Memory cards, were they a good idea or a misstep?
Not really sure why they were necessary. Beyond that, not really sure why nintendo and sega bothered to make new formats instead of reusing their existing supported cartridges (for nintendo, the GB/GBC carts; for sega, the Genesis carts that were still in production at the time.)
>>11247194to add, sega could have even still used the vmu design. Not like they haven't added extra hardware to their genesis carts before. A little game gear that is a memory card that would probably also work on a genesis/nomad...
>>11247189I don't understand why the fuck was it so impossible for them to just build it into the console instead of forcing every single person to use this shit
>>11247196Plug it in the Neo geo pocket and... See what's haappun
>>11247189These are my least favorite aspect of retro gaming, then and now. All these years later and my little brother STILL deletes my saves on these things (because he's a drunk) but he never does on modern systems. The n64 cards are straight trash anyway. They always corrupt.
>>11247209People would've ran out of memory eventually. Then what?
>>11247220You delete stuff just like every other device
>>11247189The idea is neat, being able to transfer saves easily between consoles and such. Could go to a friends house and just continue using your save data.I can't think of any games though that really make use of that ability so people would just let them stuck in the same place permanently only switching them out if they ran ouf of space.
>>11247220Tell that to hardcore completionists
>>11247226There were a few fighting games that used it in theory, with modes where you build up a fighter and save them to the memory card. Alpha 3 had a Japanese revision that was compatible with Dreamcast VMUs for example. Though in practice, it's questionable how many people actually used that function. Sonic Adventure had a similar function for Chao.Speaking of fighting games, the Neo Geo also had memory cards that allowed a player to continue from where they left off in an arcade game rather than have to start from the beginning.
>>11247209That's what the Sega CD and Sega Saturn did, and it was fucking awful. You were relying on battery backed up saves without any way to check when the battery's gonna die.There was also a tiny amount of space which was fine if you just had a few games but fuck you if you were playing a hundred hour RPG or something and wanted multiple saves per game. And sports games filled the whole fucking thing anyways.Sure there were memory carts even for those systems but they were very expensive compared to PSX memory cards. File management was also a nightmare.
>>11247278>sega literally used genesis carts as memory cards>didn't just keep using the formatbut why
Are these chink mem cards -and n64 rumble packs any good?
We're still using them in a way or another, so expandable memory must be important after all.
>>11247189They were arguably one of the best ideas in the history of videogames. How do you make a game that's 4 to 8 hours long (the ideal length) without them? Nobody's gonna bother with passwords forever.
>>11247189it was a time where hard drives were big, costly and didn't have too much space,a good transition beetwen passwords and actually usable drive storage.
What other option was there to save your progress on games that came on optical disks? You can't write to the disks and people sure as hell weren't going to one-shot a game like Final Fantasy. Plus these had the advantage of letting you bring your saves with you and not tying them to a console or cart.>>11247194See above>>11247209SEGA tried that with the SegaCD and Saturn. They still had "memory cards" because it was not only not enough, but they were battery-backed SRAM. The Saturn was incredibly stupid, it had an RTC that ran off the same battery, so it kills your saves in roughly 2-3 years as the RTC was a power hog.>>11247215N64 cards stupidly also used battery-backed SRAM, even though there were N64 games that saved with non-volatile memory on the cart itself. Both the Saturn and PS1 memorycards used nonvolatile memory in their memorycards, it was insane that Nintendo did not... yet some of their on-cart saving games did.The whole save situation with the N64 was a mess. Some games saved on cart, some on a memorycard, some both, some both but only saved some types of data on the cart and another on the memorycard. There was multiple different hardware carts used to save. The memorycards had both "pages" and "notes" and if either was full you could not make a new save. There was no built-in memorycard manager so you had to rely on a game that supported memorycards to manage it, and there was no standard for this so each game had it's own manager with different features... It was a clusterfuck.>>11247226>Could go to a friends house and just continue using your save data.Monster Rancher did that, I recall there was dozens of games I played which had that whole "bring your own save data" mechanic to use in some vs or co-op feature.>>11247540Getting harder and harder to find a decent phone that still has a port for those... fuck Apple.
>>11247226Animal Crossing on both N64 and GameCube made use of it. You could make a "travel data" file to then visit your friend's town.
>>11247563>What other option was there to save your progress on games that came on optical disks?My turboduo works fine without it.
>Uses a CAPACITOR to keep it's internal memory aliveI mean, if you are trying to claim the stupid award for saving data over the way the SegaCD or Saturn did it... have fun with those 30+ year old caps.
>>11247194Discs are read-only and people used to transfer save data between them for unlockables.
>>11247563>See aboveI don't know how that explains what I said, maybe I was too vague? I just meant, why did they make new memory cards when they had cartridges that they could have just stuck a label on like >>11247278
>>11247209would have increased the cost
>>11247189I like them, they're like little digital journals. A used memory card with save files on it is a log of someone else's video game journey. It was the same impression I got from renting SNES games from the rental store, there'd already be an existing save and the player would be named something dumb like DAVE.
>>11247189my parents were divorced, i was living with my dad, and it was december. i woke up in the middle of the night with my mom at my bedside and she handed me a ps2 with metal gear solid 2. it was one of the best moments of my childhood seeing my mom and getting that gift. the next morning she asks me to hook it up and show me the game so i plug it in and then realize i was missing a memory card. i can't remember if i brought it up or not but i know for a fact i probably felt bad about asking for it. shit was such a pain in the ass.
>>11247189>Memory cards, were they a good idea or a misstep?It would be nice if they started sooner and made password saves non-existent in the 16bit gen. Like 95% of games didn't have a battery and those that did had like $10-20 added to the price. I'd prefer to buy one memory card and save everything, even for arcade games they could remember scores or what stage you were on. Pretty much every game could have benefited from a memory card. The only forth gen console that did it was the AES.
>>11247189Adding more hard drives to my PC, is it a good idea or a misstep?
The controller memory cards were retarded the rumble packs though were a good idea and the screen
>>11247892> there'd already be an existing save and the player would be named something dumb like DAVE.
Surprising it took us as long as it did for someone to just put memory inside the console.
>Save game progress in console's internal memory card>Can't take it out and put it in another console>Can't copy its data to another console>Can't copy its data to PC and eventually share it online>Can't salvage it when the console eventually stops working>Can't replace it if the chip that stores saves stops working>Can't have ports for homebrew like booleg memory cards that hold much more data, gameshark cards or custom software that can jailbreak the console in the future>Console also becomes more expensive due to production costs>Can't have a cool little piece of memorabilia containing your childhood memoriesGreat idea, retard.
>>11247189How would they be a misstep unless you are that special kind of addled sped who argues with a fury that long form games played in chunks were a cataclysmic mistake?>>11247194Are you actually fucking kidding? How much shit do you think you can fit on a SNES or Genesis cart? Even when Nintendo kept betting on the cartridge horse, they developed a new format which could hold more shit, and they realized they couldn't just use save batteries for everything.Memory cards and on-board drives for saving games have countless advantages over cartridges with save batteries, or diskettes where you write the save data onto the thing itself.>>11247209Because being able to use a card gives you the exact same capability but also shitloads of different benefits and flexibilities. It also makes the console (and cartridge) a little cheaper for those people playing games where you don't actually really need any saving (Doom 64 had a password system, for instance).>>11247226Diablo on PSX made very good use out of that, you saved your character and progress on your memory card, and then you could go to your friend's house, who also had the game, and you could play couch co-op with him with the character you already have.Main drawback there though was that Diablo was one of those games which really ate space, though it was also an impressively intact console port of a PC game of that era. Not 100% faithful, but like +90%, and you could still play the game for MUCH less cost than getting a computer, and they did their little PSX touches to make up the difference a little, like colored dynamic lights and split-screen multiplayer.Many years down the line, and really just for pure shits and giggles, you could pop Diablo into a PS3 and then use its massive hard drive space for all the virtual memory cards you could ever want. Or a 32mb card and an adapter.
>>11248141>>Can't copy its data to PC and eventually share it onlineWhile I'm still on Diablo, apparently the character save data is interchangeable between PSX and PC, so it's actually possible to transfer a character from one platform to the other.
>>11248141You can do that on modern systems. It's called having additional external memory, like an SD card slot. No reason PS1 and 2 couldn't have just had an internal memory card, with a slot for an external one too.
>>11247189Those N64 memory cards were a joke. 32 KB is fucking nothing. I barely had any games back in the day, but even then I still needed multiple memory cards. Still pissed about it after all these years.
>>11248219>You can do that todayWith technology that wasn't affordable or widespread 25 fucking years ago.The PSX was sold for $299 and even then it was sold at a net loss for a while before it made a profit.Are you dumb?
>>11248247Read what I said again. Having on-board saves doesn't mean you can't have an external memory card. It's a non-issue. Xbox 360 even still had regular memory cards you could buy, not that anyone did.
>>11247746Because they would be laughably huge. The memorycards on Sony and Nintendo systems were tiny, they could easily fit in a pocket or in the controller/controller socket.The only reason the SegaCD's memory card was so huge is because the system was an add-on to the Genesis, and it just simply re-used it's game cart slot for the memorycard. Saturn was also originally planned to be backwards compatible before that was axed, and it's slot worked as a RAM expansion too.Can you imagine if the PS1/PS2 or the GC had gigantic cartridge-sized slots for it's memorycards? That's absurd. You want these things to be small so they don't take up much space in both the console and in storage/your pocket when going to a friend's house. There is no benefit to making them the size of a game cart.>>11247892>A used memory card with save files on it is a log of someone else's video game journeyI feel the same, especially on cards where even deleted files can still be recovered with the right software as long as they were not overwittten. It's interesting to see what the pervious owner played. Though 85% of the time it's just sports games and COD from my experience, rarely is there something interesting.See picrel, used card I got from a pawn shop. Was mostly "wiped", but nearly all the data is still there if you look at it through software.
>>11248261>It's a non-issueIt's expensive.It's fucking expensive.The Saturn had an internal memory card that could barely keep 3 game saves, and it was $400 at launch, twice that of the N64 when that console launched two whole years later.Meanwhile the PSX didn't even ship with a complete GPU that had z-buffer capabilities. That's how expensive these risks were. Pick one or the other, or fail like Sega did.
