Game didn't save properly/save file not loading

[Sawkinator]

I've been playing Earthbound, and it's been working fine so far. But today, after I saved in-game and closed, I tried to load up the game again and loading from the game menu brought me to an earlier save point. I then tried loading my 1st save slot to see if it managed to somehow get saved there, and again it was a different point in the game.
When I go into my 'Saves' folder, there's an SRM file with the timestamp of my actual most recent save, but when I try to load it it gives me a 'bad checksum' error. I also tried a couple earlier saves from the folder and it gave me the same error. I'd really like to get my most recent save back (highlighted in the linked image) because I got a Star Pendant and don't want to lose that. Is there a way to fix this? I've poked around a little here and on other sites but I'm not seeing a clear answer anywhere :/

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... /saves.png

[BearOso]

Unless your ingame save was captured in one of the state slots 1 to 3, you’ve overwritten it. Don’t mix save states and ingame saves if you don’t understand how it works.

[Sawkinator]

Unless your ingame save was captured in one of the state slots 1 to 3, you’ve overwritten it. Don’t mix save states and ingame saves if you don’t understand how it works.

I've never had issues using both in-game saves and the save slots in the emulator for my playthrough, so I'm not sure why it's just now giving me issues. Why should I assume there would be a problem using both?
Your first sentence would have been a sufficient answer to my question. There's no need to be snarky, dude.

[odditude]

it wasn't snark, it was genuine advice - while i can't give you numbers, a solid percentage of people with issues pertaining to lost saves are due a careless combination of battery saves and save states.

[BearOso]

Save states contain all the in-game saves, so when you load a save state you overwrite any in-game saves with what they were when you made the save state. It’s very easy to wipe out your progress. I’ve done it myself, even knowing the way it works, by just being lazy. If you want to use both, make it a habit to make a save state after every in-game save.