It might be because when I used the save states I was using a glitchy old version of mGBA (0.5.0), which might’ve corrupted the save states in some way (I have since updated to 0.8.4 which is the latest). With the save states gone wack and the original .sav long gone, I guess the only way to keep playing would be to either fix the states (which is beyond my abilities) or to keep playing as it is by relying on save-states and suspension (which isn’t that bad except for the fact that I can’t have more than one save file). Thanks for the insight on the nature of the problem even though ngl I can’t understand much so everything I said so far is probably a guess.