Found my old Pokémon Crystal save file with PCNY events and eggs [Gen II]

Hello! ​

I got into contact with an old friend who had a device to dump save files to a computer back then. I asked him if he still had the save or the computer and he still had the old IBM laptop in question with the save file on it in a No$Gmb save folder, but didn't know it at first.

I tried to load the save file on VBA but it just loaded a "new game" like there was no save. There was like no way to load this save. But I tried to load the save file on PKHex and it loaded! It was the save file we were looking for with the events on it! But it wouldn't load.

One time I had a Pokémon Blue save file corrupted and was able to use it again by loading it on PKHex, saving it with the program and using the new file with VBA and it would work. So I did the same with the corrupted Crystal save file and it worked!

I saw these kind of events were rare so I decided to share them, here they are!

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Do you mind me asking if you or your friend personally attended these events back in the day? Any stories about receiving these events in person would be great

 

We did! It was brief and I unfortunately moved to France not long after but I still have memories of it since I was like 16 when it happened. I remember we used to hang around the Pokémon Center a lot looking for trades and we came with all of our friend's, cousins, mom's, grandpa's carts (lol) to get a ton of Pokémon.
Another (painful) memory is getting home and discovering that ly sister's save was corrupted after attending one of the event (maybe a Celebi? I don't exactly remember) and we could never restore it.

 

Hehehehehe unfortunately I'm not THAT lucky. As I obtained most of the eggs myself, all the shiny Pokémon were obtained by trades except Celebi. I remember throwing a whole bunch of Pokémon cards to get this shiny Mewtwo.

 

Awesome stuff, so awesome to hear about this stuff all of these years later. For what it's worth, when we were redeeming a lot of Gen2 PCNY Pokemon for preservation, we also had several saves get corrupted. There is some problem with the Gen2-era distribution that can totally nuke the GBC saves with CPLD data.

Since your friend was backing up all these save files, were they also duplicating/cloning Pokemon to trade haha? We've heard stories like that in the past from PCNY attendees, and any more stories would be greatly appreciated

 

Do you have any more friends that could potentially have any other saves? I missed out on getting Chikorita, Totodile and Cyndaquil.

 

I am trying to flash this save file to my own copy of Crystal, but when I do, it says the file is too large and corrupts my game, with no way of playing the cartridge afterwards. My program says the file is too large, being close to 33kb when the game can only hold 32kb. After flashing a different save to the cartridge it reverses whatever bad code is making the game fail to load, but why is this? How can I get this save file onto my own cartridge?

 

I also have a save file that is 33kb that I cannot get onto a cart. Are you able to share how you trim out the RTC data?

 

Can this be possible on the VC version?

 

Indeed, a very obscure collection you guys preserved, it was best decision for your friend to dump this rare save files, i wish if we could move or transfer this pokemons to later generation