3rd Gen Is my Pokémon Sapphire cartridge...hacked?

[zheyuen]

I got a second hand pokémon sapphire cartridge off of someone. The chips and circuitry and everything seems legit, but I'm a little worried if the game has a hacked rom. I want to make sure if my game is fully legit, and even if the cartridge is legit, i do NOT want a hacked rom inside it.

You see, I was browsing through his team on his saved file and he has several Pokémon he received from trades. HOWEVER, he has a Numel he met at Fiery Path that is under an entirely different Trainer name and a Grovyle that is under a different Trainer name. Yet, it states that he "met (numel) at Fiery Path" and "met (grovyle) at Route 101".

So I was wondering if the cartridge had been hacked and is there a way to reset it to an unhacked state if it is? Or should I return it?

EDIT: I've never traded Pokémon or anything before, so I'm not quite sure about these kinds of things.

Really sorry if my question is really stupid, never owned a Sapphire cartridge before. This is my first and only Pokémon Sapphire cartridge I have and I have never traded before.

 

[Gunter's Mew]

He may just took an action replay or gameshark to it. They do make hacking devices for the GBA iirc. He may hack on the game but the game itself isn't illegal. Just start a new save and it should be fine.

 

[Sydian]

They're probably traded. If the Pokemon are from the same game and it's traded to another game that takes place in the same region, it'll still say "met in ____" as opposed to when traded to a different region, which would say "met in (region)" or "met at a faraway place." For example, if I trade my Altaria from Ruby to Sapphire and we met in the Sky Pillar, when it goes to my Sapphire, it would still say "met in Sky Pillar." So I think it's fine, really, but if it bothers you, just restart it I guess. :/ It seems fine to me, though. They're just traded is all it seems like.

Anyway, I think that answers that, but if you have more questions or my answer doesn't fully convince you (which I mean, don't take my word as law, I was just assessing this with the information I was given!) then feel free to ask more questions in the Q&A thread. It's at the top of this section.

Oh, and it might do you some good to check the trainer card and see the number of link trades the game has performed. If there are less than two, then the previous owner possibly hacked for those.

Locked.