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Save files

What sorts of things can you do with save files?

You may be using a DS for the first time in your life because of the modding capabilities, or you may be returning to your childhood console to play the games you couldn't afford when you were younger. It really depends on your situation if you need to mess around with save files, but here is a conclusive list of the things this site can help you achieve with them.

  • Make save data backups from a game cartridge that has been played on
  • Unpack and decrypt digital game save data
  • Unpack and decrypt extdata (any saved data unique to your playthroughs such as Pokemon battle videos)
  • Convert save data unique to a file type (such as GBA save data) to save data compatible with a different file type of the same game (pokemon emerald.GBA -> pokemon emerald.CIA)

You can find instructions for the top three bullet points on this website, however the fourth one is detailed below.

Converting a GBA save to a CIA save

Situation I was in to need to know how to do this: I had a game running as a GBA on one console (a DSi XL) using GBArunner2 and converted the game to a CIA to run it on another console (an Old 2DS). My old save from when I was playing it on the DSi was for the GBA version of that game file, so I had to figure out how to give the same save data to the CIA version of the game to continue my playthrough.

Here is how I did it:

  1. Get the .sav file from the old console and store it safely somewhere on the new console's SD. It doesn't really matter where.
  2. Open this website and follow along. I couldn't organise this method here any more helpfully than they do.

This website has more information on a similar process in case the above link doesn't suit your situation.