive into the history of this cartridge. Very well produced video - love the format!

[@NesHacker]

Thanks, I am happy you liked it :D

[@Odog78]

Playing Zelda back in the day was a religious experience. Playing Zelda with friends during a snow day is a core memory.

[@johnrickard8512]

I think Nintendo calls it "lateral thinking with withered technology". It is also important to understand that at heart Nintendo is still a toy company.

[@NesHacker]

Indeed, thank you for sharing 😊

[@SingularCherubim]

They actually started out as a playing-card company, specifically! Small wonder they push the idea of collecting and *trading* so heavily in Pokemon.

[@johnrickard8512]

@@SingularCherubim Indeed, we must remember that Nintendo is a company with a very long history.

[@TheRedCap]

"The Cartridge RAM is almost as fast to access, The Legend of Zelda could have been the first game to have continuous saves" Sorta related, Super Mario Land 2 on Gameboy actually uses part of the Save RAM on the cartridge to hold map data while you're playing. Hey, it's clearly fast enough for active gameplay.

[@vuurniacsquarewave5091]

Makes sense since these ram chips were much larger than what was required to actually save game progression, heck PS1 memory card save blocks were only 1k each.

[@beauwalker9820]

I tried my old Zelda 1&2 cartridges, and amazingly the save batteries still work.

[@rodneylives]

Recording a game's state to persistent storage goes back before Zork and Wizardry. Zork was originally a Unix mainframe game called Dungeon (it was split up into three parts for release on microcomputers); Wizardry cribbed ideas from very early RPGs made for the PLATO multiuser system.

[@NesHacker]

Interesting, I was mostly concerned with save systems that were close to those we see today (aka modern). It's somewhat hard to collect reliable written sources about particular games from the late 70s / early 80s, so I used what I could find and made some deductions. Appreciate you sharing!

[@shinypb]

Delightfully honored that something I wrote ended up being a source for an NesHacker video 😍 I love the internet so much

[@CreeperShorts]

The music you use is incredible. It's like watching an actual documentary with this sort of ambient music that pulls you in, or is very "informative-like". Don't even know what such genre is called.

[@TheMikeyb86]

I just put in my LoZ and AoL carts. Both have all my saves... for now.

[@NesHacker]

Oh wow, that's awesome, maybe I was wrong about the batteries being dead?

[@TheMikeyb86]

@@NesHacker no, I wouldn't go back on what you said in the video if I were you. My case is probably outlier data and not the norm. Great video as always, by the way. It's always a better day when NES Hacker puts out a new video.

[@XxCrystalPhoenix]

How's your Pop & Chips save doing?

[@pjl22222]

So, the manual said that the battery had a five year expected life. My cart bought not long after its release date still works some almost 40 years later or 8x the expected life. Things used to be built to last

[@Controllerhead]

@@NesHackerMost of my NES / SNES / GB carts are fine as of the 2020s, a few have lost their data and don't save anymore, but those are the exception. Lasting 30+ years from a friggin watch battery is truly incredible engineering.

[@wayfarer1021]

Great video! I knew about the battery save system, but I've never seen such detailed information. Thank you for sharing!

[@JonathosDX]

Nintendo Family Basic had battery backup with removable batteries in the cartridge. Masahiro Sakurai demoed it in a video on his channel a few months ago.

[@NesHacker]

That's super interesting, and didn't come up in my research. I guess I was looking too narrowly at games in particular... Man, now I want to see if I can get a Family Basic system of my own 😭

[@JonathosDX]

@@NesHacker It looks fun and fairly easy to use even if you don't speak Japanese. And has functions for manipulating sprites so you can actually do performant (if simple) games.

[@arcturax]

Couple years ago I got my family collection of NES games. Both Zeldas and FInal Fantasy had saves still on them. When I replaced the batteries, the saves survived on Final Fantasy and the first Zelda, but were lost on Zelda 2. I'm guessing there was a capacitor that held just enough juice to keep the SRAM alive while I did the battery swap which took 30+ seconds due to soldering, or the SRAM was just hardy enough to keep its contents without power for that long.

[@kingbrettpro]

So that's why World 5 in The Lost Levels took longer to load than the other worlds, since it was for the FDS, some of the levels in the game would take a bit longer to load than the other levels.

[@obvfw]

Probably it couldn't load all of the disk contents onto the cartridge connector at once. I'm guessing it loads worlds 1 through 4 at bootup, and then 5 through 8 once you get to that point.

