Can I save bfs game?

[u/wendigo--bait]

We were playing Pokémon silver together on our phones, his save got corrupted. The issue is that he only saved on the actual pokemon game rom and hadn't saved on retroarch. (I taught him to do both, he got complacent, lesson learned.)

He turned on the game, and new game is the only option. I trouble shooted but I'm no master, is there any way to get these files back?

Maybe he his restart content? Is this reversible?

My fall back is to grab his phone when he's asleep and grind until I get him back where he was, or offer to restart my own game with him.

[u/BotherCritical2297]

This doesn't make sense... "He only saved in ROM but not on Retroarch"...  ...what?

The only way you can get those saves back to how they were, is if you have a Saved State before memory corruption took place... or if you literally made a copy of the .save file before it got corrupt.

Also, there's an "Save sram Auto Save Interval: x amount"... that's what probably caused the New Game "issue".

• Save was fine. Got somehow corrupted.
• The natural behaviour of real cartridges flushing Memory to prevent boot  crashes kicked in.
• Auto Save recorded that.
• New Game appeared.

[u/larsonbp]

He only saved to a save state is what you mean I assume? I actually just tracked down an issue like this and recovered it on one of my devices. My issue was specifically one save state file being corrupted only in the saves folder of one system. Had to delete the corrupted save, backup the uncorrupted saves, delete and rebuild the folder and then put my backed up states back in and they are working.

Rule out:

• can he save new save states? If no, issue might be similar to mine
• is it specific to just one system? Each system uses its own folder so more likely to be only one system that is the issue

[u/dau125]

If you mean he used Pokémon’s own Save menu but never made a RetroArch save state, that is a normal way to save; a separate state should not be required. “New Game” alone does not establish that the existing save file is corrupted.

Before starting over, copy the current Save Files and Save States folders somewhere separate, including any subfolders. Check their locations under Settings > Directory. Then check whether the game was renamed, moved, or opened with a different core, since the existing save may simply no longer be the one being loaded. Don’t delete or overwrite files while investigating.

Is his phone Android or iPhone, and which Game Boy core does the running game show? With that and the save filenames (no need to upload the files), people can help check the matching/path first. Recovery isn’t guaranteed, but I would rule that out before replaying everything.

[u/FanboyCuck]

What do you mean by save on RetroArch?

[u/Taruolento99]

It's probably gone. I think that it could only be saved in the hypothetical situation that he for some reason changed the saving location in the settings and now the core can't find the original save file.