so it's been kind of a running gag that every time i try to beat Mega Man: The Wily Wars (aka Rockman: Mega World, a Super Mario All Stars-like collection of the three NES Mega Mans on the Sega Genesis with some bonus levels) i end up losing all my progress. The original cartridge used a stupid little EEPROM to save data, which emulators didn't support for a very, very long time (and still don't, in many cases!). a variety of ROM hacks have been created over the years to try and address this issue, none of which have actually worked for me for one reason or another; i complete a game, go back to the file select, and oops wouldn't you know it my progress is gone! again!
i found out the other day that the MiSTer Genesis core (recently?) added support for this awful little EEPROM. i was intensely skeptical, for good reason, but decided to load up the unpatched ROM and give it a try. it actually saved my data! hallelujah!! with a burning determination in my soul, i spent much of the last two streams slogging my way through three horrendously unoptimized and janky games, and finally unlocked Wily Tower. by this point it was pretty late, so i reset the game, made sure my cleared file was still there, and wrapped up my stream and turned off the MiSTer. i was feeling pretty good!
a short while later, i got a horrible sensation in the pit of my stomach, and turned the MiSTer back on to check the integrity of my save file. lo and behold, all of my progress in Mega Man 2 and 3 was gone. at some point, the "autosave" feature in the Genesis core got turned off, and being unaware of this, i turned off the system without committing the new EEPROM data to disk.
i hate this fucking game.
