Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire bugged!

Nintendo has acknowledged a bug in the Japanese Game Boy Advance Pokemon titles, and is offering to fix existing cartridges through its network of service centres. "Nintendo is aware of a minor issue in the Pokemon Ruby and Pokemon Sapphire Game Boy Advance games," a spokesman confirmed on Friday. "It affects only very minor areas of the game (such as growing berries) after one full calendar year of gameplay."

As a result, at the moment problems are confined to Japan, where reports suggest that several time-lapse events (including berries and also the lottery tickets bought at the Lilycove department store) are no longer working correctly due to a glitch in the cartridge's internal clock. Fortunately the fix is relatively simple, and can be applied at Nintendo service centres with no data loss - indeed, Nintendo has stated that deleting save data will not solve the problem.

Obviously with the game less than a year old in the US and Europe, the problem has yet to arise in these territories. "The earliest the issue could appear is March 2004, which is the one year anniversary of the first sale in North America," says Nintendo. When that time comes, we can apparently expect an update and details for fans who may have been affected.

Meanwhile, Nintendo says that the bug has no affect on the GameCube title Pokemon Colosseum, which links up with the GBA Ruby and Sapphire titles and uses their game data.