[@NesHacker]

I'd have to look into it, but that's a very plausible explanation. Zelda takes some time to load its levels as well, for what it's worth, and that is definitely due to disk data being accessed and written from what I can tell.

[@ClassicTVMan1981X]

Same thing in All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros. While this licensed hack was mostly based on Super Mario Bros. 2 (aka The Lost Levels), it combined levels from both that and the first Super Mario Bros. (most of worlds 1-8), and as with SMB2J, worlds 1-4 are stored in the first bank, then worlds 5-8 in the second bank, world 8's ending (Princess Peach saved) in the third bank, and finally worlds A-D (after you beat World 8 eight times; use A+Start on title screen to access) in the fourth bank. This degree of bankswitching on the FDS is why getting to Worlds 5-8, either directly from World 4-4 or via warp zones in Worlds 1-2 and 4-2, take longer to access.

[@alieander]

Love the story you present here. really pulled me in and kept me watching :D

[@NesHacker]

Thank you so much, it was a labor of love :)

[@BenKlassen1]

Very cool. I always knew there was a battery in the Zelda cartridge but now I know how it got there and why.

[@Ails1234]

Wait a second this isn't a video about tetris... (if you don't know, the channels Displaced Gamers and Retro Games Explained both just released a video about Tetris within hours of each other)

[@NesHacker]

Hahaha, that's so funny. I had no idea 🤣 (was a little busy with this one)

[@coomtothebroom778]

Oh my heck, I thought I was the only one that noticed that. LOL!

[@MaurycyZarzycki]

Haha, I didn't notice it's two different channels and thought both vids were from RGE

[@menhirmike]

8:15 Even more so if you had a Commodore 64 or probably a ZX Spectrum (which were the most popular home computers in Europe at the time) because loading times from a 1541 Disk Drive or from Tape were measured in minutes, not seconds. I will say though that it was still Super Mario Bros. that really blew all our minds, with it's fast scrolling and detailed graphics.

[@NesHacker]

Oooph, that is rough. Thankfully I didn't exist in the time of tape, my first computer was a commodore 64 with a shiny high speed 5.25" floppy drive 😆

[@ChairmanMeow1]

I have to be honest, even as an adult I've never really understood how a battery 'saved' anything. Great video, I learned a ton from this and subbed.

[@NeverlandSystemZor]

Many NES games used passwords or had no save function. I remember the grief of passwords for games like River City Ransom, Kid Icarus.... It was great to have the save function with the battery and built-in save. A MASSIVE improvement.

[@Jath2112]

Algorithm did me a service on this one. Excellent vid! Fascinating...

[@AnthonyBabcock]

Would be a neat short video to add to this about when and why the "hold reset to power off" function came about. I distinctly remember the original Zelda not having that function and was later added not only to Zelda but a lot of later release games that had a battery backup system. Was it different hardware or just a routine to hold the CPU in a stopped state so that the SRAM was not written to by accident?

[@NesHacker]

It's unclear to my why this is suggested for games with saves on the NES. I have seen conflicting information about it online too... and coming from a CS (math) background as opposed to EE, I haven't quite grokked what's going on with the reset hold.

[@warrenduree9417]

I always powered my NES off without holding reset and it almost never erased my save files.... almost. I remember it happening once. Next time I went to play, all three of my save files were wiped. So it can happen, but is rare.

[@demos456]

Always nice to see you upload new videos. I love that I can understand many principles in circuitry and assembler programming (and apply them) by watching your content. I'm still enjoying the free fall in the rabbit hole you and BenEater made for me and I'd dive in it again if I could 😋

[@NesHacker]

It's so fun to explore and play on these old systems. Please enjoy your 8-bit journey :D

[@greenmagicdragon]

Dude, great video and awesome segway into the sponsor at the end. Well played. 👏

[@jaro5822]

For a channel with not even 100k subs. This is such a great quality video! Keep up the good work man! ❤❤❤

[@mattgio1172]

It's really awesome to see the algorithm rewarding smaller channels like this that have really top quality content. There's another channel called "inkbox" that has similar content and is similar size - it's great that both keep getting recommended.

[@McIntyresMalts]

love your voice, love the footage and music and great knowledge on top of it all. Excellent content, thank you!

[@JamesSturges]

I always thought it was interesting how of the three similar FDS>NES conversions, released around the same time, only The Legend of Zelda was afforded a battery backup. The other 2 (Metroid and Kid Icarus) had to go with a hacked-together password system that more-or-less converted the blob that would’ve been saved to the FDS file into a password (Metroid, for example, wastes a LOT of space because it was built against the FDS save size)

[@NesHacker]

Yeah it was unclear to me why this was the case, but I didn't focus my research in that direction due to the video primarily being about Zelda. Might be worth a followup, maybe even a short?

