I'm not having much luck with this game. When I selected my file I was in a part of the town that I wasn't in when I last saved. It was the right town but not the right spot and there was no music. I left the town and whenever I moved the sprites representing areas that you can access from the world map, literally lifted off the ground and kept moving to the left until the game crashed. I have now lost over 20 hours worth of save data.

Has anyone heard of this problem before?

The game commited suicide after seeing the sales for the DS game.

that unfunny joke out of the way, wow that's bizarre and unfortunate. That's awful, but I've lost hundreds of hours of data in several games before so 20 hours would not be a huge deal to me all things considered.

If I ever do start over again, (and if I do it won't be for a while as I don't want to repeat over 20 hours worth of game time anytime soon) should I attempt it again on the same cartridge or find a third one?

Sounds like you have a bad cart. Likely the save battery is dying.

I guess, I may have to buy a third cart when I eventually feel like restarting it then.