Kid Icarus NES Save Battery?

[wingzrow]

Does anyone know why kid icarus has a place to put a save batter on the chip? I was cleaning mine and noticed you could solder a save battery onto it if you wanted to.

[gokugohandave]

Maybe they just used the pcb of another game when they ran out or something.

[shaggy]

Maybe they just used the pcb of another game when they ran out or something.

That's what I was going to say.

[Orion Pimpdaddy]

They may have intended to have a save feature, but were unable to develop it in a cost-effective way before launch.

[jb143]

Do other kid icarus's not have the same board layout? It's extremely common in circuit boards to have "missing" components like that. It's cheaper to design and manufacture 1 board that will work for multiple products than to do 1 of each.

[Mr. Smashy]

A battery save would have been nice. The password system in Kid Icarus is pretty ridiculous.

[Game Freak]

BOTH Kid Icarus and Metroid had save batteries on their Japan releases. Perhaps when they were porting them to America, they initially intended to use save batteries, but forewent their use in order to save on manufacturing costs. It's all good for the players, right?

[dendawg]

BOTH Kid Icarus and Metroid had save batteries on their Japan releases. Perhaps when they were porting them to America, they initially intended to use save batteries, but forewent their use in order to save on manufacturing costs. It's all good for the players, right?

Were they re-issued as carts in Japan? AFAIK they were both FDS games, correct?

[megasdkirby]

Would it be technically possible that, by adding a battery and correct configuration to the game, new options will appear on the game screen? I am pretty sure this has to be written on the game programming itself, but believing that it is, would this be possible?

[Game Freak]

Were they re-issued as carts in Japan? AFAIK they were both FDS games, correct?

Ah my mistake. Kid Icarus on the FDS still had "save slots" nonetheless. Since the FDS never made it to the US, they wanted to use batteries i guess.

[jb143]

Would it be technically possible that, by adding a battery and correct configuration to the game, new options will appear on the game screen? I am pretty sure this has to be written on the game programming itself, but believing that it is, would this be possible?

I doubt that they did it that way but it would probably take more than just adding a battery. The way most engineers would handle something like this (I don't know about for games though) would be to set a pin either high or low(cutting a trace). The only way to really know for sure would be to look at the code. It wouldn't just work though since a cart uses ram that a disc wouldn't have.

[gdement]

Would it be technically possible that, by adding a battery and correct configuration to the game, new options will appear on the game screen? I am pretty sure this has to be written on the game programming itself, but believing that it is, would this be possible?

A battery backup wouldn't be compatible with floppy drive code.
The only thing that could theoretically work is to get the game to boot with the previous "continue" status still in RAM. It's doubtful though.

From the photo, I see a chip labelled LH5164D3.
From a google search, it looks like LH5164 is an 8KB SRAM chip. So it does have cart memory and the game is obviously programmed to use it. But we don't know what it gets used for.

You'd have to hope that the game uses the cart RAM (not console) for storing the "continue" status. Also, you have to hope that when it boots, the game will check for this "continue" status rather than automatically launching a new game.

If both of those things are true, then you also have to hope that the game doesn't automatically wipe the whole cart RAM when it boots. It probably does.
What happens when you hit reset in this game? If it loses the save, then that would prove this won't work.

You'd have to be really lucky for all these things to work out, but it's possible. If so, you probably would need to replace the SRAM chip with a low power version (designed to be used with battery backup). There's also a couple diodes required in addition to the battery.


If someone was really determined they could disassemble the code and modify it, but that's much more complicated.

[b1aCkDeA7h]

Any NES game that had a ridiculous password system was likely a Famicom Disk system game. The best examples I can think of are Kid Icarus, Metroid, and Castlevania 2.

I think the first battery save NES game was Legend of Zelda. As a whole, the password system was made, I think, as a cost effective measure as it is one less material component for production.

Remember, this was during the period when Nintendo of America was off their rocker and extremely strict to game developers, who had to bend over backwards to even get games here, and were limited in the number of games they could bring over here per year (five per publisher if memory serves). Some companies were smart enough to get around the game limit though (Ultra anyone?).

Save features converting to passwords were just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how gimped some NES games came, regardless of how classic and good they are.

[gdement]

As a whole, the password system was made, I think, as a cost effective measure as it is one less material component for production.

Definitely. For battery backup you need:

bigger PCB (which makes it more expensive)
couple of diodes and maybe a capacitor (cheap stuff)
battery
low power version of the RAM chip (prob more expensive than a standard type)

The cost is more reasonable if it's a game that already needs RAM anyway. If it only needs RAM to allow a save feature, it probably cost way more than it was worth.


They ended up doing this on 16-bit era games, where they'd have 8KB of cart RAM on a system with 64-128KB in the console. So clearly in those cases the RAM wasn't needed except for the save feature. But by that time an 8KB SRAM probably didn't cost so much anymore.

[channelmaniac]

The chip that is in there is a low-power version.

The -15L signifies 150ns access time Low power. It requires 25uA max power to retain data. (uA = microamps)

If you can find a -15LL version of the chip then it would be 2uA max power to retain data and the battery would last even longer.

Do the checks mentioned to see if the cart will run without wiping the memory then try to put the missing diodes and battery in and see if it will store the game data. Be sure to let it sit for a couple of days just to make sure it is storing it.