Topic: GBC games crashing on GBA SP

Hi everybody, i'm starting off my forum "career" with a tough one: I have a GBA SP (The NES-retro version), and certain GBC-games crash when i play them on it (play just fine on my GBC, but the SP has backlight for those... sub-optimal lighting situations), so far "Legend of Zelda: Link's awakening DX" and "Super Mario land 2: six golden coins" crashed on it, thinking the carts might be broken i bought different ones, but they crash too, so it's something with the GBA SP...

Is there anything i can do about this? (Besides playing them on my GBC and squinting hard ), thanks in advance for any help.

How do the games crash exactly? Maybe you should try blowing the dust out of your cartridge slot, or you might need to replace your GBA SP if it's just faulty I guess.

Yeah because mine did that too but all i had to do was either shake it to see if it rattles (piece fell out) or just simply blow on the bottom to make sure it isn't dusty. Hope This Helped!

Well, a year or two ago I was playing my copy of Link's Awakening on my SP (original version). Worked mostly fine, except a couple times it just randomly reset on me. But I managed to finish it.
Then I tried to play Oracles of Ages (finished it with no problems one time several years earlier).
I'm the original owner of LA and OoA was preowned. The only thing I can think of is once the bag I had been storing my GB carts in just kind of deteriorated, making them dirty. I got a new plastic container for them and cleaned the games first.
So, my suspicious was the battery, so I ordered a few new ones from Nintendo, and I replaced it. Not sure about the reseting, though I know the battery light on the SP still seems to change rather randomly.

The games play just fine for a while (Sometimes minutes, sometimes hours), and then just freeze, no garbled screen or anything, just "Lights on but nobody home", so to speak...

GBA games are 100% reliable though, not a single crash with those, which is partly why it's all so strange, since slot-trouble would affect those as well.

Maybe a power issue, I can only guess?
If I remember right, the GBC CPU uses more power than the GBA (I've heard which one to use is determined by a tiny switch that gets pressed down by GB/GBC carts).

Problem is that i got my SP second-hand, i bought it about 2 years ago (Had a regular GBA, but really wanted the backlight), so there's no telling what the previous owners did with it, i also charged it with my DS-adaptor, thought that might be the problem, but it's identical to the SP one, down to the part number, so that can't be the problem.

I'll see if i can find a replacement battery somewhere i suppose (Though i'd honestly expect it to just shut down rather than freeze with the screen staying on and the speaker still buzzing), hope i don't end up having to replace my trusty NES-SP model, love that design and it's pricey to get nowadays.

A similar thing happened to me while playing GB games on the Gameboy player on GC where they would freeze. But yet they work perfectly on my Gameboy and GBA.

I asked the same question on the racketboy.com forums (A website devoted to retro-ganing, seemed like a good place for a "second opinion" ), and over there somebody said it might have to do with a little switch inside the cartridge slot that is pressed by GB/GBC games and not by GBA games (it switches between GBC chipset and GBA one, that's why GBA games have that indentation at the back corners), problem being that in older systems where cartridges have been put in and taken out a lot you get a bit of cartridge wiggle-room that might cause GB/GBC games to not press that switch properly (or in the case of the SP, wiggle the switch from GBC to GBA mid-play)

Bit of a wall of text, i know, but it makes sense, only thing to do about it is buy another GBA SP (or GB player, as the case may be)

Weird. I happen to own a copy of Super Mario Land 2 and that works like a dream on GBA SP.