>>11248274You're going to buy the thing anyway. What difference does it make?You may as well sell your console without a controller, just to hassle people into making a second journey to the store to buy one.
just solder that shit to the motherboard like normal fucking memory instead of having people buy it separately to pretend your console is cheapermight as well sell a console without any gamepads
PS2 having 2 usb ports and a hard drive bay and STILL requiring you to use those shitty 8 mb max memory cards to save is genuinely the most bizarre part of that console
>>11248283>What difference does it make?Less consoles being sold. That's why they made it the way they did.I reiterate: Are you dumb?
>>11248283>>11248261unlike controllers, memory cards are entirely optional to play games, so people can forgo those entirely for a cheaper console
>>11248270>Because they would be laughably huge.GBA carts are barely bigger than PS or GC memory cards, in fact iirc GBA carts were smaller than PS memory cards. And Sega made the VMU have a literal tamagotchi built into it, and their controller had ample space; if they wanted you to play it surely it could have been more comfortable..? Them being too big seems like a laughable excuse really, I mean compare an N64 memory pak to a GB cart, it's nowhere near unreasonable. I think you just saw the Genesis cart and said "hurr durr imagine carrying 5 of those in your pocket lmao" (even though, realistically, who actually carried more than 1 memory card at a time anyway?)
>>11247226I was still using memory cards in Gen 7 for exactly this reason, was handy to pop out the memory card and take it to my friend’s
>>11248484>PS2 having 2 usb ports and a hard drive bay and STILL requiring you to use those shitty 8 mb max memory cards to save is genuinely the most bizarre part of that consoleYou realize that USB flashdrives were not really much of a thing until the late 00s right? The very first one was released right around the time the PS2 came out, and guess how much it stored? 8MB... and it also cost more than a PS2 memorycard. And it goes without saying that a harddrifve costs a lot more. Yes, a HDD in 2000 would be a lot bigger, but a single memcard could store many games already, you didn't need the space of a HDD just for save storage. That's even if Sony didn't force you to pay way too much for a way too small proprietary drive. Fun Fact: Many Japanese versions of PS2 games DID have the ability to save to the HDD... that feature was stripped on Sony's demands in most US versions of the games... and Sony intentionally delayed the release of the HDD outside of Japan for years so they can push their MMORPG out over FFXI, an MMORPG that died quick anyway.>>11248556>GBA carts are barely bigger than PS or GC memory cards, in fact iirc GBA carts were smaller than PS memory cardsAnd just what advantage is there exactly to shaping them like GBA carts over the format they used? The GBA wasn't even a thing until after the PS2 and GC was already out. And no, they weren't smaller.>And Sega made the VMU have a literal tamagotchi built into it, and their controller had ample space; if they wanted you to play it surely it could have been more comfortableAnd the controller would have taken up a table to fit it>Them being too big seems like a laughable excuse reallyHow? The smaller they are, the easier they can be carried around. Literally nobody would want ot carry around a McFuckHuge memorycard. There is literally ZERO benefit whatsoever to re-using a cartridge shell for it, but plenty of downsides. Also, even one genesis cart would be a pain to put in a pocket.
>>11248141Xbox did it best imo. Internal 10GB hard drive that could fit a shitton of game saves, while also having separate memory adapters to copy saves and bring them over to a friend's house, and since it's just a hard drive now you can just FTP save folders to your PC. That said the technology was limited at that time so having the hard drive made the Xbox fuckhuge and loud by necessity.
>>11248924>That said the technology was limited at that time so having the hard drive made the Xbox fuckhuge and loud by necessity.The Xbox wasn't fuckhuge because of the HDD, don't forget that the PS2 had one too.
>>11248124If you put it in from the start a very small percentage would actually buy memory cards, making them harder to keep in distribution and way less available and kill a lot of the usage and possibilities like playing games at a friends house much more easily, games where you can use your save against a friend, etc. Would also kill multiple console owners
>>11248720dude I really think you're overemphasizing the size issue. Do you really think, ignoring all other examples, using this as a litmus test, that using the GB cartridge form factor for the N64 instead of its memory paks, as a concrete example of an existing technology that would have had immediate viability with the 2 n64 games that used a transfer pak no longer needing one, would be a bad design based on its being marginally larger?
>>11248484nobody had usb drives when the ps2 came out, plus they wouldn't want to let users put saves on something that can be easily plugged into a computer, because it could make hacking saves and save exploits much easier (as an example, exploit saves were a common way to softmod an xbox, the xbox memory cards were actually just usb drives in a different shape, and on ps2, ever heard of freemcboot? or if you're old enough, the independence exploit)first usb drive i got was around 2002/2003, i got an expensive 64M drive, you could buy them as small as 8M still, and i think the biggest was 128M
>>11250115forgot pic
>>11249376The off the shelf DVD drive was part of why, the way its spaced out also gave it room for cooling.
>3 memory cards for the price of 1>holy shit what a steal!!3 years later all my saves were gone
>>11250125my psx memory cards are a quarter-century old and still have my saves on them, since sony didn't cheap out and used actual EEPROM in them rather than battery-backed SRAM, like a certain other company
>>11250121that looks like a fun early project to learn techniques like soldering and basic electronics as a kid
>>11247194Well you see, you fucking imbecile, rewritable CDs were impractical in the early 90s, so there needed to be some method of saving a game off of a CD. Hence chip storage. And they needed to be portable to allow for transferring of data to another machine.
>>11247209Gotta meet price points. Console gonna cost too much money and nobody's honna buy it. Better to offload it onto an accessory.
>>11247546I agree. Controller ports were right up there, too.
>>11247546games that could save predate memory cards, you knowthough i admit that most games prior were the kind that didn't expect saving at all, as in more arcade-like, there wasn't enough content to expect many days of play, plus the rental market was huge, you didn't want kids finishing games too quickly, that's why games back in the 80's were hard as balls
>>11247189overpriced shit. needed non-kosher copiers to copy the data to upload them on PC.by the time PS2 arrived, we had USB thumbdrives. all consoles should have allowed saving with thumbdrives.
>>11250236so why the fuck not use the cartridges they already had you illiterate nigger
>>11250469Because they hold like 4mb, which is unhelpful when you're wanting to make a bigger and more advanced game.
>>11250492Ok, fair enough. Was there any major reason to not just add more storage to the same cartridge form factor? I can only imagine placing a different chip into a slot would still be cheaper than the whole design process of a memory card.
>>11250548>Was there any major reason to not just add more storage to the same cartridge form factor?Yeah, they were dumb. Why didn't they sell games at the same price but on 1GB cartridges? Were they retarded?
>>11250548Sega did that with the Saturn and people hated it. Nintendo designed the N64 memory card to fit neatly into the controller so the gameboy form factor wouldn't work.
>>11250548That has its own problems even assuming using the same cartridges would be a viable choice. The highest capacity which a Nintendo 64 cartridge could boast was 64mb, and those cartridges were pretty expensive, most were 8mb or 12mb cartridges, and in an era where you're seeing CD-ROM games on PC and other consoles which hold like 700mb on disc (and is maybe multiple discs), you start really seeing the limitations for the time period.CD-ROMs were in fact a very cheap medium too, so it was less expensive for all devs to have games produced. You could be a small time dev studio running on hopes and dreams, and you could afford to shoot your shot and see what happens, whereas for an N64 cartridge, that was going to be increasingly costly for you if you wanted more storage space, which is also going to make your game more expensive for consumers to buy.I genuinely love the N64, but it using cartridges was for the most part a pretty terrible bottleneck.
>>11250557idk I can't imagine it would be hard to make the gb cart fit into it. It's not like it doesn't already jut out anyway. >>11250554>>11250575guys we are talking about memory cards, please try and read
>>11250597Why the fuck would he want to use old console cartridges as memory cards? That's not fucking convenient or cost effective.
>>11250605It is more cost effective because it's already a format that allows for saving that was being mass produced... again, the dreamcast put some crazy stuff in their memory card and overengineered it. You think just using your existing production line with a tweak here or there is going to be as big of an investment as that? No, it'd save on r&d AND manufacturing, and allow compatibility with existing hardware. That IS efficient and cost-effective!
>>11250094The N64 came out years before the GBA, by the time the GameCube came out, which was still before the GBA, it's memory cards were smaller than a GBA cart.And yet again, WHAT advantage is there here? Literally all it will do is cause confusion from idiots who will try to plug a GBA game into a GC's memcard port or vice-versa while making you use bigger memorycards for no fucking reason.What exactly is your logic of "Why didn't they use the shells of existing carts for memory cads"? What possible purpose does it have exactly? All it will do it make them larger and cause confusion, WHAT is the benefit that you are arguing for here?
>>11250125I know your pain. I once had picrel... for all of about 5-6 months until it died on me and took all of my saves with it. Seems to be the same story for just about anyone who had one of these pieces of junk, how was there no lawsuit?>>11250143What I find even stupider is that there is no modern multi-memcard replacement either. The PS1, PS2, GC, and now even the DC have devices (some multiple) such as the Memcard Pro that can create virtually infinite cards on a MicroSD card along with usually other features like auto-switching to a virtual card dedicated to each game, cloud uploads, etc.The N64 just has the ForeverPak, a memcard that costs as much as these Memcard Pros but... is literally just a standard N64 memcard that just doesn't need a battery to save. That's it, no multiple memorycards, no saving to MicroSD, no features, NOTHING. It's just a laughable 32KB of storage space, in 2024, that costs as much as these do-everything infinite-cards (even MORE than some of them) and it's only difference from the 1st party cards from 30 years ago is that it doesn't need a battery...>>11250236>Well you see, you fucking imbecile, rewritable CDs were impractical in the early 90sThat's putting it lightly. Many drives not meant to read CD-RWs had trouble reading them compared to a CD-R, generally disks need to be completely written to at once, you can't just randomly write/erase to them like a floppy disk, they are very slow to write to, the laser would need to be much more complicated, power hungry, and expensive, and CD-RWs have very limited writes because they aren't meant to be constantly erased and re-written to multiple times a day.Fucking punch cards would be more practical than a re-writable CD for storing your game saves.>>11250372>by the time PS2 arrived, we had USB thumbdrivesNo we didn't..
