Nintendo DS Game Cards - Battery backed saves?

[Cauterize]

Quick story/question...

Just bought some Nintendo DS games from the flea market near by, theyre all in great condition and look ready to play. 2 copies of Age of Empires and a Metroid Prime Hunters.

However, upon selecting Age Of Empires from the DS OS Screen (or whatever you want to call it), the DS goes to two black screens.
Both copies of Age Of Empires do this :-\

Metroid Prime does the same, however it doesn't do it until after the intro video with the falling glowing ball. Two black screens...

So this lead me to believe that there is something wrong with the battery backed saves etc...
Considering the carts are being detected and loading (somewhat), it seems that at certain times, everytime, the game will lock up. From what i gathered, this point is where the DS Card is looking for saved data, but cannot find it/its corrupted for whatever reason... ending up locking itself up.
(If im wrong please correct me)

Just to clarify, I have two DS's, both original old models and it does it on both so the problem isnt my unit.
Secondly, all three games were bought from the same person

So my questions are;

1. Is this the case, have the batteries died or something?

2. If so, how do the batteries work on the carts? are they rechargeable batteries using power from the main unit or are they just like every other cart based game with battery backed saves using standard batteries?

3. How would i fix this? and if so, how on earth do you open up a DS card!?

Ive searched the web and cant find anything on this, the only talk about black screens while loading up is referring to the flash cards.
Any help with this will be appreciated :) Thanks in advance!

Adam

[boatofcar]

I dunno man...you might want to just see if you can return the games. Sounds like a pretty unfixable problem given the way DS carts are constructed.

[robotriot]

I think there's no battery in DS carts, since the savegames are being stored on flash memory, which is non-volatile by nature.

[Enixis]

By any chance did these ds games come complete with their cases and manuals? The blank screens you mentioned could be due to it being bootleg ds carts (hopefully not though). If you could post some pictures up, someone might be able to tell whether the carts are legit.

[Cauterize]

By any chance did these ds games come complete with their cases and manuals? The blank screens you mentioned could be due to it being bootleg ds carts (hopefully not though). If you could post some pictures up, someone might be able to tell whether the carts are legit.

Definitely legit, came with cases and manuals. Even the Metroid Prime has the holographic cover etc.
Trust me, i can spot a fake ;)

[Bratwurst]

This is exactly why I won't collect DS. The cards are not meant to be opened + flash memory that could die = worthless product.

[The_4th_Survivor]

You know, I had something similar happen to me, in terms of a game save for a DS cart.

A few months ago, when "Castlevania: Portrait Of Ruin" was released for the DS, I picked it up on launch day and played it for about 20 hours+ (I want to have everything in all of my CV games!).

As I was playing through the game again, using an old game save, it had locked up a couple of times during the saving process.

The game gave me an error message, something to the effect of "Game save error. Please turn of DS to try again".

The effect? It totally wiped out the game save I was using. In other words, 20+ hours of game time (and all those items and power-ups) Went down to nothing. Needless to say, I was pissed, but I was able to at least exchange the defective copy at a local GS store.

To this day, I still haven't opened up my replacement copy of PoR, so I just might have to, at least to replay again.

The other interesting thing about that particular defective cart was that it felt 'loose' in it's casing. By that, I mean, is if you shake the tiny DS cart, it feels as if the ROM chip is not secure in the DS cart casing. I asked other PoR owners about it and they too, claimed that their carts where also somewhat 'loose', but they had no problems with saving, etc. .

Perhaps your problem has something to do with the flash memory?

[Cauterize]

Cheers for the story The_4th_Survivor, makes me feel less ripped off :)

Update: This is most bizarre...

After another look, i opened up Metroid Prime, this time able to get to the Title Screen, i was able to select files/delete them etc. However upon clicking start new game it froze again.
So it cant be the Flash Memory that is causing the problems, considering i was able to delete data and see the percentage completed by the previous owner.

So what the hell is going on with these carts?

The only irrational explanation i have is that the circuity got so cold in the morning being out on a stall that it refuses to work...

Seriously though? Any ideas now? It all makes no sense!

[GM80]

There was an issue with the first batch of Age of Kings where a save+quit could corrupt and brick the cartridge if your profile name was shorter than 4 characters in length. Google will tell you more about it, but I've seen plenty affected and wouldn't take my chances buying a used AoK anywhere.