Will MV1F run without battery?

I took my MV1F apart today to clean the dust out of the various plastic bits and to get it mounted on this acrylic semi-enclosure that I've been working on for a while, when I discovered that the onboard battery was showing a bit of that crystalline gunk on the side, indicating it's about to go bad. I did a search and found a lot of information about replacing the battery or modding the MVS board to accept a standard CR2032, which will be very helpful. Unfortunately, I wasn't planning on doing any soldering today (wife has made it clear that the kitchen table WILL be cleaned for the holiday) and the local Radio Shack most likely won't have the part anyways, meaning I'll have to find the part for an upcoming Mouser order. I don't know if the board is in immediate danger or not, but I'd still rather not take the risk and would like to just clip the battery right now and desolder the legs/add a replacement at a later date.

My question is, would I still be able to use the board without the battery? I know it wouldn't save any high scores, but would it even still function, or would lack of a battery cause a short or break somewhere that would keep it from functioning? If I have to put it out of service for a while, so be it, but it would be nice to still be able to use it until I can get a new battery.

Thanks, and sorry if this has been answered elsewhere (didn't see anything...) and if it's a stupid question which basic electronic knowledge should answer.

YES. The battery just retains high score,level settings and such.
BB

Just snip it off for now.

Thanks for the help, guys. I snipped the battery off to make sure it doesn't leak before I track down a replacement solution, and it's nice to know I can still get use out of the system until then.

I left the battery in a 1FS once, this was the result

Wow, nice. A little too late on that one.