The Complete List of Cartridge Games with Battery-Backed Saves

If you've ever popped in an old RPG cartridge only to find your decades-old save file gone, you've met the enemy: a dead coin-cell battery. Long before memory cards or cloud saves, cartridge makers solved the "how do I save 40 hours of progress" problem by soldering a small lithium battery onto the cartridge board to keep a little chip of SRAM powered at all times — even with the console off. As long as that battery holds a charge, your save survives. When it finally dies (often 15-30+ years after manufacture), the save is lost or corrupted unless the battery gets replaced — one of the most common retro repair jobs we do.

We put together the list below to help our own team (and the wider collecting community) quickly answer "does this cartridge have a battery I should worry about?" It covers every major cartridge-based system, from the NES/Famicom all the way through the Game Boy Advance, organized by console with a jump-to-section menu so you can go straight to the system you're shopping or repairing for. Each console's list can also be collapsed if you just want to scan the section headers.

What counts as "battery-backed save" here: a physical battery inside the cartridge powering SRAM (or, in a few cases, powering both SRAM and a real-time clock chip). This list intentionally excludes password-save systems (no battery involved), games with no save feature at all, and cartridges that use EEPROM or Flash memory without a battery (common on later N64 and most GBA games) — those retain data without a battery, so there's nothing to eventually die.

A note on completeness: we cross-referenced multiple community-maintained sources (ConsoleMods Wiki, RetroSales, NESDev, FamiWiki, AtariAge, Data Crystal, and others — full list at the bottom of this article) and did our best to catch errors and omissions in any single source. For newer or lesser-known titles, always verify by opening the cartridge and looking for a coin-cell battery on the board before assuming. If you spot something missing or incorrect, let us know — we'll keep this list updated.

Jump to a console

• NES / Famicom
• SNES / Super Famicom
• Nintendo 64
• Game Boy / Game Boy Color
• Game Boy Advance
• Sega Master System
• Sega Genesis / Mega Drive
• Sega Game Gear
• Sega 32X
• WonderSwan / WonderSwan Color
• Cartridge systems with no battery-save games
• Sources

NES / Famicom (91 games) — shop NES / Famicom

The NES/Famicom popularized the battery-backed save at mass-market scale — The Legend of Zelda (1986 Japan / 1987 US) is widely credited as the game that started it all. Note that the original Japanese Dragon Quest I and II used password saves; it was the NES localizations (Dragon Warrior I & II) that added an in-cartridge battery. A handful of Famicom-exclusive titles (Battle Fleet, Famista '90, Kaijuu Monogatari, Mindseeker) use a lesser-known save method: 128 bytes of battery-backed RAM built into the Namco 163 mapper chip itself, rather than a separate SRAM chip.

SNES / Super Famicom (174 games) — shop SNES / Super Famicom

The Super Nintendo has the largest battery-save library on this list — nearly 300 confirmed titles, dominated by RPGs (Chrono Trigger, EarthBound, Final Fantasy III, Secret of Mana) and sports franchise games that needed to save rosters, standings, and season progress (the Madden, NHL, and NBA Live series alone account for dozens of entries).

Nintendo 64 (15 games) — shop Nintendo 64

Important note on N64 saves: most Nintendo 64 games that appear to "remember" your progress actually use EEPROM or FlashRAM built into the cartridge, which retains data without any battery at all — so they don't belong on a battery-save list, and we've left them off. Only the handful of games below use genuine battery-backed SRAM (the same CR2032 cell type used in the official Controller Pak memory card). This is a short, well-documented list — if you're aware of a verified title missing here, we'd love to hear about it.

Game Boy / Game Boy Color (296 games) — shop Game Boy / Game Boy Color

The Game Boy/GBC library is the largest handheld battery-save catalog on this list — over 200 confirmed titles between the original monochrome Game Boy and Game Boy Color. Special case: Pokémon Gold, Silver, and Crystal use a battery that powers both the save SRAM and a real-time clock chip for the day/night cycle and berry-growing mechanics — when that battery dies, you lose the clock function in addition to save reliability, which is why dead-battery Gold/Silver/Crystal carts are such a common repair request.

Game Boy Advance (22 games) — shop Game Boy Advance

By the GBA era, most publishers had switched to Flash memory for saves, which (like N64 EEPROM/FlashRAM) doesn't need a battery at all — so the GBA's true battery-save library is much smaller than the Game Boy Color's. Notably, Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald are the last mainline Pokémon cartridges to use a battery (for their internal clock), which is why so many original-battery Gen 3 Pokémon carts in the wild have lost their clock function or need a fresh CR1616.

Sega Master System (8 games) — shop Sega Master System

The Master System's battery-save library is small but notable — Phantasy Star (1988) is often cited as one of the first console RPGs to use a battery save outside of Nintendo's ecosystem.

Sega Genesis / Mega Drive (215 games) — shop Sega Genesis / Mega Drive

Like the SNES, the Genesis/Mega Drive's battery-save library is dominated by sports franchise games (Madden, NHL, NBA Live/Jam, college football) and RPGs (Phantasy Star series, Shining Force series, Landstalker). Many EA Sports titles used a battery every single year from '94 through '98.

