Cartridge Deleted Data on its Own?

[SuddenlySleepy]

I have a very bizarre situation that I'm hoping someone here can help with, I can't find out how to rescue my missing town.

So what happened is, I was gifted a copy of ACNL for my birthday in February since I liked ACNH so much and wanted more Animal Crossing. I played it on my 3DS XL until just the other day, when I put the cartridge into my New 3DS LL (my old 3DS is starting to go: freezing, not waking from sleep, etc.).

I thought the data was stored on the cartridge so I (mistakenly) thought I could just plug it into my new 3DS LL and just play it. Wrong! No data, it opened with no town data in it. I didn't start a new file or anything, I just closed the game since my town wasn't there.

Not surprised, I figured I'd plug it back into my old 3DS XL and just play it on that, since Nintendo likes to literally attach each system per person and it's dumb. But now it's not seeing my town there, either, and nothing on my old 3DS XL has been altered at all! It's acting like a fresh game. It's so bizarre. When I go to export a save of it from Checkpoint it's not generating the garden.dat or garden_plus.dat file, the Animal Crossing folder is just empty.

What happened? Is it possible to restore Taco Bell breakfast? (I named my town Taco Bell lol)

I'm thinking what messed it up it that I hadn't yet installed HHD on the LL, thinking the extra content just won't be available in the game until I install it there too. But I don't think that explains everything being gone from the cartridge when I plugged it back into my old 3DS XL. The data should still be there, right?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Clock]

Is it updated to Welcome Amiibo? I had the same situation when i got a new 3ds and i thought i lost my data, until i had to update my game and that is where i got it back.

 

[SuddenlySleepy]

Is it updated to Welcome Amiibo? I had the same situation when i got a new 3ds and i thought i lost my data, until i had to update my game and that is where i got it back.

Hello! Sorry for the delay. It is updated to Welcome Amiibo, though the cartridge doesn't say welcome amiibo when i select it in the 3ds home menu.

 

[Clock]

Hello! Sorry for the delay. It is updated to Welcome Amiibo, though the cartridge doesn't say welcome amiibo when i select it in the 3ds home menu.

Thats strange, was the save also fine before the issue happened?

 

[SuddenlySleepy]

Yes, the game was working fine before I stuck it into the LL for a minute and then put it back into the XL. I was able to extract the .sav file but idk what to do with it.

 

[Clock]

Yes, the game was working fine before I stuck it into the LL for a minute and then put it back into the XL. I was able to extract the .sav file but idk what to do with it.

I see, by any chance were you able to transfer the old 3ds data to the new one? Also, do you also have backups with gardenplus.dat from the save beforehand? I don’t think .sav can fully restore save for 3ds unless emulator i think.

Unfortunately, i never used Checkpoint for my NL save, but Homebrew and JKSM.

 

[SuddenlySleepy]

Unfortunately no. I hadn't used checkpoint, etc. to make a backup save before, and when I do that there's nothing at all in the folder where the garden_plus file would be.