No, not at all.  It's just a normal save.

The problem is that the game uses an unusual save size, which the M3 fails to properly detect.  So if there isn't a save there already, it creates a save file that's too small -- and then, when the game attempts to load this too-small save file, it hangs on the very first screen.

But if you create a save file manually (or get one from elsewhere), the M3 will happily accept the size of that file as appropriate for the game.  In fact, if you know the correct size, you can even create a totally empty file of that size yourself -- the bits all 0's -- and the M3 will correctly assume that that's the right size, then the game will notice that the file is empty and properly-initialize it for you.

So it's not even a copy-protection issue, more a limitation of the M3 (well, they might have chosen that odd save-file size in hopes that it would screw over some cards -- but it might also have simply been because they wanted more space.)

A few other games have had this problem, too, but firmware upgrades have fixed them...  I thought the issue was totally resolved on the M3.  Oh well.  It's easy to work around once you know what the problem is.

This post has been edited by RuriRuri, Sat, December 5th, 2009 at 09:44