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@hi_cial yeah if it says corrupted save it's the battery
not surprising; pokemon gsc drained batteries fast because the real-time clock consumes additional power on top of the tiny amount the sram needs, while other games just had to keep the sram powered
so the battery in a pokemon gen 2 cart usually lasts around 5ish years, while other gb/gbc games could last around 10-15 years
-F
@hi_cial it's quite possible that the battery is just strong enough that enough of the save data survives for the game to see that there is data there and gives you the continue option, but once it tries to read the whole save file it gets a bunch of nonsense, error detection kicks in, and it says you have a corrupted save
-F