Sony's 8MB Card Brings Good Memories
Written: Jun 23 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Works, never fails on me.
Cons: A little expensive.
The Bottom Line: Without it, your Playstation 2 has Alzheimer's Disease. The Memory Card is a permanent solution for remembering your games' information with the problem of a steep price.
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| hyundai_fan's Full Review: Sony 8MB Memory Card PS2 |
Unless you've been in the basement for the past ten years, game companies have made great strides in making sure that the game console can remember everything you do to it so you can pick up where you left off when the time comes to turn off your system. It's like a brain to humans. It would really be annoying to keep telling you parents that you were their child etc., etc.
Back before memory cards, you might remember the Nintendo Entertainment System. It didn't actually have one, but it did in a way. Certain games had a battery-powered memory inside their cartridges so it saved data. The problem was the fact that once a few years passed the battery went dead, losing all your hard-earned saved data. Oh well. Even though I never experienced it on my NES, I did experience on my Super Nintendo.
Using something similar to the NES's technology, I did have problems with game saves on the game Mario World. After about a month of not playing the SNES and then having to one day boot it up, all data was lost. I had to restart almost every time I played which really sucked.
That was when Sony, Sega and Nintendo did something to cure this problem. With the invention of the Playstation, the Nintendo 64 and the short-lived Dreamcast (no surprise there), they all took the battery technology and threw it out the window for memory cards.
On the Nintendo 64 you put a rectangular memory card into the back of the controller. But when the "Rumble Pak" came along you could only hold one at a time until aftermarket companies made memory card/rumble pak cartridges so you could use both in one package. Sega had the same idea but from what I heard they still used batteries to save data. The Playstation set the standard though. The console could hold two cards at once and they held 15 "blocks" of memory each in a 1 MB card. The problem: 15 blocks can fill up fast.
Behold the next generation of game systems, the Gamecube, Playstation 2 and X-Box. They all use memory cards and no longer use batteries. The Playstation 2 still holds an advantage with the 8MB of space (to compare, the standard computer has 128MB and the card is eight times larger memory-wise compared to the PS1 card). Theoretically, if 8MB equals eight times a PS1 card at 15 blocks each, then the PS2 card is equal to eight PS1 cards, or 225 blocks, even though the PS2 card does not use blocks.
Sony has made some amazing products recently with the DualShock and Dualshock 2, as well as the games, game consoles and the Memory Card. If you're an avid gamer, there isn't much to write about for a memory card, which saves games and information so you don't have to restart a gave every time you boot up. What I can say is that they come in different colors. Recently I've seen Ice Blue (sort of a clear blue) and white as well as red. The standard color is black, which I prefer for the fact that it's the same color as the console itself.
The size of the memory card is about the size of a Playstation One memory card, about 2 1/4 inches by 1 1/2 inches. It can even be carried inside a Playstaion 2 game cover. That's amazing. I wonder why they never used it in their PS1 cards. Was it because it was expensive to make?
Another good thing to mention is Sony's reliability. It's the Toyota of video games. Even though it suggests in the manual that the memory cards may after a while lose information, I have never lost any at all. Even with a full 8MB of the card full, not one thing has been corrupt. Thank Heaven that battery technology is not used anymore!
There is one small problem with this amount of information on one card. It will take between six months and a year depending on how many games you own before you fill up a memory card and decide to get another one. At $30 a piece, it is no bargain (and I only get a $20 allowance each month!!) If you don't like that, just act like me mentally; whenever you need extra space in your cranium to learn or remember something, just forget something. Or in the memory card's case, delete much-needed files which I'm sure you won't do. Luckily you can earn $30 in six months.
I WILL NOT RECOMMEND AFTERMARKET MEMORY CARDS unless given approval from Sony. I bought aftermarket cards from Nuby among others and most of them lost all of my data or had my saved files corrupt over half the time. Even with a 90-day warranty you cannot replace lost data.
So what do I think of it? It's a great card and I wouldn't want to buy any other aftermarket card for my Playstation 2. It is proven that they work and they never fail so I support it every way. When I look back on it ten years from now I'll have good memories.
Recommended:
Yes
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hyundai_fan
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Member: Scott K
Reviews written: 107
Trusted by: 26 members
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A gay, Subaru-driving Vermonter.
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