It Does What's Promised...That's Pretty Much It.
Written: Dec 14 '06 (Updated Jan 03 '07)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: For a mere $15 you can copy all your PS1/2 saves to the HDD!
Cons: For a mere $15 you can't copy all the HDD saves to a PS1/PS2 card!
The Bottom Line: This might actually be PS3's real killer app. Since you actually need one if you plan on playing old games on PS3.
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| awoolcott's Full Review: Sony PLAYSTATION 3 Memory Card Adapter |
So you're a PlayStation gamer who has 10 years worth of game saves across PS1 and PS2, holding them all like a pack rat and accumulating dozens of memory cards to keep them. But now the PlayStation 3 is out, and it uses a hard drive to store saves for backwards compatibility, but the new system has one small hassle - there's no memory card slots to copy existing data. Sad, yes, but Sony has a solution, a fifteen dollar solution, known as the PS3 memory card adapter. There's really not much to this thing; it copies saves to the hard drive and makes sure they come out intact, whether it's a PS1 or PS2 memory card. In short it pretty much does its job. That is, unless you wish to reverse the process. Then it makes you one sad panda.
For your $15, you get...a memory card adapter. That's all there is - a little square with a slot for a memory card and a USB plug. It doesn't come with the USB cable, mind you, but it really doesn't have to because one comes with each and every PlayStation 3 console for the purpose of recharging the Sixaxis controller. So hey. But this isn't exactly a complicated device - I'm no tech expert but it looks like something they could have shoved in the PS3 itself next to the memory stick slots and still charge the same price. But I digress, and my wallet is $15 lighter.
All one can ask for is an accessory to do its job, and the PS3 MC adapter does that. No extra fuss has to be undertaken to get it working - put a memory card into the box, plug it into one of the USB ports, and it automatically pops up on the games menu of the XMB. When selecting a card, it will automatically copy every save from that card to a new internal memory card, which kinda sucks because sometimes you want to pick and choose an individual save but can't and thus have to wait for everything to be copied only for you to delete the excess once you get the save you want to the proper memory card. The only exception are 'locked' files, such as the PS2 network settings files and a few particular games - for instance, Star Ocean: 'Till the end of Time has a Battle Trophies file that can't be copied, so you'll have to keep it on PS2.
The bummer is you can't reverse the process and copy saves from the HDD onto a memory card to use on the old consoles. It's just not happening, so once you start playing your old games on PS3, don't expect to go back to PS1 or PS2 to continue the game unless you do all sorts of crazy workarounds with memory sticks. Indeed if you have a PSP, you can backup saves to the PSP and then copy them back to the PS3 if necessary, or use the different memory options from the $600 model to back them up, but you need a 3rd party program to get the saves back on the PS1/2 cards. It's a process that's a bit too over the heads of the average gamer though, so once you go PS3, get used to it.
Final Thought
The thing works...and anyone with a history of playing on a PS1 or PS2 will likely want one for PS3 unless they'd rather stick with the original hardware (if you still have the room for them after making space for the small planet known as PlayStation 3). So it comes recommended, though it might be a better group purchase - you and friends can chip in a few bucks each, buy the thing, pass it around, copy saves, and be done with it since it has no other uses unless you need to grab an old file that's not on the PS3, or some similar scenario. Then again, if you're spending half a grand on a system, what's an extra $15?
Recommended:
Yes
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awoolcott
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