End of an Era

So I've been playing around on one of my online games lately and managed to complete one of the monthly explorations. In this little scenario, you had the chance to go on a mission and nab the egg of a member of one of the Legendary trios. This time around, the two different explorations had you choose between the Beasts of Johto or the Golems of Hoenn.

I picked the Golems of Hoenn, since they weren't getting a lot of love. I don't understand why; they're pretty frelling awesome and they have the most epic battle music ever. My final egg choice was Registeel. Registeel, hands down, is my favorite of the Golems. Why? Just look at it. The thing's basically a friggin' robot. It even sounds like one to boot; when you catch it, its cry sounds like a slightly shortened transformation noise. Not kidding.

Autobots, roll out. Or something.

Once I had completed all the necessary steps to end the exploration and get my egg, I couldn't help feeling a little nostalgic. I had my own Regi trio on my old copy of Ruby, but hadn't sent them over to Emerald and had never migrated them to my copy of Pearl or Platinum. I kinda missed them.

So when Prime came home, I dashed upstairs to grab my old copy of Pokemon Ruby and trade my Regi trio over to Emerald. But when I turned on my GBA SP and had gone past the title screen for my Ruby, a message popped up on the screen:

The internal battery has run dry. The game can be played. However, clock-based events will no longer occur.

My heart broke a little. No more growing berries on my Ruby cart and no more free TMs, either.

Now, the internal battery can be replaced if you really feel the need to pester the old men in Pacifidlog Town regarding a free TM or Mirage Island. But since I don't feel the need to do either one, there really is no point in opening up my game cart to screw around with the battery.

It is a little depressing, though. Although the game itself runs on flash memory, just how long will that last before I lose any data? How long will my safe file, along with all of my Pokemon, last before I get an error message or simply get the New Game option?

It was a sobering thought. So sobering, in fact that I started moving a few of my Pokemon from Ruby to Emerald. I have yet to send over my old Rayquaza, but a few others are "safe". Among them are a pair of Registeels--one from Ruby and the other from Emerald.

They're now on my copy of Pearl and will soon be transferred to Black. But not before they get a Sinnoh League ribbon, of course. They deserve that honor.

There have been rumors and speculation for the last two years that Game Freak would do a pair of Ruby and Sapphire remakes. The newer DS systems don't have the backwards compatibility that the older ones do so it's impossible for some players to trade over Gen III Pokemon. I'm lucky--I still have two functional DS fats and a brand new, never opened DS Lite. I can trade with Ruby Sapphire and Emerald. But many others can't.

A remake looks pretty good right now. It's coming up on ten years(!) since the Hoenn saga was first released and plenty of those games are suffering from dead internal batteries, not to mention the lack of backwards compatibility. It's about time to bring Hoenn over to the DS. I'll be ready and waiting until then.