I purchased my M3 Lite around xmas time for my DS. When I started using it, the game i was playing had no issues at all. The past 2 times I have played a game (Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker & FFTA2) I will save in game and then shut the DS off. When I come back to play the next day, its like it never saved. Playing FFTA2 the other day, I saved and quit around 20min into the game. I came back later and played for about 20 more minutes no problem. The original save was there. I saved the game, shut it off.. now I go back today and even though I triple checked that it saved, its still at the original 20 minute save game. I even saved in 2 slots. I know I have about 200MB free on my micro SD card so its not an issue of space. Can anyone assist? When I was playing DQM: Joker I lost about 6 hours worth of playtime because of this. Any help is appreciated.
I did some testing with FFTA2: I went in and performed a quick save then did the following: 1) Shut down and started back up. It retained the save. 2) Shut down, removed the M3, popped it back in, started it up. Still retained the save. 3) Shut down, removed M3 and MicroSD card, popped them back in, started it up, still retained the save. Each time I went in game and made a new save. So it doesn't appear to be an issue with removing the game. Is it required to go back into the game manager software within a certain timeframe after shutting a game off to ensure that it saves or anything? I'm stuck, please help.
There may be a patch for the ffta2 game that fixes this issue or a firmware update is needed for your m3.
A very common mistake. You have to have a .DAT file in the GAMESAVE folder with a filename that matches the GBA ROM. The easiest way to get this is to set the output folder in Gamemanager to a folder on your MicroSD, it should create one automatically. There is also a blank .DAT in the M3 Gamemanager folder, GBA.DAT. Copy that file to the GAMESAVE folder on your MicroSD and give it the exact filename of your GBA ROM, minus the extension.
1) FFTA2 is not on GBA, its a DS game. 2) There us a ffta2.dat file in the NDSSAVE folder. I just turned the game on this morning as it had been working ok.. and the saves somehow got corrupt. Everything gone. Now what? It looks like for firmware.. v34 is the newest and there is a game manager v36 out. Is this the most recent?
Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention to the game names. Try these patch settings for FFTA2: 1xDMA, Force R/W, Trim Rom, SoftReset Off) The M3 slot-2 firmware hasn't been updated in a long while, it wouldn't surprise me if newer games don't work... I had to pick up a cheap slot-1 cart last year, I'd recommend you do the same. I'm sorry if that isn't helpful.
Actually its very helpful. Thank you. I have thought about getting a new one for awhile. I let too many people tell me the M3 Lite was the best without doing any research on others. I have other complaints outside of the obvious. Guess I'll need to begin some arduous research soon Thanks for the help!
Don't get me wrong, it's a damn good Slot-2 cart, GBA compatibility is higher than any cart I've ever seen, but for NDS games it suffers only because it's no longer updated.