>>11250548>Was there any major reason to not just add more storage to the same cartridge form factorCDs were a MASSIVE jump in storage over carts. A single CD held ONE. HUNDRED. TIMES. what even the largest SNES carts held. Even compared to the largest N64 game, of which less than a dozen games used a cart that big, a CD still held More than TEN TIMES what those carts did. And more around to over 50 times as much data as the size of most N64 games... and CDs started being sold in the early 80s, there were already over a decade old by the time the N64 came out yet still held that much more data. Even the largest GBA or NintendoDS carts didn't come close to how much a CD stores, despite that being well into the DVD era by then. It would have been laughably impractical to make carts that can hold that much data, the games would have cost more than Neo Geo carts. And don't forget that despite this massive leap in storage space, we still commonly had PS1 games that took up two cds, and many that took up three or four. And on top of all of this, CDs were considerably cheaper and easier to produce than carts. Their main disadvantages were slower loading, not being able to tack on enhancement hardware (Which makes carts cost even more to make, and mostly died after the 4th gen), and not being able to write to them but memorycards not only fixed that but IMO made it better since then your saves were easily portable, copyable, and not stuck on the cart>>11250839It's not a "format", it's just simply a plastic shell design. A widely impractical one for the purpose of a memorycard. This isn't like Sony making a proprietary memory card for their Vita when plenty of same-size standard alternatives existed. They would have had the same innards regardless of the plastic shell, you are actually wasting money by using so much more material to make a larger and impractical memory card, not saving money by re-using an ancient design.
>>11251048>picFucking garbage. That thing would get corrupted so easily, it could be tomorrow, it could next week but eventually it will tell you to reformat the memory card before you can use it. I fucking hated this thing.
>>11251064Reformat if you're lucky, mine just completely died. Zero signs of life, no lights, no display, nothing.
>>11247189>>11247194>>11247196>>11247209What is with the stupidity in threads recently?Did the collective IQ points on this board just drop?
>>11250236anon there were multiple CD based consoles that had small internal storage for saving games
>>11251051>CDs were a MASSIVE jump in storage over carts. A single CD held ONE. HUNDRED. TIMES. what even the largest SNES carts held.True, but N64 cartridges weren't that bad all things considered. Sure, they're pretty small compared to CDs, but the average N64 game was still able to be many times the size of the average SNES game. There might not have been enough space for FMVs, but it was still a decent followup to the previous generation of consoles.>>11247189If the 64DD had gone as planned, we wouldn't have been so reliant on these bloody things. That and having up to 38 MB of rewritable storage on each disk would've opened up some cool opportunities beyond what you can get with tiny memory cards.
>>11251051>CDs were a MASSIVE jump in storage over carts. A single CD held ONE. HUNDRED. TIMES.that is NOT. AT. ALL. what is being discussed you illiterate retard, WE'RE DISCUSSING STORAGE FOR MEMORY CARDS, WHY THE HELL ARE YOU INCAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING THIS, FUCK OFF
>>11251281Anon, you wouldn’t need memory cards if CDs weren’t used, you have no business calling anyone illiterate
>>11251048If the Everdrive 64 or one of the other flashcarts could put memory card saves onto the actual SD card, that would be something.
>>11251293You can make a full MC backup on themBut I think I’ll wait for 8bitmods to make a 64 memory card
>>11251293>If the Everdrive 64 or one of the other flashcarts could put memory card saves onto the actual SD cardYou can manually copy saves between the memory card and the SD card, but that's about it. Maybe this process could be automated, but I'm not aware of any flash cart menu that does this.>>11251285>you wouldn’t need memory cards if CDs weren’t usedMeanwhile, the N64:
>>11247226Armored Core.
>>11251281You're the illiterate retard, look at the reply chain:>Because they hold like 4mb, which is unhelpful when you're wanting to make a bigger and more advanced game.That's clearly talking about space for games, not saving. There was no 4MB memory card, there were 4MB game cartridges though, and since when would a 4MB limit on saves prevent one from making "A bigger and better game'? Massive 80 hour RPGs on the PS1 generally took under 10KB to save.>>11251293I know some ODEs support mapping a virtual memory card in place of a real one... with varying compatibility. Not sure if any flashcarts do it. I imagine it's heavily dependent on how the system was designed.
>>11247746Because that cart uses a battery. There is no magical data storage system in the early 90s.
Warning: Be careful when running random ROMs. Do NOT run "Controller Kensa-ki NUS-yo N Cassette (Japan) (Test Program)" with a memory card inserted. It tests if your memory card is working by formatting it. I found this out the hard way.
>>11251326Not entirely true, non-volatile chip memory did exist in the 80s and 90s, just that it had many drawbacks on top of being more expensive.Notably Sonic 3 used a FRAM chip. FRAM chip. FRAM is more expensive than SRAM, slower, and wears out faster... but it doesn't need power to retain it's memory.I've seen people modding Sega Saturns to replace the SRAM chip with FRAM, though you also should disable the battery giving the chip power if you do that.
>>11251360You think you're safe by only playing officially released software?
>>11251380"Holiday 2004"? What a coincidence. I love holiday surprises.
>>11251394Well, I warned you
>>11251302The N64 doesn’t need a memory card, they did it to save money on production because of how much more they spent per cart with the save feature
>>11250998The N64 came out after the GB though...?>WHAT advantage is there here? Literally all it will do is cause confusion from idiots who will try to plug a GBA game into a GC's memcard port or vice-versaWhich they have done before, primarily afterwards with DS peripherals, but even before with things like the GB camera in a super game boy or something, or with how sega literally did this already with the genesis and caused no problems whatsoever?>All it will do it make them larger and cause confusion,Oh nooooo it's 20mm longer and if you plug it into a GB it doesn't do anything (or maybe DOES do something because they could give their games extra memory card features easily haha) oh nooooo however could this have happened, not 20mm more plastic and either no difference and minimal confusion or a fun novelty and also cost savings from using existing materials and production facilities noooooo>>11251285that has fuckall to do with the conversation (and also the n64 used memory cards like the other guy said) I was talking about INSTEAD OF MEMORY CARDS THEY USED EXISTING CARTRIDGES BECAUSE THEY BOTH CAN SAVE GAMES, OR ALTERNATIVELY, USE THE EXISTING CARTRIDGE DESIGN AND CONNECTIONS SO YOU CAN MAKE MEMORY CARDS MORE CONVENIENTLY AND SO THAT IT ALLOWS FOR EXTRA COMPATIBILITY, which is pretty self explanatory but I think there's been few enough cognizant replies that understood that that I feel the need to write it out like a toddler would need to read it to understand it.
>>11251325I already answered here: >>11250548and was met by these replies:>>11250554Someone who still didn't understand what we were talking about>>11250557Reasonable enough post that I disagreed with here: >>11250597and that you can follow the rest of the conversation from there>>11250575Someone else who still didn't understand what we were talking about (this one was polite though)>and>>11251051someone who doesn't understand that I'm talking about developing the console to have used the cartridges rather than just, idk, making it look alike? Not sure why he thinks that "it would use the same innards" applies when I'm talking about using a cartridge's innards and just increasing it storage or something if necessary.>Back to >>11251325So why are you talking about space for games when I've been talking about space for saving the entire fucking time?>>11251326No real complaints with this counterargument, just curious: how hard would it have been for them to just replace the data storage they had in the carts with whatever they did use in the memory cards...? I can't imagine it would have been excessively laborious
>>11251326EEPROM and even FLASH existed in the late '80sthe playstation (1994) uses eeprom in its' memory cards
>>11251572>INSTEAD OF MEMORY CARDS THEY USED EXISTING CARTRIDGES BECAUSE THEY BOTH CAN SAVE GAMES, OR ALTERNATIVELY, USE THE EXISTING CARTRIDGE DESIGN AND CONNECTIONS SO YOU CAN MAKE MEMORY CARDS MORE CONVENIENTLY AND SO THAT IT ALLOWS FOR EXTRA COMPATIBILITY>which is pretty self explanatory Are you retarded?
>>11251598Indeed, which is why it was separateThose things were costly
>>11251609>>11247194yeah, I'm convinced 99% of /vr/ is completely illiterate. Must be the lead poisoning.
>>11251572>use existing cartsbad idea, this would mean building enough memory into game carts than the game needs, which is expensive, making carts was all about reducing their unit cost, this is why things like n64 games were as cut down as they could be, to keep the rom size downit's also why in general companies shipped more shovelware carts than good game carts, why? because said shovelware tended to be smaller and require less cart features, making them cheaper to make and more profitableso adding unnecessary space to carts is out for cost reasons, there's also the aforementioned confusion reason, imagine having savegames for other games mixed around your ... games. you expect people to remember "oh my smash save is on pokemon red"?, making a single large card for saving all your games makes more sense for multiple reasonsas for why not a single design amongst generations? i guess they could have done that, though you'd still have had to buy a new one anyway. why? because the n64 memory card is 32k and the gamecube one is 512k for the smallest option (side note: i just looked it up and wait really? and here's people complaining about the ps2's 8M memory card...), you're not storing much of any gamecube saves on an n64 card just because of size. reusing plastic moulds is a non-issue, across the number of cards they make, the cost of the mould is nothing
>>11251615yea, i imagine it was. i'm glad they did that, but it certainly wasn't the norm at that point
>>11247225enjoy never having more than like 10 games I guess.
>>11250094Holy shit I can't believe you're really going upto bat for making Genesis cart molds into memory cards.There was just simply no reason to,it would look ghetto as fuck.
>>11247220not him but you can have both, some consoles did both, like the xbox could save to the internal hdd or a memory cardthe hdd has so much space though that unless you wanted to transfer games to a friends' house then you didn't need a memory card at all. in fact i got an xbox second hand a few years later (as in maybe around 2005) and i've never owned an xbox memory card (not officially anyway, i did once hook a regular usb flash drive up to a controller... for splinter cell purposes, wink)
>>11251687(not him)it would have made sense with the saturn, since even the released console used expansion carts the same size as megadrive cartsthey could have done that on the dreamcast as well, like put a slot on the back where you can't really see it, why not. i've seen worsebut see, the issue there is that people will think you can play megadrive games on it because you can plug the carts in, why risk disappointing people by making them physically compatible? and what use is a saturn memory cart or ram expansion cart in a megadrive? nothing, even if you made a late megadrive game to support it, there's only one slot on the megadrive, so you can't plug a game and a memory cart in at the same time (and you can't remove either while the game is running like you can a cd either just due to how carts work)
>>11251687did you even try to read that post? It was reductive to a specific example such that there was no issue with its internal logic. You just jumped right around it and said the absolute worst possible counterargument because of all the examples provided the genesis carts WERE turned into memory cards.
