Help Pokémon Heart Gold

[Lava]

Hi everyone,

I've bought DraStic almost two years ago with the sole purpose of playing pokémon HeartGold on it. Back then, it was working great until I decided to defeat Elite Four for the first time. After I defeated them and the game restarted, the game just would start all over from the very begining. Then I was advised to com back to and old savestate and try to save it ingame, but it was of no use: the game said the file was corrupted and it would not save. I asked for some help over here and even uploaded my savestates, but it was said that there was nothing I could do about it and I should start all over. I was so pissed off that I simply stopped playing it.

Now I want to play it again, but I certainly do not want to go through the same situation: have a nice play but cant get past E4 and finish the first part.
Having said that, I want to ask you some tips on how to do this:
- Can I use savestates or is it too risky?
- Should I use only ingame saves? Will that prevent me having all those corrupted files from before? Will I be able to finish the whole game with no worries?
- I read that a corrupted ROM file could provoke those some problems. How could I know if I have a proper file? Do you guys have any sites to recommend?

Please understand that I'm just a player that wants to minimize any risks and enjoy the game!

Thanks you all

[Exophase]

You're tempting fate if you don't make in-game saves in the Pokemon games. In fact like you've seen you need to be able to make one at the end of the game. That doesn't mean you can't use savestates, you just shouldn't rely on nothing but them. I'd actually recommend using both. Maybe in-game saves less frequently.

As you've found out, the game is really finicky about considering saves corrupted. This can happen if your save looks like it's from the future. Something that can happen with savestates that are mismatched with in-game saves. In particular, if you turned off the default option to store in-game saves in savestates that can cause this problem (it was changed in order to help prevent this)

It also doesn't let you make a save if a save was already there when you started the game. Something you'd notice pretty quickly if you weren't relying on savestates.

For checking if a ROM is not corrupt I recommend using a database like this one: http://datomatic.no-intro.org/

[Lava]

Hi Exophase,

I really appreciate your reply! So I guess that throughout the game I should always be saving in-game from time to time, just to see if everything is going fine. And the main thing is to avoid using savestates from before the in-game save. That's basically it, isn't it?

Anyway, thank you for your tips!

[Exophase]

Yeah, I think that about covers it.

[TkSilver]

Lava a good rule of thumb is use savestates to save at those points you could not normally save or every 10 mins or so in case something messes up (this is emultion, it happens). When you are done playing make a full in game save just like you woukd do on the real thing. I also do a full game save for any important save position like I would if I was on my NDS but that is optional.

[Lava]

Lava a good rule of thumb is use savestates to save at those points you could not normally save or every 10 mins or so in case something messes up (this is emultion, it happens). When you are done playing make a full in game save just like you woukd do on the real thing. I also do a full game save for any important save position like I would if I was on my NDS but that is optional.

Yeah, TkSilver, that's what I was thinking about and it is probably what I am going to do. Thanks for the tip

I'm just having a hard time finding a decent ROM for Pokemon Heart Gold. The ones that I found were ranked as corrupted by the database Exophase recommended. I'm afraid using them might result on a bad gameplay.

Do any of you guys have a working ROM for HG or had any problems using one of these commonly found on the internet?


Thanks in advance!

[TkSilver]

1. Don't ever ask about roms on an emulator site. Most will flat out ban you.... we tend to warn first.
2. I tend to have no issues since I dump my own cartridges. Though I don't own this game so I can't be of any real help.