Weird glitch with the DS?

[Captain N]

I wanted to know if this happens to anyone else or if they could test this out.

I was playing Megaman Battle Network 2 today and I paused the game in the middle of a fight and shut my DS. I opened it back up and the game was frozen. I had this problem before and today I managed to figure out it was my shutting the DS that caused this to happen.

Anyone else have this issue?

If not and you have a DS, if you have a GBA game that can pause ( meaning like stopping everything from moving on the screen ) pause it and shut the DS and leave it there for a few seconds open it up and see what happens. Wondering if it's just the game or my DS.

[Tom the First]

I just tried my bro's DS with Warioware, and it worked fine.

[Blackwolf]

In DS games, if you shut the case, it goes into sleep mode. In GBA games, it does this too - in games that support the feature. Megaman Battle Network 2 might have some kind of bug in it that intercepts the DS "Go to sleep" message call and then winds up locking up. It's a bug they wouldn't have been able to see when they made the game, since it was before the DS came out.

[Captain N]

Ah I see, so does this mean like any game that can't go to sleep mode will glitch like this?

Edit: This can't like damage the game or anything right? I don't want to have wasted 17 bucks :/

[Blackwolf]

Ah I see, so does this mean like any game that can't go to sleep mode will glitch like this?

Edit: This can't like damage the game or anything right? I don't want to have wasted 17 bucks :/

No on the glitch. If you're not a programmer, it's hard to explain, but I'll try.

When you do anything with a computer, such as hit a key, move the mouse, move a window, minimize/maximize a window, anything, that triggers an "Interrupt". Programs catch these "interrupts" and then do something with that IN THE CODE. You have to specifically program for it. (Yes, Windows programmers have to specifically code what to do when you resize a window. It's a bitch. At least if you're doing straight API work and not using Visual Tools.)

Console and handheld games work the same way, but on a much smaller scale. You usually just have the buttons that trigger "Interrupts", but on the DS, closing the case also triggers an "Interrupt". Most GBA games probably don't pay any attention to this "Interrupt" and let it go on it's merry way, since this isn't triggered in a GBA or GBA SP. However, this one game might actually capture that "Interrupt" by accident, which only occurs in the DS. And then, in it's handling code, it probably has a memory leak and crashes hard.

Considering the game is read-only, you won't damage the cartridge this way. You just have to reboot the system. You can say it's shoddy programming (Capcom may be trying to trap EVERY "Interrupt" and then it locks up when it doesn't understand one) or you can just say it's something they wouldn't know about because the DS wasn't out yet.