>>11251662oh and if you're wondering, why didn't they just future-proof the n64 cart by making it bigger? again cost, even large amounts of sram is expensive, how many people do you think would be happy to drop $100 on a memory card on the chance they could find some use out of it on the next console? not that sram with an irreplaceable battery is a good choice for a very long term memory card in the first place
>>11251662I'm not talking about using existing handheld game carts to save your console games with, I'm talking about making new cartridges that say "memory cards" but can be plugged into, let's say, the GB and also the back of the N64 controller, instead of making a separate physical "cartridge" and calling it a memory pak. Then, you could have stuff like the mario golf and pokemon stadium compatibility no issue, you could have more games with compatibility because it would be integrated neatly into the system, and the differences between the gb games themselves and the memory cards being only stuff like storage itself inside it. You could have some random GB game store a save, sure, but it would be "let's take one of our GB cartridge production runs and instead of using memory chip a for the GB let's use memory chip b for the n64, which is larger, but more expensive."Because they still DID the latter, but now they don't have to also make a new form factor and they get the benefits of the compatibility previously stated.I know I'm talking in circles now but I'm just kinda confused how you came to that conclusion based on what I said so I wanted to restate more clearly, again.
>>11251781i covered multiple scenariosmaking a gb cart-shaped memory card specifically is pointless, since there would be absolutely no use for it on a gameboy, outside of re-using the shell mould, which as i've mentioned is a non-issue, the moulds aren't /that/ expensive relative to how many shells they can produce. if moulds were expensive (i mean, they aren't cheap, but relatively speaking), you would see reused or multi-purpose plastic parts more often, and that just isn't really the case, it does happen, but not often, and not from large companies like nintendoa large (storage space), multi-generation memory card may have been pretty neat, i don't deny that, my post explains a couple reasons why it wasn't practical, the big one being the cost of the memory chips. simply making it bigger than it needed to be was just too expensive in the '90sinterestingly, did you know the playstation and playstation 2 memory cards are physically compatible? as in you can plug a playstation memory card into the same slot on a playstation 2? (and technically vice-versa), though it doesn't let you save ps2 games on psx cards or psx games on ps2 cards, the format's very different, it's just so they could use a single memory cart slot on the ps2, and it only makes sense because the ps2 supports psx games
>>11251813Yeah ok, fair enough, that makes sense.
>>11251823it's an interesting thought experiment nonethelessfrom what i can see, the memory card originally cost US$30 (at least in the US), and got you 128K of space, i don't know how much that eeprom chip would have actually cost them or how much bigger ones would have cost, but as you should know, the cost/space ratio doesn't tend to be linear, and i don't know how big they even got back then. you'd only be able to save maybe one or two ps2 games on such a size, some games not at all, the ps2 memory card is 8M, or 64x bigger, they surely could not have made psx cards that big in the mid-'90s, it's 4x bigger than the n64 controller paks and those came out after the psx, so it's probably fair to say they already were pretty bigas a side note, even though they could have, they didn't use the same mould between psx and ps2 memory cards, they changed the design to better match the ps2 design for the ps2 cardspps: if you're wondering "i thought psx memory cards were 1MB", sometimes they have that written on them, but actually it's 1 megabit, which is 128K
>>11251936The size of the storage of a PS1 MC isn't very useful, they all have 15 blocks of usable storage. That is the metric games use and there's no fudging it with the way the MC interfaces with the games.
>>11251946yea, mentioning it is useless, which will be why the official psx cards don't say how big they arethey're formatted in a very simple way, the space is divided into 16x8k blocks, with one of them reserved for metadata, leaving 15 blocks for games to use, this format is fixed, there was no provision to support bigger cards. third party cards that had more space did this via "bank switching" that is, they would have a switch or something on them to switch between multiple 15 block cardsthis is in contrast to ps2 cards, which did support larger sizes as one big card, being a totally different format/filesystem
>>11251964on that note, i think the playstation would have been better off with the traditional filesystem approach the ps2 did, while it would have made it more complex, it surely wouldn't have been that big an issue to use something like FAT12 or similar on it. i say this as there's surely many games which don't need a full 8k of space to save your game, like take crash bandicoot for example, the first one supported passwords in addition to memory card saves, like many early psx games because the memory card was an optional purchase many people wouldn't have gotten straight away, those passwords were only a few bytes worth of datausing fixed blocks is certainly simpler, both to implement and to explain to users (users who in all likelyhood had never used memory cards before, the psx wasn't the first, the neo-geo has that distinction, but who had one of those), it's much easier to say you have 15 slots to save 15 games with, you always know if you have enough space for a game (until some games started needing multiple blocks...)
>>11247189Neither, they were a necessity. What the fuck else were you supposed to do when optical discs couldn't be written to and storage was insultingly expensive?
>>11251572>The N64 came out after the GB though...?I believe I specifically mentioned the GBA since that was the one that kept getting brought up.>Which they have done before, primarily afterwards with DS peripheralsThose were not memory cards, those were accessories. And it's because the DS had no type of expansion/memcard port, the only ports they can use for such a thing would be it's DS and GBA ports, whose main purpose was to play DS and GBA games, not for accessories.>or with how sega literally did this already with the genesis and caused no problems whatsoever?What are you talking about? The Genesis did not have memory cards. If you mean the SegaCD cart, that's because the SegaCD was not a standalone system and plugged into the Genesis, so they re-purposed the cartridge port that was already going to be there anyway. None of these apply to creating a memorycard port to an entirely new system.>Oh nooooo it's 20mm longer and if you plug it into a GB it doesn't do anythingMaybe if you count GBA, it's quite a lot larger than that for other game carts.>I was talking about-*snip*-Are you suggesting that you plug in say, your copy of Golden Sun into your GameCube and save your Super Mario Sunshine progress on it? Holy fuck that is stupid, it's so stupid that I didn't even consider that's what you was asking at first. Do I even need to explain why trying to use a cart designed to save the data for the game already on it with a completely different game that could have had all sorts of different capacities and even storage tech on a random game from a completely different system is buttfuck stupid?You are well below the mental capabilities of a toddler if you are suggesting that.As for design, again. ZERO. FUCKING. BENEFIT. Zip, Zilch, None, Nada, there is NO BENEFIT to doing that, but several downsides to doing so, I believe I made myself clear on that last time.
>>11251578>(linking a bunch of posts)How about actually paying attention to the post I mentioned?>when I'm talking about using a cartridge's innards and just increasing it storage or something if necessary.Because that statement is total nonsense. The cartridge's "innards" are mostly there to run a game, the chip to save is a very small piece of it, far far smaller than a full sized cart needs. It would be like putting a SD card in a 3.5 HDD's casing just to "use it's innards". Do you have any idea how any of this shit works to be making such asinine statements? Everything you are suggesting has no benefits, would increase costs, make a worse product, and just cause customer confusion.>So why are you talking about space for games when I've been talking about space for saving the entire fucking time?Again, because in the replay chain the person I replied to was in turn replying to someone talking about space for games, not just saves. Do try to keep up.I also love how you accepted >>11251326 's post when I replied how they are wrong and not only did such tech exist but it was even used in some games, as well as explained why it was not widely used.>>11251651Seriously, this "Why not re-use shells intended for games" argument is one of the stupidest arguments I have see on this board in years, and that's really saying something.
>>11251964>third party cards that had more space did this via "bank switching" that is, they would have a switch or something on them to switch between multiple 15 block cardsJust a quick note, many 3rd party cards were also advertised as being "1MB", but they were not bigger or multi-cards, they were just counting their space in bits instead of bytes, likely to trick the customer to make it think it's some larger than a standard card when 1 Megabit would be essentially the same as 128kilobytes.Even the one you posted in that picture claims it's "8MB" despite also being advertised as being able to switch between 8 PS1 memcards. If it was actually 8 Megabytes and not bits it would have the space of 64 PS1 memorycards.>>11252006>on that note, i think the playstation would have been better off with the traditional filesystem approach the ps2 didFully agreed. All this made up pages/blocks/notes/whatever else bullshit was just stupid. Sony got it right with the PS2, even though Nintendo and even fucking Microsoft was still insisting on using these arbitrary systems. N64 was by far the worst offender though, and also the one who held out the longest, even the 3DS was still doing it. Wasn't until the WiiU that they stopped that shit.
>>11247194you are legitimately retarded
>>11252057>Just a quick note, many 3rd party cards were also advertised as being "1MB", but they were not bigger or multi-cards,yea i pointed that out here: >>11251936>Fully agreed. All this made up pages/blocks/notes/whatever else bullshit was just stupid. Sony got it right with the PS2,glad someone agrees, i mean at the end of the day, is it really any harder to learn to use kb directly? like was anyone confused over why one ps2 game had "63k" on the back of the box vs. "172k"? the only catch i could see if users didn't know that 1024k = 1M, but if that was a concern then they could have just kept it all one unit (that is, call it a 8192k memory card, then it doesn't matter what the unit name is at all)
>>11247215Replace the battery in your memory card.Flash ram was expensive. Back in 98 you'd be paying 40 bucks for 16 megabyte usb drive.Putting it into the console was possible but if you had to move the data elsewhere you'd be fucked.And if you say just plug in a memory card then why bother putting it in the console and raising the in the first place? >>11248261If you have external storage then there's no point in having internal storage (back then). And you can guarantee additional sales from save carts
>>11249376Having an pc motherboard, internal psu, and a full size hdd and dvd drive made it heugFuck the 360 though.
>>11252169the ps2 had an internal power supply as well, and a bay for a 3.5" hdd, there's nothing the xbox had that the ps2 didn't in terms of volume
>>11252173oh and a full tray-loading dvd drive
>>11252038>Seriously, this "Why not re-use shells intended for games" argument is one of the stupidest arguments I have see on this board in years, and that's really saying something.I think I finally understand what this thread isIt's the dumbass that keeps making "why wasn't Saturn backwards compatible, the cart slot is right there: postsHe's just going about it in a completely roundabout way
>>11252173Likely the benefit of using custom fabricated motherboard and layout rather then doing off the shelf. Can optimize things for power voltages, decrease the size.Memory cards offered a convenient way to save and expand storage for those who needed it without increasing the cost for those who didn't. Imagine having a cartridge with 2 save slots and you have 4 siblings all wanting to play a separate save file. Without a memory card you'd be fucked.
