As I recently told my family and friends, I just became the proud owner of a new baby boy. Finally, after saving those pennies at a dead end job I recently was fired at (and I'm soooo upset, hehe) I had enough to buy a top-notch Playstation 2, THE console for those after a nifty DVD player and some good games. So far it's been excellent, with both Playstation 1 and 2 games, and it's done well as a DVD player as I gave my Buffy DVDs a good workout.

After picking up the truly great Grand Theft Auto 3, a must for all PS2 owners, I discovered that I needed one of these PS2 8MB Memory Chips for use on the game, and pretty much every other PS2 game out there. A simple card which inserts into the PS2, it allows you to save your games or creations for later use in your games. No problem, I thought, cruising down to my local K-Mart where I'm a shareholder and get a generous discount. I figured it'd be no more than $5, $10 at the most. To my pure shock, the tiny thing weighed in at over $35. And that's where the problems began.

You see, the memory card is about an inch by an inch by a couple of millimeters, and holds 8 megabytes of space. 8 meg really isn't much. In computer space, it's less than a few cents; in RAM, it's about $1. Apparently, in PS2 terms, it's 35 times that. Even with my discount it was $30, which really doesn't sound that good. With $30 I could buy more Buffy DVDs. Hell, I could buy a few DVDs, or a couple of PS1 games. I could get a few movie tickets. Hell, if I still had a girlfriend, I could go on a decent date.

But no. I had to buy this card.

Now, looking back, I don't mind the purchase. It works well with the PS2, obviously, transfers the data pretty fast and I haven't lost a saved game yet. Unfortunately, the card only works with PS2 games though, not PS1. This is a major downfall on the card, since for the huge price you really don't want to buy another PS1 card for your PS1 games. Unfortunately, you have no choice. That's another $8 in the hole just so you can save your game in Metal Gear Solid. I really think that at least one of these cards should have come with the PS2 system, as I can't really imagine it being too expensive for Sony to produce, and as it's essential for the system, everyone needs one, and I hate to think that I'm spending more and more money just on this one system. Given, it's cheaper than wasting $63 million on an X-Box, but still.

I have to give this the benefit of the doubt, because you have to buy one if you own a PS2, but I'm not happy about it. I recommend it, but you should be warned: if you're getting a PS2, you should count this into the price, because you're gunna end up needing one.

Recommended: Yes