I've been emulating it, but so far the most stable ROM I could find is still pretty buggy.. It's off-putting going back to the same stable save over and over.
Yeah, it was quite heavily bundled with anti-piracy measures.
One of which records how many steps you have taken and
stops loading new data if you exceed that number, and the number half's the more badges you get, eventually
stopping you from loading the game altogether.
That's in the English version though, the Japanese version only stops loading new data after 40 or so minutes playing, so you have to just reset.