(I'm not sure if this should go in Gaming Discussion or not, since this is more of a tech support thread)

A friend gave me a Pokemon Red cartridge and the game worked just fine for a couple days. Games saved and loaded just fine, and no glitches or crashes, so the battery isn't dead. Now, whenever I try to boot the game, the Nintendo logo on the Game Boy startup screen looks corrupted. I'm trying to play this on a GBA SP. The cartridge makes a faint rattling noise, and it sounds as if the entire PCB is moving. I've cleaned the contacts multiple times and still nothing. Also, the very very rare times I get the game to boot, any faint touch on the cartridge crashes the game. Can anyone help with this? (I also don't want to do anything that will destroy my save)

I think the cartridge is corrupted try a new one

I thought that this was why :'( I guess i'll try to find another cartridge

Maybe it fell on the floor very hard or your friend threw it on something for some reasons, else I wonder if humidity could have done it? Normally those carts are heavily resistant, but in some extreme circumstances I guess it's possible for them to go bad. If the battery died years ago, leaking is possible as well.

Hopefully there's a way to get it to work again, since those old Pokemon games go for $25-40 on Ebay now.

Read out the eeprom using a PIC microcontroller