[@ILostMyOreos]

I really love your videos, they're very good.

[@NesHacker]

Thank you so much! I put a lot of heart into them, so I am glad you like them :)

[@PreciousAlpschindler]

The problem is when the battery run out the saved game will be gone and you have to desolder the battery and solder a new one in

[@sidvicious332]

How is that a probem? Everyone should know how to solder.

[@Steven-P99]

Not everyone knows how to diagnose a problem like this, and with solder replacing it is another skill a lot of people don't have. All resulting in more E-waste. Besides, there's no need for the battery to be soldered on as there are pcb holders for it.

[@kyle_8036]

Just discovered your channel from Adafruit. Love the content, easily my favorite new KZbin channel. Thank you for making all this amazing content.

[@gabe6646]

I had a copy of Zelda in the 90's that I got from my uncle, the battery died on it before I ever finished the game and that's how I got super into Zelda II

[@BubblegumCrash332]

Love your videos😊 I like the new background also

[@NesHacker]

Thank you! I was feeling my old "set" just started to feel a little to cluttered and distracting. Even though this is just a wall in my house, I think it looks nice with the natural vignette created by my lighting 😁

[@RobertoVillegas-vincent404]

It still kind of screws with my mind that not all of the games that were on the FDS came with save functions once ported to the NES (looking at you Castlevania and Metroid), but I’m guessing that’s probably a timing thing vs when the MMC1 was utilized. Definitely wouldn’t mind in the future as I find them all sort of cool a video discussing some of the more popular or weird MMC chips and what each provided on a technical level.

[@Phroggster]

If I recall correctly, Metroid and Castlevania were in development on the tail end of a chip shortage, so they cut production costs and went a different direction for those titles.

[@NesHacker]

I think I'm going to dig into this a bit and see if I can do a short or two on the topic. Hopefully I can find a definitive reason or at least a couple reasonable ones...

[@RobertoVillegas-vincent404]

@@Phroggster that’s right. I forgot about the chip shortage at that time. That I would believe along with the fact Metroid and I think Castlevania as well were launched pretty early into the NES release vs Famicom. I’ll have to look into Castlevania II, but that might have been the cost side as well.

[@kri249]

Didn't you say that Zeldas code had to be rewritten to accommodate the SRAM system. Would Metroid and other games have to under go the same treatment? If so LoZ might have been the guinea pig to see if it's worth the cost and trouble.

[@RobertoVillegas-vincent404]

@@kri249 looking back again at the timeframe, I’m now leaning towards potentially it being a cost type thing. You can get away with it for Metroid, but it might have been a bit harder of a recode for Zelda. Maybe at the time they could afford to use the tech with one game due to chip amount and they felt fantasy was easier to advertise in the US than SciFi (Zelda did get a different colored cart on initial release and did have a different box art template vs other first party releases at the time). Could be all, could be none, but I’m now leaning towards the economics of the situation.

[@alexanderlins8905]

Your videos are of an incredibly high quality of work, I hope you continue on making them! Very talented indeed! I am a student of IoT and NES fascinates me! Thanks for the high quality content and keep it up! ✌️

[@Gameprojordan]

It's like how Gen 1 and 2 Pokemon GB cartridges saved

[@Dukefazon]

You really upped your production quality! Are you plannig to continue your NES programming tutorial - the 6502 Assembly Crash Course?

[@NesHacker]

Thanks, I work hard to make the videos as high quality as I can muster. It's hard to say when I will get around to more tuts, I have a pretty full plate of ideas for both the NES and GB coming up this year 😅

[@cartergamegeek]

Rentals in Japan are legal if the IP holder says you can rent our game. Thing is nobody ever gives you the okay.

[@NesHacker]

Indeed, at first I was under the impression it was banned (since a lot of second and third hand sources claim it to be), but as I was fact checking further with a friend after recording I learned it was simply the right was given to the IP holder... so it is "effectively" banned.

[@cartergamegeek]

@@NesHackerIt's the right to say yes but they rarely if ever do. This is why so many American games are harder. Renting games was never banned or controlled by the IP holder.

[@briankarcher8338]

Old computers also used to record your BIOS settings the same way - SRAM with a 2032 battery. Sometimes if you made a mistake in the BIOS your computer would not boot and taking the battery out and back in was the only way to restore it to default settings. I had to do that more times than I'd like to remember.