>>11252187the xbox doesn't use an off-the-shelf motherboard, and despite the similarity to a pc, is not actually pc-compatible>>11252184a bigger question is why the fuck the megadrive didn't take master system carts directlythe megadrive already fully supports master system games, it has all the hardware for it, and the power base converter used to plug master system games in is almost just a straight pin adapter, it's not like a super gameboy which is an entire gameboy in a snes cart
>>11252192Because the master system also had cards
>>11252195sure, but is adding a card connector and a slot somewhere out of the way that big of a deal?same with the pause button, those are the only differences and i don't think it needed a whole other accessory to add backwards compatibility when they'd already done the technical stuff in the main console (it did something like the ps2, where it has the master systems' z80 cpu in there as well which handles sound in megadrive mode, on the ps2 it includes a psx cpu which in ps2 mode is the I/O processor)
>>11252076>yea i pointed that out here: >>11251936Ah, my mistake, missed that post.> like was anyone confused over why one ps2 game had "63k" on the back of the box vs. "172k"?Agreed, I don't think the concept of "subtract X from Y" would be confusing to customers regardless of if it's kilobytes or some made up "blocks" or whatever. Well before memorycards, computers and programs would constantly mention space or memory needed in KB. While I know most did not have a computer back then, it wasn't a confusing concept for people.The N64 took it a step further though. Their cards had TWO made up terms, notes and pages. Pages was the equivalent of space left, and notes were like the slots on a PS1 memorycard, they had 16. So not only could you just have 16 saves on a N64 card period, but you needed to make sure you had enough space too. If one game took up a massive 100 pages, you would not have enough space for another game that needs 30 pages even though you had 15 notes free. Likewise if you had 16 saves on the card that take up a very small number of notes you would not be able to make a 17th save even if you had enough pages. It was absurd and considerably more complicated than any other system ever used for internal or external for saves. And that's not even bringing up the fact that the N64 had no internal memorycard manager like nearly every other console with memorycards did, you had to hold start while booting a game that supports memory cards. And this was not standardized beyond any game with memcard support requiring it, so the way it looked, what buttons did what, what features it did or did not support, if it could only manage controller port 1 or all 4, if it could copy or move, if it supported plugging a controller/memcard in/out without a reset, etc were all dependent on how the developer coded it.>1024k = 1MTo be fair storage manufacturers still pull that BS today, advertising capacity using 1000 instead of 1024
>>11252201as someone who got an n64 second hand in the early '00s, i confess i never did figure out how controller paks workedwithout instructions, i didn't know there was a memory manager at all, there's no way to guess to hold start on powering on a game, the fuck is that. i also remember the terms pages and notes, but didn't know wtf they were, if a game saves, cool, if it didn't, oh well, try another pak i guess
>>11252162>Flash ram was expensive. Back in 98 you'd be paying 40 bucks for 16 megabyte usb drive.The first flash drive publicly shown was in 2000, and it was 8MB.>Putting it into the console was possible but if you had to move the data elsewhere you'd be fucked.The first console to support saving to a USB drive was the Xbox360, and that was late into it's life in an update. They also imposed many silly limitations at first so it would not eat into their overpriced HDDs... until those limitations were removed in further updates.The PS3 and PS4 allowed it too, and unlike the 360 you didn't need to format the card in a special proprietary file system to do it so it was very easy to move data elsewhere... the PS5 removed that feature no doubt so Sony can push it's paid cloud saves.>>11252169A lot of the Xbox was empty space, I believe for airflow. Again, the fat PS2 had all of those things and it was much smaller.>>11252187>Likely the benefit of using custom fabricated motherboard and layout rather then doing off the shelf. Can optimize things for power voltages, decrease the size.It did not use an off the shelf motherboard you dingbat, it was custom. You are taking those "Xbox is just a PC" arguments too literally. It used a CPU that was based off a Pentium 3 a GPU based off a Geforce 3 rather than something that was RISC, MIPS, or PPC based and a fully custom GPU like other consoles at the time, it also ran the Windows2K kernel, this made it much more similar to a PC nut that doesn't mean it was literally off the shelf PC parts or even a disguised/reskinned PC itself.
>>11252205Yeah, it was considerably more complex than just plain listing the free space in bytes and that's it, even kids would have found that less confusing. Maybe they didn't want people to know how laughably tiny (32KB) their cards were.Also hilarious in that the manual for the memorycard says "pages" in quotes, and does not even mention notes. Though I believe about knowing to press start, that was written in the game manuals... I think.
>>11252213i only had a couple games in boxes, with manuals i don't know, but it's not like anyone actually reads thosewhy not put it in the games' main menu? why hide it?
>>11252239>but it's not like anyone actually reads thoseI used to love reading manuals back when games still had them, they were fun to read back then.
>>11252294yea, when consoles were new to me i did, but by that point not so much
>>11247189Good, we lived in s rentals era, easy to carry at friends' home as well
>>11252038You're the illiterate one lmao
>>11247194>>11247196Why is everyone having a hard time understanding these posts
>>11252516Because they are moronicIt’s hard to grasp an idea that’s so stupid it makes the anti mister poster seem sound of mind
I'm assuming the mentality of the N64 controller pack is you weren't really supposed to rely on them for game saves. Nintendo probably saw them as a way you could save things like custom settings, and then carry them to a friend's house. But then other developers cheaped out by not having saves supported on the cartridge. Did any actual Nintendo developed games do that?
>>11247563>Getting harder and harder to find a decent phone that still has a port for those... fuck Apple.Quit buying flagships, dumbass. You don't need to spend $1,000+ on a device whose primary purpose is making phone calls and texting. I bought my phone for $300 on sale and it has a microSD slot, headphone jack, and 120Hz screen.
>>11247189>>11247209i see them as a cool thing, sure it could have been built into the console, but with a memory card you can save your game, go to a friends house and continue there with your save, whatever level you are on or play with what characters you have unlocked or what have u.now we have the cloud which is great but comes with all the gayness of logins and passwords and confirming your id and shit
>>11252565It's also one of those Nintendo gimmicks that they didn't really think through. You can see how individual memory in each controller seems like a really cool idea, but did any game utilise that, particularly?The system really ought to have launched with a game where you build a character, and battle your friends. Maybe Custom Robo was supposed to be that. I dunno.
>>11252535There's nothing stupid about "why reinvent the wheel?"
>>11252714The cartridges the older consoles used were read-only memory storage (hence ROMs). They couldn't be used as a memory cards because they weren't writable, and the save memory some cartridges had built-in required a battery to maintain the save data. By the time systems like N64 or Playstation rolled around rewritable flash memory had become affordable in tiny quantities, which was good enough for most games and did not require a battery to maintain data.This is why they "reinvented the wheel".
>>11247189good if you had friends and brought your games to play on their console
>>11252731Yeah that all makes sense, but the initial question wasn't stupid just because it could be answered. It's not unreasonable to think>>11252731>save memory some cartridges had built-in required a battery to maintain the save data.could be solved by just swapping it out with>rewritable flash memory had become affordable in tiny quantities, which was good enough for most games and did not require a battery to maintain data.
>>11252535This, they are so stupid that people are making the mistake of attempting to apply logic to them. It's like trying to logically understand why someone thinks 2+2=5>>11252565Off the top of my head Mario Kart 64 let you save ghost data to them, it did not save ghost data to the cart IIRC. But all progress and times were saved to the cart only.>>11252568It's not just flagships, and I sure as fuck don't pay four figured for a phone. Also others use their phones for things other than "calls and texting", why don't you just have a flip phone if that's all you do with yours? They do still exist.>>11252714Because you aren't! This more like "Why not always re-use the rubber from the old wheel?" ... when the wheel in question is for a bicycle and the old rubber is from a truck tire. There is zero benefit to re-using the old plastic molds, you will waste MORE money on the materials of the larger carts than engineering smaller ones, they offer no benefits, would just confuse customers, and would be harder and more annoying to use.It's stupid from every angle. I have rarely seen an argument that doesn't have at least ONE point to make, even if that point is stupid. But this is literally stupid from every possible angle, it has no worth whatsoever. It's so stupid that people couldn't' even grasp what the anon originally was asking because they made the mistake of using logic at first, it defies even stupidity itself and descends into eldritch levels of incomprehensible super-stupidity.
>>11252951>This, they are so stupid that people are making the mistake of attempting to apply logic to them. It's like trying to logically understand why someone thinks 2+2=5>Why didn't they use the same hardware they were already producing to save their new games?>THAT'S SUCH A DUMB FUCKING QUESTION HOLY SHIT WHY ARE YOU SO STUPIDRetard, lol. The funniest thing about this whole thread is that the few anons that went in and actually tried to explain reasons for why it wouldn't work made perfect sense and were met with equally cordial responses. Everyone acting like it's an idiotic question are doing stuff like claiming that you would be saving over existing games or only using the plastic shell, or thinking it would be too confusing for kids when it's literally been done before and been fine (how many kids were confused by the sega cd's genesis-compatible cartridge...? No-one? Yeah.) or thinking that it would take a herculean effort to carry them around compared to the smaller default ones. I mean, seriously. THAT'S stupid.
>>11253080>>Why didn't they use the same hardware they were already producing to save their new games?Already explained a hundred times over you retard.The only thing that would be reusable would be the plastic shell and edge connector, the plastic shell costs very little to re-engineer and ends up saving a lot of money in manufacturing costs to make a smaller one. As for the edge connector, again, much cheaper to make a smaller one and they are very simple to design.There is no benefit to reusing jack shit, it ends up costing them more to make as well as making the product worse and less practical. It's lose-lose.>(how many kids were confused by the sega cd's genesis-compatible cartridge...? No-one? Yeah.)Ah, so you're a zoomie, got it. Because people WERE confused back then over what it was.>or thinking that it would take a herculean effortNice exaggeration. Nobody said it would take a herculean effort, they said it would be a lot less feasible to carry them around as well as have ports on the console that big than to just have a small one.>I mean, seriously. THAT'S stupid.Not as stupid as your postDo try to keep up, retard
Were horses a misstep? Why didn't we just use cars first?Were land lines a misstep? Why didn't we just use cellphones?Was candle light a misstep? Why didnt we just use light bulbs?
>>11253439>Already explained a hundred times over you retard.Yeah fucktard I know because I was summarizing the argument. Do you have an internal monologue? How would you feel if you hadn't eaten breakfast this morning?This will be the last time I dignify your word-shaped vomit with a response, because although you don't realize it, this particular conversation has literally (dictionary definition if you were unclear) already culminated in several conclusions, and the discussion ended with positive rapport for all involved except for the couple mentally lacking individuals like yourself that cannot parse phrases with more complexity than a 3rd grader's essay. You have shown through these last couple replies a remarkable endurance against basic monodirectional rationale (which in basic terms means "that if x is bigger than y, and y is bigger than z, then x is bigger than z) and a refusal to entertain bounds in a particular topic (which translated to retard-speak means that you can't help but say things outside of the current topic) and will be summarily ignored henceforth, no matter how much you ree at the idea of asking a question in order to get an answer and being mad that the answers all complain that the question is stupid due to the answerers misinterpreting it.tl;dr lol you literally still don't understand what we're talking about, fuck off retard lmao
>>11253509>Do you have an internal monologue? How would you feel if you hadn't eaten breakfast this morning?... do you have brain damage?>blah blah blah blah I am so awesome blah blah blahPlease stop tard raging all over this thread, thank you.Gotta love that the person who wrote a paragraph of gibberish is claiming others have "word vomit", get your verbal diarrhea out of here.