Sega Game Gear (39 games) — shop Sega Game Gear

Game Gear cartridges are small but several RPGs, strategy titles, and Japan-only sports games used a battery save. Only Sonic Drift's battery type (CR2032) is well documented in parts catalogs; the rest use small coin cells of unconfirmed exact designation.

Sega 32X (5 games) — shop Sega 32X

Only a handful of 32X games used a battery save at all — this is a complete list across Japanese, US, and PAL releases.

WonderSwan / WonderSwan Color (31 games) — shop WonderSwan / WonderSwan Color

Bandai's WonderSwan and WonderSwan Color were Japan-only handhelds (1999-2003) but built up a real library of battery-save cartridges, including two mainline Final Fantasy remasters.

Cartridge systems with no battery-save games

Not every cartridge-based system has battery-save games — several either predate the technology or used external accessories/console memory instead. We researched these directly rather than assuming, so here's an honest accounting:

• Atari 2600: Predates SRAM+battery cartridge technology entirely; no official cartridge included a battery.
• Atari 5200: Shares cartridge lineage with the Atari 8-bit computers; no battery-save cartridge was found.
• Atari 7800: The closest exception is the officially designed (but cancelled pre-launch) Atari 7800 High Score Cartridge accessory, which used a battery + SRAM to save high scores across nine arcade ports — it never shipped in period and only exists today as a fan-made reproduction.
• Atari Lynx: Some Lynx games (S.I.M.I.S., Eye of the Beholder) save via EEPROM chips, which hold data without a battery — no genuine battery-backed Lynx cartridge was found.
• Atari Jaguar: The Jaguar CD's "Memory Track" was an external removable memory card plugged into the cartridge port, not a battery inside a game cartridge.
• ColecoVision: No official 1982-1985 era cartridge shipped with battery-backed SRAM.
• Intellivision: The only official persistent-storage path was the Entertainment Computer System's cassette-tape interface — an external accessory, not a cartridge battery.
• Neo Geo AES: Neo Geo saves went to an external, removable Neo Geo Memory Card (or the console's internal memory on Neo Geo CD) rather than a battery built into the game cartridge.
• TurboGrafx-16 / PC Engine (HuCard): HuCards themselves never included a save battery. Saving relied on the CD-ROM² base unit's internal memory, or external accessories like the Tennokoe Bank / Backup Booster / Memory Base 128.
• Neo Geo Pocket / Neo Geo Pocket Color: Save data is stored in the handheld's own internal memory (backed by the system's single CR2032), not in the game cartridge itself — so no individual NGP/NGPC cartridge qualifies as "battery-backed."

All told, that's 896 confirmed battery-backed-save cartridge games across every system we could document, plus the systems above with none. Whether you're restoring a save-battery-dead cartridge or just building out your collection, browse our full retro gaming catalog for tested, working cartridges across all the systems covered in this guide, or check out our cleaning & repair tools if you need to replace a dead save battery yourself.

Sources

This list was compiled and cross-checked against the following community-maintained references:

• ConsoleMods Wiki — List of NES Games with Save Batteries
• ConsoleMods Wiki — List of SNES Games with Save Batteries
• ConsoleMods Wiki — List of Nintendo 64 Games with Save Batteries
• ConsoleMods Wiki — List of Game Boy Games with Save Batteries
• ConsoleMods Wiki — List of GBA Games with Save Batteries
• ConsoleMods Wiki — List of Genesis Games with Save Batteries
• ConsoleMods Wiki — List of Master System Games with Save Batteries
• ConsoleMods Wiki — List of Game Gear Games with Save Batteries
• ConsoleMods Wiki — List of WonderSwan Games with Save Batteries
• RetroSales — List of NES Games with Save Batteries
• RetroSales — List of Game Boy Games with Save Batteries
• RetroSales — List of SEGA 32X Games with Save Batteries
• DKOldies — Complete List of Nintendo NES Games with Save Batteries
• NESDev Forums — List of NES games with a battery save
• NESDev Forums — Battle Fleet / Famista '90 / Kaijuu Monogatari / Mindseeker (Namco 163 mapper)
• NESDev Wiki — Cartridge and mappers' history
• Data Crystal — SRAM
• FamiWiki — Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord
• Wikipedia — Dragon Quest, Dragon Quest II, III, IV
• Wikipedia — Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei
• GameFAQs — Little Samson (NES) cheats/data
• Metal Gear Wiki — List of Metal Gear passwords
• AtariAge Forums — Battery-backed cartridge RAM? (Atari 7800)
• Atari Museum — The Atari 7800 High Score Cartridge
• AtariAge Forums — Atari 7800 games with saves
• AtariAge Forums — Save game feature (Atari Lynx)
• AtariAge Forums — Battery backed Coleco games
• Wikipedia — Entertainment Computer System (Intellivision)
• Wikipedia — BattleSphere (Atari Jaguar)
• BoardGameGeek — Memory Track (Atari Jaguar CD)
• NeoGeo Development Wiki — Memory card
• Official NEO-GEO Memory Card FAQ by Billy Pitt
• Black Falcon Games — TurboGrafx-16 & PC Engine Save/Backup Unit Information
• Wikipedia — Neo Geo Pocket
• Video Game Gem Vault — Sega Genesis games that take save batteries