[@seanvinsick]

My original zelda still saves without replacement. Same with snes. I've only replaced 2 or 3 of them over the last several years

[@NesHacker]

Wow, that's impressive... I would have (and did) assume most the batteries were long gone by now.

[@schlangengrube157]

Another awesome video.😀 The possibility to just save data on the cartridge without dealing with a password was so pleasant during that time. Fun fact: I bought my own copies of Zelda 1 and 2 around 35 years ago, and they are still both keeping their saves without problems.

[@NesHacker]

Nice, yeah a lot of folks are writing in to tell me about their batteries still working. Looks like I might have goofed assuming they'd be dead, my bad! 😅

[@darkalman]

Can confirm the button batteries in my Legend of Zelda, FF1, Star Tropics, and several other games are original and still working which is astonishing I have had to swap out a few of them over the years, but several still work

[@nickfromm5315]

It’s amazing that battery technology is capable of fitting into compact discs and the modern flash storage.

[@muad2323]

Watched this video in an attempt to find out what amount of data the save has - didn't find out. Still, worth watching. Thanks!

[@modenoatr]

They did something similar with Game Boy games, especially the Pokémon Gen 1 and Gen 2 games. Interestingly, the more recent second generation cartridges are the ones that saw the earliest dead batteries, because they pull double duty both with preserving save files *and* keeping the in-game, real-time clock running.

[@fershnibbity330]

This was super interesting, and-I mean this in the best way- helped me fall asleep. You’ve earned my subscribe for sure!

[@nowhere529]

Shout out to all the Old School players of Faxanadu and its awful passwords.

[@goofball236]

This has got to be one of the most important games in history. It was a very good example of how to make an action adventure game and it was the first home console game to implement a save system. Thanks for making this video about this!

[@NesHacker]

You're very welcome. I tried my best to present it as such, giving it the attention and research it warranted.

[@goofball236]

@@NesHacker the research is very developed and credible. you just earned a subscriber!

[@yogxoth1959]

Commenting to counter the bots. Very interesting video btw, I’m currently learning how to program games for the NES myself.

[@NesHacker]

Nice! I wish you luck on your learning journey :)

[@ssl3546]

Kinda wish you'd talked about the data Zelda stores, because it seems like a lot when you play the game - it remembers when you leave a single enemy on a screen, it remembers which room items you've taken, etc. The answer "it's an SRAM chip that gets copied from WRAM when the game is over" is obvious and well-known.

[@NesHacker]

Yeah maybe, but I also think the video has value for the way I provide historical and emotional context.

[@Finity_twenty_ten]

In other words, The original Legend of Zelda doesn't save your game, it just never turns off completely.

[@mattbillenstein]

First game that had this feature for me was Dragon Warrior - I never thought about how it worked much more than there was a battery inside - neat stuff.

[@laserfloyd]

We bought a used Zelda cartridge a few years back and it still had the original saves on it. Pretty neato. And yes, going from disk based PC games to NES was like traveling into the 4th dimension. I didn't touch PC games for years after the console wars started, lol.

[@TheD3cline]

growing up we would have failed batteries and we would often replace them, but tthe carts would also fail over time. Zelda 2 cart was notorious for this as each copy i had as a kid would eventually corrupt. I got good at speed running Zelda 2 because that was the only way I could actually beat it.

[@NesHacker]

My Zelda 2 had the same issue, me and my cousin would just leave the NES on 24/7 as we made our way through the game...

[@TravisTev]

Interesting. I don't recall that on our particular Zelda II, but by brother and I both recall getting a particular type of save file corruption where one particular save slot would get filled with 0xFF bytes… and I could swear this happened on more than one occasion. But I assume it was more likely some result of the flaky contact design of the front-loading NES units we had, as we experienced quite a few lost game saves on account of that alone.

[@kildaver]

...what fresh blasphemy is THIS?! 😮

[@omegarugal9283]

sony makes batteries

[@NesHacker]

To be fair I own a couple of copies of the game. This was the "nice" one, so it's likely this was a replacement battery.

[@hicknopunk]

Sony makes bread in Japan

[@i-frames816]

Wait until you hear about blu-rays in modern consoles...

[@xnamkcor]

Look up who made the sound chip for the SNES.

[@mathgeniuszach]

Nintendo: reworks old solutions in new and innovative ways. Also Nintendo: no you can't mod your own hardware and our games that's illegal and infringes on our copyright!

