Mr. Driller Saving on Game Boy Color

I’m still on my Mr. Driller kick, so let’s talk about an interesting difference between the Game Boy Color carts across regions.

Mr. Driller

Mr. Driller began its presence on Nintendo consoles with its Game Boy Color release in 2000. While the game is simplistic in nature, an interesting tidbit is that the Japanese cart features a battery backed SRAM, allowing you to save your high scores.

Sadly, Namco decided against bringing that support to other regions (North America and Europe). The other regions don’t remember your high scores when you turn off your Game Boy Color. Boo.

Saving patch

I’ve since learned that there’s a patch you can use that allows you to enable the saving functionality on the NA/EU ROMs (available from ROMHacking.net), which you can then put on a flash cart that has SRAM or FRAM.

You need to patch your ROM for this to work. Having the unpatched ROM on a flash cart with SRAM or FRAM isn’t enough.

PCB differences across regions

You can see that the JP cart has the ability to save, via battery. Whereas the the NA cart does not.

My custom Mr. Driller cart

I made a custom cart for my patched backup of my Mr. Driller North American cart. I used a DMG-GBRW-20 flash cart, a clear blue Game Boy Color shell, and a custom holographic repro sticker. I think it turned out nicely!