>>11247189Better idea than serialized hard drives.
>>11251781>Then, you could have stuff like the mario golf and pokemon stadium compatibility no issue, you could have more games with compatibility because it would be integrated neatly into the system,that would be cool, so many games had both an n64 and an gb or gbc release it would have been cool if the whole data transfer thing have been mor often
>>11252951>It's not just flagships, and I sure as fuck don't pay four figured for a phone. Also others use their phones for things other than "calls and texting", why don't you just have a flip phone if that's all you do with yours?Sounds to me like you just enjoy being financially irresponsible, dipshit. I also use my phone for quick internet searches on things while traveling, watching videos, taking photos, and using my phone as a portable music player but I still don't need a flagship or even more expensive phone for that.Any other potential use case can be better served by something else. Reading? Bring a book. Games? I'd rather play something more substantial than what a phone can offer and emulating with a touch screen sucks and I'm not going to carry a fucking game controller for that purpose.
>>11254093>but I still don't need a flagship or even more expensive phone for thatI just said it's not just the flagships, retard. My phone is not a flagship.
>>11247226Digimon World, fight with digimons from different memory cards.
>>11251437>NO I AM NO TELLING MAM
>>11253451pretty much, they were very much a product of their timelike yea, they could have built it into the console, but you'd still have wanted an external option anyway, because whatever internal storage was provided wouldn't have been big enough for people with sizable game collections, and they couldn't just make it huge because writable chips were expensive, and adding a floppy or hard to disc to say a playstation (1) just for saves is absurd, these machines were made to be as cost-effective as possibleand in addition to that, the rental market was king, that included /renting the consoles/, i remember renting a playstation a couple times before buying one, i didn't get a memory card for that, but the option was there, plus taking your saves to a friends' without taking your entire consolethe first console with a memory card, the neo-geo, introduced it first for the arcade machine version of the console, allowing customers to continue where they left off on any arcade machine, that's where memory cards were born, that's what was going through their minds at the timesure these days you'd just slap an ssd in there and play on another console via internet syncing, but neither were feasible back then
>>11247189I think it had to go along with CD-ROM based media, unlike floppy discs or cartridges with battery backups, the CD-ROM medium didn't have a method to write saves onto the disc. Some systems/addons like the PCE, MegaCD, and Saturn had a small amount of storage space built-in with optional accessories for larger storage capacities. The NeoGeo's memory card was optional, mostly for transferring high score data. However, I think it was Sony's Playstation being the one of first for the memory card being a bit more than optional, especially for games requiring longer playtimes. A sort of DLC for a feature to be added onto the base system to enhance the player's experience. As I remember playing though Resident Evil without it quickly and getting very proficient with the knife, but I still did eventually had to get the memory card for games like Final Fantasy 7. I suppose it is a good thing, since it did allow for the base console to be more cost effective.
>>11254734>ForeverPakUseless, would have been better to put that money towards a VM2 or wait for 8BitMod's version. Or even gotten a cheap FRAM chip and soldered it in place of the SRAM chip on an original N64 memory card.
>>11247194>>11247196bro there is NO WAY they could have made the gb cartridges plug into the gc or n64 cartridge slot, wtf are you tlaking about? its pins are completely different
>>11256426that is... not what he said
>>11255487Yep, I don't understand why this was even made,
>>11255487many people don't like doing mods like that themselves, even if it's not that hard
>>11247189>were they a good ideayea, being able to save your progress was a pretty good idea i would saynot being sarcastic either, tons of games in the 8/16bit era didn't have saves at all, and most that did did so using passwords, only some of the bigger games that were both far too long to play in one sitting and required saving a lot of data (such as RPGs) had internal save ram
>>11247194>>11247196>>11247209>>11247215Are you people for real?Having memory cards was nice, no need to worry about losing your progress when renting, plain and simple.
>>11251360>that stick
>>11250115You could load PS2 and PS3 saves over USB on backwards compat PS3sThe reason they didn't want people using USB storage was to sell overpriced memory cards ($25 for 8 MB magicgate card vs $20 for 64 MB of USB flash stoage in 2003)
>>11256992well usb drives didn't really exist when the ps2 first came out, it was added basically as an expansion port, like for the eyetoy and the likei didn't know about the ps3, i stopped getting consoles by then
>>11257001PS3 era was pretty good IMO, but AAA videogames stopped actually progressing in development after that and are now in this awful stagnant rut, where we're now just wallowing in the most rethreaded, Marvelized cookie cutter shit possible, along with increasingly greedy nickle and diming schemes, and politically driven billionaire activism from powerful investment groups not making shit any better.I'm just gonna continue to enjoy older games, refurbish some old consoles and get flashcarts for them, and then maybe try to make the kind of game I really want to play.
>>11257027well you don't need to tell me about modern games, we're both in /vr/, but maybe i should look into what the ps3 hasi only got a ps2 in 2004 (was never rich, got a psx around when the ps2 came out), so i was using that all through the early ps3 years
>>11247194>Not really sure why they were necessary.Then you're an idiot.
>>11257090i'm pretty sure he gets it now, there's a whole conversation that happened after that post, no need to keep beating it
>>11257108No you see, there's a lot of (You)s so he fits in better if he (You)s the same post, bonus points if he only repeats what the other replies say without having read the rest of the thread.
>>1124719410/10
>>11258796you mean 8/8
>>11247194I'm getting really tired of zoomtards like you posting negative IQ takes like this. /v/ needs to be a containment board again.
>>11258537see what I mean? 3 more chiming in since this single post just to jump on the non-existent bandwagon, lmao
>>11247535>chink mem cardsNever heard anything about them, but the official ones are very cheap anyway so I don't see any reason to bother with them.
>>11251683you need more? fuckin hoarder
>>11247215>he let his brother delete his saves as a kid>he apparently still lets this routinely happen to him well into adulthoodsounds exactly like the type of person who'd make this sort of thread
>>11251048fuck me I had one of these. It melted in a fire, so I don't remember it being a problem but I do remember it vaguely being worse for some reason. I was super young so I barely understood anything about it
>>11247540I have a one gigabyte microSD card in my N64 flashcart. It can still hold nearly two dozen N64 games.
>>11248238>Those N64 memory cards were a joke. 32 KB is fucking nothing.I think PS1 memory cards were 128kb.
>>11251048>What I find even stupider is that there is no modern multi-memcard replacement eitherI don't actually know if this is the actual reason but I'm guessing its got something to do with power requirements.You know how N64 rumble paks required batteries? Well there's some third party rumble paks that don't, so how's that possible? By simply not giving a fuck. The N64 controller port provides enough power for one, maybe two, controllers with rumble paks going full swing. But you put four controllers rumbling away in there and that damn thing's taking an express ticket to the grave, which is why you need those AAA batteries in there to take the load off.So to make a fancy N64 memcard either you'd have to do some weird fuckery to deliver power like an external dedicated power supply or an internal battery, or you'd just have to plaster it with warning stickers saying to unplug all other controller ports while using it.Best option would probably be a wireless controller with its own internal battery and fancy memcard built in but then that's all sorts of limited again in undesirable ways.
>>11262458Correct. PS1 memory cards were smaller, held four times as much as a N64 memory card, used non-volatile memory that didn't rely on a battery, and were around the same price if not cheaper than an N64 card IIRC.Even for back then 32KB was fucking nothing, even if talking about non-volatile memory, much less volatile SRAM.But the Forever Pak came out three years ago. Even back in the 90s 3rd party memory cards that held 4x or 8x the normal amount existed. Today? There are 3rd party new memorycards for the PS1, PS2, GameCube, and Dreamcast that all have the ability to have a near infinite amount of storage space using a MicroSD card as well as a slew of other features.The Forever Pak though? Just a single, featureless, 32KB of space, with it's only "feature" being that it does not need a battery... and it costs around the same as that "infinite" PS2 card, even costs MORE than the PS1 version. This was a mod you could easily do even back then by replacing the SRAM chip with a compatible FRAM chip.This thing should be five bucks at most. Ideally though, it shouldn't exist, it should have been a MicroSD based effectively infinite storage device like all the other cards I mentioned. Why has nobody made one of these for the N64 yet?
>>11262657>>11262627>I don't actually know if this is the actual reason but I'm guessing its got something to do with power requirements.Not an electronics engineer either but from my understanding a lot of this super-tiny modern hardware tends to use less power than 30 year old components. Granted, the N64 was just at the beginning of many components going from 5V to 3.3V (This is why a lot of chink carts/flascarts for 3rd gen consoles can eventually damage them, many just use modern 3.3V components, with a lot not even bothering to do voltage regulation, and some that do not doing it well) and going from through-hole to surface-mount components, but it's components still drew more power than many modern devices that can blow it out of the water. If the PS1, PS2, GC, and DC all can safely have such a device for them, I don't believe the N64 was some super low-power setup that can't handle it. It had to support the Transfer Pak after all, which read Gameboy carts, and the Gameboy ran at the old 5 volts standard (This is why there is actually a tiny switch in the GBA's cartridge port, GBA carts clear the switch, GB/GBC carts don't and press it down when you plug them in, the switch kicks the GBA into 5 volt BC mode).I fully believe that it can be done and with likely using less power than some official 1st party components did while using it.As for the rumble pack, uses a LOT more power to spin a motor than to run solid-state micro components, there is a reason relays exist for when you need to control a power hungry motor with modern low-power devices like a Pi.
