Pokemon Red Compatability with Advance

[duanojo]

My son just purchased the original Pokemon Red (with Charizard) off of eBay, but when he tries to play it on his Game Boy Advance, all he gets is black boxes for the pictures.

Do we have a bad cart or a compatabilty problem? Has anyone experienced this before?

 

[Pikamaster]

Pokemon Red (to my knowledge) can't be played on a Gameboy Advance, the Gameboy Advance was made way later. It sounds like you might have bought a fake, but I'd need more info, pictures of the box, booklet (If there was one in those days), etc.

 

[Professor_Chris]

The Gameboy Advance (with the exception of the Gameboy Micro) is, indeed, fully backwards compatible with Gameboy and Gameboy Color games.

Regardless, its entirely possible that it is fake. There's also the chance that being so old, the cartridge may have been incredibly poorly taken care of if it was bought used.

 

[espeon1]

I don't know about it being fake. That sounds like what happened to my yellow after i accidentally dropped it in the toilet when i was 5. Does it look like you're throwing a box at another box when you throw pokeballs at pokemon?

 

[duanojo]

I don't know about it being fake. That sounds like what happened to my yellow after i accidentally dropped it in the toilet when i was 5. Does it look like you're throwing a box at another box when you throw pokeballs at pokemon?

Haven't gotten to that point yet, as my son gave up on it pretty quickly after discovering the problems.

As far as it being fake, it looks good. It's a red plastic cart and all, so I think it's okay. It doesn't look like, however, that it was well taken care of.

 

[Sandslash7]

Pictures would be great to determine if it is fake.

It could be that the internal battery is almost dead, my Red cartridge died about a year ago. (along with my Silver and Crystal, taking my save files with them... )

 

[Missingno]

Since cartridges use their own small internal memory chip, once the batteries die, it's a no-go. It might be that it accesses temporary memory for the image files.
Just a thought.

 

[Tagrineth]

The Gameboy Advance (with the exception of the Gameboy Micro) is, indeed, fully backwards compatible with Gameboy and Gameboy Color games.

It's actually only like 99% backwards compatible. The Gameboy Colour and Advance run the CPU a tiny bit faster (something like .02 MHz) while in Gameboy classic mode, which normally isn't a big deal, but there are a few games that are affected by the different timing. Notably, I learned this because Final Fantasy Legend II's sound gets messed up when played on anything but an original Gameboy or Pocket... the "bass" tones of the music cut out after a short while and stay gone until the sound changes, and the game will occasionally crash.

Since cartridges use their own small internal memory chip, once the batteries die, it's a no-go. It might be that it accesses temporary memory for the image files.
Just a thought.

The game data is on a non-volatile ROM chip. The actual game data will not go away unless the chip is damaged somehow (e.g. by a powerful electromagnet or by a short circuit). It's the save file that's stored on volatile RAM that requires a power source.

The most likely thing is that the contact to the game boy is very poor. I would suggest examining the contacts in the bottom of the cartridge, see if they're clean. If not, try using a soft, dry, and hopefully non-static cloth to wipe them clean (or you could try the crude "blow in the cartridge" method). It could even be corrosion on the contacts, though, which would definitely require at least wiping off.

 

[The King Of Magikarps]

Do you have a picture of the Cartridge? I have not heard of this problem before.