This year,thePokemonfranchise celebrates its 25th anniversary.Many fans have been capturing, trading, and battling their favorite monsters for two-and-a-half decades, experiencing 32 mainlinePokemontitles across a whopping 8 generations. With a successful series that has run for so long, it’s really no surprise that some olderPokemongames have begun to show their age in a variety of ways.
ManyPokemonfans revisiting their older gameslikePokemon Fire RedandLeaf Greenmay be greeted by a message saying that the game’s internal battery has run dry, resulting in an inability to experience some in-game events. While these older games have experienced battery death, for some reason, it seems that a much more recent Nintendo 3DSPokemontitle is giving many fans trouble.
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Over on Resetera,Pokemonfans have rallied around each other after discovering that their copies of the 2014 Nintendo 3DS gamesPokemon Omega RubyandAlpha Sapphirehave supposedly “stopped working.” One user in Germany noted that within their small video game community, around 50% of physicalOmega RubyandAlpha Sapphiregames refuse to start up, despite only being around 6 years old.
For whatever reason, the now-defective copies of the 3rd generationPokemonremakes only seem to be some European versions of the game. After a bit of makeshift crowd-sourced research, Resetera users have discovered that right now, it seems German copies ofOmega Rubyare the most likely to no longer boot up. Other users have expressed that their North American copies of the games haven’t worked for quite some time. While some fans expressed hope that they could be compensated in the form of a digital download for the game, it seems that some fans have sought official help to no avail.
One fan recounted that after discovering their GermanOmega Rubycopy had stopped working 2 years ago, they had reached out to Nintendo for help, only to be told that if it had been more than 2 years since the initial purchase of the game, which it had, it could not be replaced. Now, many fans are frantically checkingtheir many 3DS titlesin fear of losing their progress in a variety of games.
It’s worth noting that some fans have mentioned a similar situation with certain copies of the Nintendo 3DS gamePersona Qin the US. Now, whileNintendo has stopped supporting some 3DS applicationsand functionalities, fans are hoping that this issue could be amended as soon as possible.
Pokemon Omega RubyandAlpha Sapphirereleased June 18, 2025 exclusively for 3DS.
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