>>11262627transflective lcds and modern microcontrollers use approximately fuck all power, if the controller power bus has enough headroom to power one or two /rumble paks/, then there's more than enough to power fancy multi-card style memory cards with a screen and buttons on itremember, this kind of technology is stuff you'd find in kids' toy digital watches, or deskop calculators powered by a solar power under indoor lighting, they are extremely, extremely low power
>>11251247Welcome to /vr/, friend. You're here forever
>>11247189The N64 transfer pak especially feels like a massive fuck you. Exceedingly little uses and it just feels cheap when a game asks you for one instead of having internal save storage. Very little games uses something that you'd bring over at a friend's house
>>11262657>There are 3rd party new memorycards for the PS1, PS2, GameCube, and Dreamcast that all have the ability to have a near infinite amount of storage space using a MicroSD card as well as a slew of other features.PS2 and gamecube are modern systems that only need a simple adapter to convert to microsd, like just swapping pins. You mention dreamcast - really? I'd like to see it because I want one. Most people are waiting on this, which isn't out yet and the lowest price model is €115.https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/vm2-the-next-gen-vmu-for-the-dreamcast>>11262663This is all bullshit. The later the console the more power it tends to draw. That's why they started having so much trouble with battery starting with the psp and smartphones. The need for more power and the heat that it gives off is a major part of the current slowdown in advancing technology and the reason why a lot of work started to be focused on making them as low-powered as possible.
Also if you have an everdrive you can use the Mempak tool to easily upload and swap out your memory pak contents for the N64 making it almost completely unnecessary. There are also other devices including an official one from Nintendo from back in the 1990s that allowed you to do this. If you were to use a microsd device this is also how it would work - you would have to swap virtual memory paks around. So for practical purposes it makes little difference, it might be just a little bit of a time saver, it's not like you're going to need to swap out the memory pak all the time. The dreamcast on the other hand hasn't any clear option that doesn't have a significant additional cost, the gdemu can only send data one direction.
>>11247209The Saturn had this but it had a tendency to stop working after a certain number of years.
>>11262807you're thinking of controller pak, transfer pak is the one you put gameboy games into
>>11262807>The N64 transfer pak especially feels like a massive fuck youAn even bigger fuck you was games that locked content away unless you plugged in the corresponding GB game. As in, it didn't even read any saved data off the cart, just used it's existence as a physical DLC key to unlock something already on the N64 cart. Nintendo pulled that crap again next gen with the GBA link cable, some games used the actual link feature, many just used it as a DLC key if you had a GBA game. Even the Wii and DS engaged in this a little.>>11262815>PS2 and gamecube are modern systems that only need a simple adapter to convert to microsd, like just swapping pins.It's not just a simple MicroSD adapter, if it was you would not have the multiple memory cards, auto-switching, and all the other features. Also that does not explain the PS1 or DC VMU. PS2 cards also had DRM on them.>You mention dreamcast - really? I'd like to see it because I want one.You said it yourself, the VM2. Or are you trying to imply that it's fake somehow? Because there are working units in the hands of reviewers, and 8BitMods (the guys who made the PS1, PS2, and GC cards) are also working on one.>The later the console the more power it tends to draw. I was talking about the super small hardware that would be used in such a device you idiot. Also, the components in modern consoles ARE more efficient, the just also do a fucking hell of a lot more than older components. The N64's components needed heatsinks to not fry, nowadays hardware several dozen times more powerful than the N64 can be powered off a 9 volt battery without cooling.>>11262851>Also if you have an everdrive you can use the Mempak tool to easily upload and swap out your memory pak contents for the N64 making it almost completely unnecessary."If you have this several hundred dollars device than you don't need this device that would cost $20-40" That's really your argument? It's not even 100% compatible with every game.
>>11262889like the n64 controller pak, the saturns' internal save ram is also battery-backed sram, though it has one advantage is that you can easily change the battery. of course, that doesn't help all that much since removing the battery erases your saves, and there's no indication as to how much life the battery has leftalso like the n64, the internal ram is only 32k, so you'll still want an external memory card if you're a heavy useryou can do an fram mod on it as well (again, like the controller pak), but its' size can't be changed because it's physically only wired for the size it is
>>11262915>An even bigger fuck you was games that locked content away unless you plugged in the corresponding GB game. As in, it didn't even read any saved data off the cart, just used it's existence as a physical DLC key to unlock something already on the N64 cart. Nintendo pulled that crap again next gen with the GBA link cable, some games used the actual link feature, many just used it as a DLC key if you had a GBA game. Even the Wii and DS engaged in this a little.this kind of thing wasn't entirely unique to nintendo, there were some playstation games for example which changed their behaviour in some way in response to the existence of a save game of a related game on your memory card
>>11262915>An even bigger fuck you was games that locked content away unless you plugged in the corresponding GB game. As in, it didn't even read any saved data off the cart, just used it's existence as a physical DLC key to unlock something already on the N64 cart. Nintendo pulled that crap again next gen with the GBA link cable, some games used the actual link feature, many just used it as a DLC key if you had a GBA game. Even the Wii and DS engaged in this a little.It's not a "fuck you" at all, just because it's on a device you bought doesn't mean you're free to unlock and use it. I don't see what your problem with it is, try to get out of a caveman mentality. >It's not just a simple MicroSD adapter, if it was you would not have the multiple memory cards, auto-switching, and all the other features. Also that does not explain the PS1 or DC VMU. PS2 cards also had DRM on them.That's why I used the word "like", it's well known that the gamecube and ps2 can use SD cards, it's fundamentally the same technology. Not sure about PS1 which I believe came before usb/sd all became standard. The dexdrive for the N64 used the serial port, which is a very archaic and primitive device. >You said it yourself, the VM2. Or are you trying to imply that it's fake somehow? Because there are working units in the hands of reviewers, and 8BitMods (the guys who made the PS1, PS2, and GC cards) are also working on one.No I'm saying it costs money, it's €115. You were directly referencing the cost and like it should be $20. Anything is possible with a lot of money, especially if it has a battery in it nullifying power requirements.
>>11263007(continued)>I was talking about the super small hardware that would be used in such a device you idiot. Also, the components in modern consoles ARE more efficient, the just also do a fucking hell of a lot more than older components. The N64's components needed heatsinks to not fry, nowadays hardware several dozen times more powerful than the N64 can be powered off a 9 volt battery without cooling.Okay, I can see you're an idiot so I'll try to make this simple. I agree they're more efficient with their use of power, in my last post I explained why they are. While it's true that the same low-energy technology might be co-opted to run on low powered devices like a N64 controller, his point is still viable that's it delivers low power to the controller. The reason why is presumably not to overheat the N64 which as you pointed out required a lot of heatsinks. Consoles that came after the N64 all had fans. So your point is working against you in the sense that the N64 is trying to deliver as little power as possible to the controller ports to not require a fan, get it? Just because something can be directly engineered for the most efficient power use possible like a portable device run off a 9V battery doesn't mean it's the same technology as normal sized FPGAs. You're just throwing portable technology and normal technology into the same category. >"If you have this several hundred dollars device than you don't need this device that would cost $20-40" That's really your argument? .Now we're REALLY getting into stupidville. I got my N64 Everdrive clone for $80 a few years ago. Meanwhile, the dreamcast unit I pointed out was well over $100, you apparently didn't care about cost when you just mentioned that, now you're saying it would be $20-$40 again? Any N64 memory pak device like you're talking about would cost over $100. This aside from the fact that Everdrive 64 has other uses.
>>11263008(continued)>It's not even 100% compatible with every gameWhat do you mean not even 100% compatible with every game? We're talking about saving memory paks. It will work with any controller memory data. You can create all your memory pak data from official carts and use the memory pak tool on the everdrive simply to juggle different virtual memory paks.
>>11262921>this kind of thing wasn't entirely unique to nintendo, there were some playstation games for example which changed their behaviour in some way in response to the existence of a save game of a related game on your memory cardThose generally were more of a fun easter egg. they did not lock entire features or even additional games behind it. Also did not require you to own an entirely different system and hardware to link them together.>>11263007>It's not a "fuck you" at all, just because it's on a device you bought doesn't mean you're free to unlock and use it. I don't see what your problem with it is, try to get out of a caveman mentality. "Do not question, just cumsoom product then move onto next product"It is absolute bullshit, there is no reason for that crap to be locked away unless you plug in a cart from a game on an entirely different system when it's already on the disk/cart. People used to speak out about on-disk DLC you know, when did you become such spineless corporate bootlickers?
>>11263031>>11263007>That's why I used the word "like", it's well known that the gamecube and ps2 can use SD cards, it's fundamentally the same technology. Not sure about PS1 which I believe came before usb/sd all became standard. The dexdrive for the N64 used the serial port, which is a very archaic and primitive device.USB drives were not standard even back when the PS2 and GC were released, USB itself did not even fucking exist when the PS1 was released. And again, you are ignoring that "can technically talk to a SD card" is not the same as everything the Memcard Pros can do. Also, you realize back then it was just the SD standard, right? Max 2GB, FAT16. Nothing like the SDHC or the SDXC standards we have today that would be completely incompatible, yet, that's what these Memcard Pros use, because good luck finding a new "SD" card today that's not SDHC or SDXC and isn't some dodgy chinesium from Aliexpress.Dex drive isn't even comparable>>11263007>No I'm saying it costs money, it's €115. You were directly referencing the cost and like it should be $20Learn to read, the $20 TO $40 (I notice you cut off the $40) price was for you bringing up everdrives, which means N64. I wasn't talking about Dreamcast VMUs there so I am not sure why you think this is a "gotcha" unless you are desperately trying to find something to argue about by intentionally ignoring context. A N64 Memcard Pro would be in the $20-40 range, those things were simpler than PS1 memcards. To say that "Well, you can get this hundred dollars everdrive instead" is not a valid argument when such a device would be $20-40. And it sure as fuck won't cost as much as a VM2 which is essentially a standalone mini-handheld.>Anything is possible with a lot of moneyVery incorrect>>11263008>Okay, I can see you're an idiotIdiots should not try to call other people idiots
>>11263034>>11263008>While it's true that the same low-energy technology might be co-opted to run on low powered devices like a N64 controllerThere is no "might" here, people have crammed a Raspberry Pi into an NES cart, the NES is able to power this entire computer that is hundreds of times more powerful easily within it's power requirements, because new tech is that much more efficient.>Consoles that came after the N64 all had fans.Again, because the hardware does more, but it does it more efficiently too. If the components were as inefficient as they were on the N64 you would need a nuclear tower to cool it. Thing is, when you take this efficiency and make the product do a lot less and smaller, you still end up with a much more powerful component while it uses LESS power then the old components did. Do you get it now, or should I break out the crayons?>run off a 9V battery doesn't mean it's the same technology as normal sized FPGAs.We were talking about memorycards here, which generally use a ESP32 SoC, not a FPGA, try to keep up, idiot.>>11263008>I got my N64 Everdrive clone for $80 a few years ago"I got a crappy chink clone with less features, that means the argument that it still costs a couple times more than a N64 Memcard Pro would or the fact that it's chinkware invalid!"Welcome to retard-ville, population: (You)>>11263008>Meanwhile, the dreamcast unit I pointed out was well over $100, you apparently didn't care about cost when you just mentioned thatBecause the dreamcast one is in itself a mini-handheld, all the others which fall under the same blanket as N64 are not. Again, idiots like you should not call others idiots.>>11263009I mean what I said, it's not compatible with all of them, idiot.
