Phoenicks

Yesterday, finding inspiration, I found my ancient copy of Pokemon Gold -- unused for 6 years (!!!) -- lodged inside a N64 Transfer Pack (wow, nostalgia).

When I booted it up, I was prompted with a notice that the clock may be incorrect (it was two days, 6 hours off), and I was able to reset it. I tired the file, and I started right where I left off -- with 20 minutes of gameplay, and level a 8 Totodile.

Leaving it inactive for 10 minutes produced added 10 minutes to the clock while the game was still on (based on the gameplay clock when you save). Saving and quitting showed me that these 10 minutes had carried over. Looking at it now, it's still synched to the actual time of the world.

So my data has been saved, while my clock did not, even though it appears to function fine.

So: should I assume that everything's fine and that regular time functions will work? Is this permanent, or has the mythical dead clock not hit me yet? In that case, would all of my save file be deleted, or would it be deleted? Should this happen, would I need to keep the game on at all times to prevent save deletion? Would this still trigger the in-game clock to function? And what is the risk of any of this being necessary?