[@phookadude]

A bunch of early PC games didn't use a separate save file, the executable was re-written to save the game. This was a pain, as some games could not be restarted anew.

[@vomitkermit3446]

Just checked, my games are still there

[@ben6273]

I have two copies of zelda for nes and both carts still save 😮

[@NesHacker]

This is coming up a lot! It seems it's a bit of misconception, that I accidentally propagated, that most batteries are dead. Apparently the SRAM uses so little power that a lot of games from that era can still save. I am gonna do some electrical experiments to see if I can figure out a rough estimate of the "shelf life" for Zelda battery soon 😀

[@NEStalgia1985]

Bro what's up with the Pluto splash screen music....2:22 it starts its too damn funny im waiting for another episode of macgyver to load and hearing the same music too funny

[@NesHacker]

Pluto? I am lost... I did change up the music this episode though, trying to go for more of a documentary feel with tracks that don't have drums 🤔

[@NEStalgia1985]

@@NesHacker I watch Pluto TV all the time and the music between shows is the same as your background music....too funny.....thought it was comical sorry to disrupt your chi....keep up the Good work

[@salvadormilanesbraniff3511]

This video has been an inspiration to me.

[@WannabeMarysue]

I loved the history of PC save games here.

[@NesHacker]

I am glad! I thought it important to put Zelda in context, since a lot of people just throw around the "first game with saves" thing. It wasn't, but it didn't make it any less cool or interesting, imho.

[@stevenjlovelace]

As someone who's old enough to have played these games when they were new, I remember being frustrated that Zelda let you save your progress while games like Super Mario Bros. didn't.

[@NesHacker]

Yep, but at least SMB gave us warps so we could skip levels that we've already played a million times xD

[@Idrinklight44]

Put some hours in during early 90s!

[@scaryfish91]

Properly fascinatng stuff, the agorithm gifted me something good for a change, thanks man! Big AHOY vibes in this one

[@bencox5994]

Awesome video

[@NesHacker]

Thanks!

[@David-ln8qh]

Great video. The US usually loses out on these sorts of comparisons but we really came out ahead when it came to our version of Zelda.

[@tsrenis]

Haven't watched the video yet but another advantage of the battery is that you could also use it to power a crystal oscillator for RTC to keep track of the time even when the game isn't being played like in Pokemon GSC. That usage was why it was kept in Pokemon RSE, despite the cartridge having flash memory for save data they still needed it to power the RTC Of course they ditched it when the DS came out because it had its own dedicated clock powered by the rechargeable battery

[@NesHacker]

Yeah I heard they did that, and that this causes serious drains on the batteries for the pokemon games as a result. Also: you should totally watch the video, it's banger xD

[@TravisTev]

Indeed, while I've regularly seen 2- and 3-decade-old cartridges with working SRAM batteries, the one in my Pokémon Crystal cartridge with its RTC barely managed 7 or 8 years or so. It would have been a bit more reasonable for Nintendo to have made the batteries in the RTC cartridges user-replaceable, but that probably would have raised the cost, and Nintendo only guaranteed a battery life of 5 years anyway.

[@om3g4888]

Ever thought of doing a look at Elite for the NES? It's probably the only game for the system that doesn't use sprites but instead uses a simple wire frame graphics system to generate 3D graphics and allows for free roaming 3D movement.

[@A.R.77]

Incredibly, my Game Boy Final Fantasy Adventure still has my games saved from 1993, to this day.

[@frenat]

My zelda cart had the battery die at about 7 years. After that point I could only keep the save if I left the console powered on. I remember opening the cartridge to see if the battery could be replaced and being disappointed that it was soldered in.

[@underwaterlevelz1947]

It's sad to think that the batteries in my carts will die someday. I'm glad I have the nes mini and snes mini, those save files are more "permanent"

[@NesHacker]

It's okay, you can always replace them. And anyway batteries go to battery heaven, where no battery ever loses a charge...

[@pigs81]

Why did some games make me hold reset before I turned off the power to the NES?

[@thomasrickelman5468]

maybe it's like when you jump from a height, and you tuck and roll when you land instead of letting your legs get broken... it softens the blow and it's not just an absolute shock to the system, maybe? - Heck, I'm not completely sure either, but if it works, it works. If you're looking for a technical answer to explain the difference I don't have it for you. But if Nintendo told us to do it, and it worked, then what else??? - Maybe the RESET gave the cartridge a moment to do the save, whereas just shutting if OFF didn't?

