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I thought I had finally established that only Ocarina of Time used a battery-powered save feature, whereas the sequel Majora's Mask had advanced to a flash-based save memory which didn't require a battery (and thus the savegames will last forever)... But then I read this:

Miscellaneous Attributes Battery Backed RAM

Source: https://www.mobygames.com/game/n64/legend-of-zelda-majoras-mask/techinfo

What gives? Is it battery-powered or not? What does "Battery Backed RAM" even mean? That's a very odd phrasing for a battery-based save feature... Are they talking about something else?

Also, I've been trying to verify that the resolution used by both this game and Ocarina of Time is 320 x 240 pixels. I can't find this information anywhere, and considering how MobyGames apparently cannot be trusted to contain correct information, I'm not even sure how I could be sure that the answer for that is correct...

I find in general that Wikipedia articles virtually never contain any useful technical information like this, and whenver I DuckDuckGo these games, no matter what phrases I add before or after, all I find are "ROM download" piracy sites, which is not what I'm looking for. I'm eager to hear if you know of some kind of properly verified wealth of information for N64 (and other) games.

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  • The Stack Exchange format works best—and encourages moderators to actually enforce—when you have one question per Question. You are more likely to get better answers, faster, if you break out the resolution question into its own Question.
    – KRyan
    Dec 14, 2019 at 0:19

1 Answer 1

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"Battery-backed RAM" is exactly what it says on the tin. In the older battery-backed cartridges the chip storing the data is a RAM chip, just like the ones in your console or PC - the only difference is that while the PC or console are expected to eventually be turned off and have their RAM contents wiped, the battery-backed RAM chip is continuously kept powered so that it doesn't happen.

This repository of N64 board images shows Majora's Mask to contain a 29L1100KC-15B0 chip, which is a flash memory chip. Also, obviously, there's no battery on the board:

majora

Compare Ocarina of Time with its LH52V246AD chip and a battery holder:

zelda

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    Having just opened both my Majora's Mask and OoT cartradges with a melted pen to take a photo of the innards, I'm salty that you beat me to it. Nice answer.
    – schil227
    Dec 13, 2019 at 13:24
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    @schil227 I mean, do post the pictures please!
    – Kyll
    Dec 13, 2019 at 20:13
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    OP's assumption is also flawed in that the first three games (The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past) all used batteries as well.
    – sirjonsnow
    Dec 13, 2019 at 20:39
  • @sirjonsnow I feel lost. Where did OP make any assumption that relates to the NES and SNES Zelda games and how they saved games?
    – Logarr
    Dec 13, 2019 at 22:27
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    @Logarr That would be the opening line of the question, “I thought I had finally established that only Ocarina of Time used a battery-powered save feature.” I think it’s pretty certain that Mayor Link was referring to “out of the N64 Zelda games,” (though this is still somewhat odd phrasing, since there are only the two).
    – KRyan
    Dec 14, 2019 at 0:18

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