Topic: Pokémon Yellow GBC

I have just bought 2 Pokémon Yellow cartridges for my Gameboy colour. They both play fine and save the game, but after a certain amount of time the Pokémon names become weird and I can't tell which is which. I thought it must be the battery, so I bought a tool and opened the cartridge. Inside, there is no battery and no metal arm things that keep it in place, or any solder. Is there any way to fix this?

EDIT - the part of the game that glitches is when I try to withdraw a pokémon from Bills PC. The names have all changed to symbols and if I click withdraw the game crashes to a blank screen. I've done as much research as I can, and everything I've found says it would be a dead battery. Both my games are bootleg and are running, playing and saving fine with no battery at all. Has anyone got an idea of what's going on with my games?

Do you mean there is a spot for the battery but nothing in it? As in there was evidence at some point there was a battery and battery clip but those were removed?
If there is no battery spot at all, it is a definitely a cheap bootleg. I don't have Yellow but I do have Red, Blue, Gold, Crystal and even a Japanese Green and ALL Pokemon games of that era used batteries.

All authentic Pokemon titles on GB/GBC and GBA use batteries, What you have is a genuine bootleg version of the game.

I think they must be bootlegs. They both look like they have a spot for the battery, a gold circle on one with 2 small gold squares where I think the arms would have gone, the other a smaller gold square again with 2 small gold squares where it looks like the arms would have connected. Neither has a battery though. Both save the game to the right place and with the right Pokémon, but the names are totally changed with symbols and squares. I have pictures but don't think I can post them on here.

@Dan991 You could, using PostImage. Upload pictures from your PC, and post the resulting link (be sure to use the one called "Direct Link") here with an image command, like in the example below:

Here's a link to the site:
https://postimages.org/
You can also make a free account and keep an online album, if you want.

@Dan991 Yesterday I changed the battery on my Pokemon Yellow cartridge. Just use tape and a new battery of the same model 2025.

Thanks thanos, this is the clearest image I could get.

I'm very surprised the games even have a yellow cart. From the looks of it, it's definitely a bootleg. While Pokemon yellow has a solid yellow case, if you look at the clear cases some Game Boy color games have, the carts with a battery in it usually have a board that fills up the cart.

To add to what @Link41x said, Pokemon Emerald, Ruby, and Sapphire use the battery for the clock. The GBA Pokemon games save to a flash chip. I have a copy of Pokemon Emerald, and the battery is dead, but the game still works and saves. Just means clock based events won't happen.

Yeah I checked videos on how to change the battery in the games before I took it apart, none of them looked like mine. Guess I'll be buying another cartridge soon. Thanks for the help.

@Dan991 This might not help much with the cart, Nintendo Life did an article and a video on spotting bootleg games. Maybe this might help with finding copies of games in the future.

If you happen to have a 3DS or a 2DS, but don't mind digital, the classic Pokemon games are on the 3DS eShop, including Yellow.

I'll give it a read. It's just so annoying that every part of the game works perfectly apart from storing Pokémon. Thanks for all the help.

Although it's surprising the bootleg even bothered with save memory at all (usually made to be as cheap as possible), I'm guessing they used an under-sized amount of memory. The PC is probably what takes up most of the save file on a real cart save memory, so much memory that the reason Gen 1 and 2 had to save the game every time you switch boxes it because it has to exchange an entire box between the saved game and the console RAM.
Whereas later consoles had enough RAM to have the entire PC loaded at once.