Memory Cards

by Nathan Withrow 

If you are thinking about getting a PlayStation, one of the first things that you need to think about is getting a memory card. They are one of the most important things for a PlayStation owner to have. Especially considering the number of games that utilize the memory card since you can't save anything on a CD. You will notice that there are several brands of memory cards out there, some advertising over 100 blocks of memory while the Sony brand has a mere 15. You might think to yourself, "Why get a memory card with only 15 blocks, when I can get a card with several times that much for a bit more money?" Well, for one reason, some of the memory cards out there are made very cheap, and will produce frequent errors, possibly deleting important files saved on your card. On the other hand, Sony cards are made by Sony, and have a much smaller chance of error.

One of the ways that the cards can save so much more than the regular Sony card is by using compression. While this seems like a good idea, some games already use compression, and by compressing it more it can damage the card, or it won't save, or it will save over other items on the card.

In my opinion there is a place for both types of these memory cards. For the person who rents many games that require saving, the multi-page card is perfectly fine. And for the person who only has a few games to call their own, and wants to keep their saved games for a long time, they should go with the official Sony card.

I must admit that I have a multi-page card, and it has crashed. Before the crash there were few problems. Here is a list of games whose save feature is incompatible with a Performance Memory card (may or may not be the case with other brands). It will still save the files, but you will not be able to access other pages. Even after deleting the files, there may still be problems. If you have a multi-page card be careful when saving these games:

Magic The Gathering: Battlemage
Breath of Fire III
SaGa Frontier (Character save, I had no problems with system data)