[@marcusbardstown505]

My friend and I are currently in the process of beating the second quest. Prior to starting, replacing the save battery was a must... even though it is an OG 5 screw cart which was still saving, we opted to take no risks. I would have loved to hear the techy explanation behind needing to hold the reset button while powering off to assure your save game isn't corrupted / lost. In any case - a great video. Thank you for this.

[@IsuKen]

History usually doesn’t care who did it first, it just cares who did it best.

[@Elektronaut]

Interesting video and great presentaion! Based on the title I was expecting a video on how the current game state is captured and written into a save file. And maybe how this is then restorend when one loads a save file. Maybe a topic for another video ;-)

[@krisreddish3066]

What is super funny as far as The Mandela Effects go. I distinctly remember two versions of Zelda on cart for my NES, one grey that made you type in a password and one gold that came out about a month later and added some area and boat thing that was the first battery save cart.

[@faub3282]

I’ve got 4 copies of Zelda, 2 of them have original working batteries and the other two I’ve replaced. It’s the first time I’ve ever soldered. I’ve also replaced a battery in a copy of Dragon Warrior 2.

[@davidbandler]

I believe my original release gold shell Zelda still that I got as a kid still is holding its save files (at least last time I checked maybe 3-5 years ago.) Played it until I beat when I was younger, and really hadn't touched it since. My wonder is - if a cartridge had basically been never used or very minimally, how long would the essentially unused battery last powering the memory.

[@Myriadis]

That was a fairly interesting video, thanks for that! However, I also kinda want to know WHAT does Zelda 1 save and what did it do to keep the save file size low? Maybe someone has a link to some breakdown of the save format or anything, couldn't find anything so far.

[@jboy8735]

What’s the little monitor you had hooked up to your nes I need me something like that

[@Barnardrab]

That actually explains why my D&D: Warriors of the Sun game on Genesis wouldn't keep a save file.

[@fattomandeibu]

Man, I had to load my games off cassette tapes at that time as cartridges and floppy drives were way beyond my budget, can't imagine complaining about a floppy drive being slow.

[@GeorgeTyson-wu2zg]

Your reminding me how the Sega Saturn console saves your games once that battery dies you need to replace it and you lose all your saves that’s why playing games like panzer dragoon isn’t worth playing on Saturn and that’s why playing Zelda on the NES isn’t worth it either now I know why my game was deleted and so was donkey Kong country it was erased my saves but now after these old consoles are done once the PS1 got released there was a memory card that can save your games very safe the cartridge for Sega Saturn was trash it would stop working no matter how many times you blow in it doesn’t work the Saturn sucked at saving games and so did the older consoles before it but now in 2024 memory is no longer the issue it’s hard drive space to install games

[@michaelhamilton6668]

As of a couple weeks ago, my copy of Zelda is still holding my save!

[@Dejan27]

Hoping you'll read this comment. I'm working on a RomHack for Akumajou Densetsu and due to the goal of my project, I have to look into Castlevania III as well. AD used the VRC 6 chip while CIII used the MMC5 chip, therefore I need to understand the differences between those chips. So my question is: Do you know where I can find good infos about it? A video of yours about it would be awesome, but I don't want to bother your schedule Thank you

[@erniesdeck7550]

My Zelda cart actually still has the original battery and it's still good I tested it with a multimeter. I was very surprised

[@dfailsthemost]

I think the saving on LoZ contributed to my enchanted view of the game.

[@hokiper]

I kept ignoring the notificationof this video thinking it was a short until now

[@johneygd]

Aside from that zelda game,pop chips was really ahead for it’s time as well😆

[@NesHacker]

It's a very weird game. I have yet to really give it a playthrough...

[@zuraxle5012]

It’s crazy that saving was a big deal. I was born in 02 so I just had these things in the games I grew up with

[@patrickholt8782]

If my Zelda cart starts up with a blinking red light it’ll wipe the save. Does that happen to anyone else?

[@thomasrickelman5468]

yep, happened to me too. Our NES had a loose connector or something, and we made it to the last dungeon, made it to the Ganon fight after getting the silver arrows, and after putting in all the hours and effort to get there, my little brother walked by and accidentally bumped the Nintendo... it went blinking red, and when we got it running again ALL of the saves were wiped out... we lost EVERYTHING in a flash! - I could have cried. It took us a while before we were willing to take the risk and try again, but we made sure the cart and the NES were in great condition before we put in that much time and effort into it again. Of course, this was long ago, and people can simply watch youtube for the Zelda ending now, but yeah, back then if you wanted to see a game's ending, you had to really work for it. No internet video then.