>>11247194holy zoomer, you dont know what they were for?
>>11247215i cant tell you how many times my quest 64 save got deleted, man that game sucked but i just had to finish it.
>>11247546i still use passwords for old games even if im emulating them, i could easily save state but i dont.
>>11251380is this the one that deleted everything in your memory card? god imagine getting your monster hunter save deleted
>>11262807None of Nintendo's own published games relied on the controller pack for saving, so I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't really intended for that, and other publishers cheaped out on cartridge saves.There definitely should have been at least one launch game that encouraged every player to bring their own character on their respective controller, and battle it out that way. I guess the WWF games had stuff like that, and maybe GASP? Nothing by Nintendo though, which is a weird misstep. Pokemon Stadium probably should have just been that, come to think of it, rather than the whole GB game connectivity thing.
Also, fucking Stop and Swop should have used the controller pack. Absolute no-brainer.
>>11263081Yes and no, it was the rated RP-T version of that disk that did it, not the RP-M, there was two Holiday 2004 demo disks. Specifically, it was the Viewtiful joe 2 demo that did it, it crashes at the 20 minute mark and that's when it corrupts any memory card that's plugged in.>>11263123Mario Kart 8 did for ghost data, but yeah, not for progress. If it wasn't meant to save progress though then what was it possibly intended for?
>>11262906Yes, I'm a retard, I meant controller pak. It's on the fucking picture too>>11262915It made no sense in that "why would you have both?" in most cases, but I SUPPOSE the games were different enough to not complain too much about it... But a huge massive missed opportunity to have actual cross content that reads your save file, then there'll truly have a reason to have both>>11263123>There definitely should have been at least one launch game that encouraged every player to bring their own character on their respective controller, and battle it out that wayBomberman 64 is one of the only that I know that uses a feature like that. I checked the wikipedia release list, and man, crazy, it came out even after Mischief Makers? I didn't even know. Then again I got the N64 a bit later than launch, so it felt "early" to me
>>11263037>I mean what I said, it's not compatible with all of them, idiot.I still don't know what you mean but I'll show no matter what you're saying you're wrong both ways (as in the other points I don't have time to go through). 1) If you mean you can't copy all controller pak saves of course you can, the memory pak data is the same either way. It does not depend on using everdrive roms or any other thing, it's an exact copy of the memory pak and can reload other memory paks with zero data lost from how it was uploaded. 2) If you mean the Everdrive 64 can't play all N64 games - yes it can, I think there is like 1 game it's meant to have slight technical issues with, I forget which now, maybe Animal Crossing due to the internal clock but that wasn't even released to western markets on N64. Otherwise it has 100% compatiability otherwise.
>>11247209It's not that they couldn't, it's that it would make the console more expensive and you had no way of getting more save space unlike memory cards where you can just buy a second one. That being said, the PS1 using "slots" instead of space was retarded because not all slots were made equal.It was one of those things we kinda just eventually solved by being able to put so much storage space on consoles that save data would never be able to fill it up. It was one of those things that at the time was the best we could really do because the tech hadn't fully reached the golden point yet and wouldn't until the 360/PS3 era.
>>11249376>don't forget that the PS2 had one too.Unless you were an FFXI player, almost no one plugged an HDD into their PS2.
>>11263197>I still don't know what you meanWhy am I not surprised?>If you mean you can't copy all controller pak saves of course you canThis was in no way even brought up>If you mean the Everdrive 64 can't play all N64 gamesAlso not what I am talking about, I meant that you can't use it in place of a memory card. It supports the on-cart saves, not emulating a memory card in a controller. It lets you MANAGE them, but not make the N64 think it had a memory card plugged in but in reality it's a virtual one on the everdrive.
>>11263227The HDD came out much earlier and had significantly more usage in Japan. Blame Sony being assholes over trying to usurp FFXI over their shitty Everquest spinoff for that one.After the mini-fiasco that was the PocketStation, where US games were including functionality for it before it was released... and then it becoming a problem when Sony ultimately decided not to release it in the US, causing some US games to have features you can never use (Like unlocking some bonus summons in FF8) Sony mandated that a game may not implement support for an accessory that was not available yet in that region.The HDD came out fairly early in the PS2's life in Japan, so many games added support for it. Generally this was the option to install some of the disk to HDD for faster loading and/or being able to save to the HDD which gave you a lot more save slots as well as not needing to worry about memory cards. It also had software to manage digital camera photos, download demos, etc. (I recall early versions of the manual for the US release actually had dozens of pages talking about this software... which also never was released in the US)However almost no games required the HDD, the exception was FFXI. At around this time though Sony was also working on their own PS2 MMORPG, Everquest Adventures, which did not need a HDD, but it wasn't ready yet. Sony intentionally held back the release of the HDD in regions outside Japan so they can try to push their MMORPG out first and usurp FFXI. And thanks to their mandate that means any US versions of games with HDD support had to strip it out, S-E even eventually released the PC version of FFXI first in the US because of this, normally they released the PS2 version first. In the end nobody even remembers Everquest Adventures yet FFXI is still remembered to this day.
>>11263259>Also not what I am talking about, I meant that you can't use it in place of a memory card. It supports the on-cart saves, not emulating a memory card in a controller. It lets you MANAGE them, but not make the N64 think it had a memory card plugged in but in reality it's a virtual one on the everdrive.Man, whatever. I think you just realized you're wrong and tried to whip up some total red herring. You said it was incompatible with some games, if you had meant what you're saying you would have said that can't make the N64 think it had a memory card plugged in - which would be obviously impossible from the cartridge slot.
>>11263287>Man, whatever. I think you just realized you're wrong and tried to whip up some total red herring.I don't think you even know what that term means because I didn't even come close to doing anything like that.Fact: You can't save your data on N64 games which required a memory card (Controller Pak)Fact: Everdrives cannot simulate/emulate a memory cardFact: The only way to save with these games on a real N64 is to have a memory card or a device that simulates a memory card plugged into your controllerIs it clear now? Or do I have to use smaller words? Or are you predictably going to reply with your own "Fact:" listing taht unlike mine will be full of wrong takes in yet another attempt to pull a "gotcha" that just further exposes your ignorance?
>>11259196wanna get some new ones
>>11263137stuff like custom characters in WWF, which you can then take to a friend's house.I can see the logic there of having one in each controller.
They should've included enough memory for like maybe 1 game. What like 16kb of memory would've cost 2 cents.
>>11263306This is crazy tangential stuff that has nothing to do with our conversation. I almost as though you're trying to make it look to a random person who might read this as if you were right in our conversation, you an anonymous user on the internet vs another anonymous user to a third party anonymous user, how incredibly pathetic but that is the only way I can figure why you are posting these ludicrous red herrings now. Or maybe you just realized that you need a memory pak, have you ever even had a N64? Like as if that would be new information to me that you would need a memory pak. I am done with this nonsense, you're a joke poster.
Are you saying you need an actual memory pak plus the ED64 so it costs more, is that what you mean? The vast majority of people have at least 1 memory pak as they're required for a lot of games, so that's $0 cost for most people and a few dollars for others. If you wanted to add that to the cost of the everdrive 64 I would have considered it, so $80+$10 $90. As opposed to dreamcast vmu which is well over $100.
>>11263408That was a lot of nonsense to say nothing of value. You clearly have no reading comprehension if you are having this much trouble trying to understand a statement that has already been dumbed down for you. Everyone on the entire internet is now dumber because of your existence.>>11263410>Are you saying you need an actual memory pak plus the ED64 so it costs more, is that what you mean?I am saying you need a "controller pak" (it was not officially called a memory pak BTW) a.k.a. a memory card to save on those games PERIOD regardless if you have a ED64 or not.This entire argument was about how the Forever Pak is worthless and that they should have made a multi-memory card like the 8BitMods guys did for the PS1, PS2, and GC. YOU was the irredeemable absolute idiot who brought up the ED64 and I have been desperately trying to correct your insane brainless tangent ever since but you seem to be too braindead retarded to have the smallest sliver of reading comprehension to even realize where you fucked up.>As opposed to dreamcast vmu which is well over $100.WHYTHEFUCKAre you bringing up the Dreamcast, AGAIN, when we are talking about the fucking N64? Are you utterly incapable of keeping a single train of thought without it constantly jumping tracks to unrelated bullshit like the ED64 or Dreamcast?
>>11263471>I am saying you need a "controller pak" (it was not officially called a memory pak BTW) a.k.a. a memory card to save on those games PERIOD regardless if you have a ED64 or not.Right, you need a $10 memory pak along with the ED64. I know it's officially called a controller pak, I along with most other people usually call it a memory pak or card to make it clearer. >This entire argument was about how the Forever Pak is worthless and that they should have made a multi-memory card like the 8BitMods guys did for the PS1, PS2, and GC. YOU was the irredeemable absolute idiot who brought up the ED64 and I have been desperately trying to correct your insane brainless tangent ever since but you seem to be too braindead retarded to have the smallest sliver of reading comprehension to even realize where you fucked up.I brought it up because the ED64 + a memory pak you already have is a near perfect replacement for what you're suggesting. The vast majority of people have a memory pak and I don't know why someone wouldn't have a ED64. So there is no need for your hypothetical device that you want. >>As opposed to dreamcast vmu which is well over $100.>WHY>THE>FUCK>Are you bringing up the Dreamcast, AGAIN, when we are talking about the fucking N64? Are you utterly incapable of keeping a single train of thought without it constantly jumping tracks to unrelated bullshit like the ED64 or Dreamcast?Wow - I'll try to explaint it one last time. 1) The ED64 + memory pak solves the problem of lack of memory cards, so that's why we don't need your hypothetical device. 2) The dreamcast vmu2 cost proves that it's not just some quick add-on that you could just throw onto the foreverpak - it requires years of research and costs over $100 for the dreamcast, and that was a console that had more power available to it due to it having a fan. What are you not understanding about these examples? You literally brought up the dreamcast one yourself.
>>11263506(continued)And fwiw the cost of the forever pak is €33 while the vmu2 is over 3 times that cost. You mentioned cost being a factor, you think it should be the same cost yet have the ability to add in microsd cards. https://4layertech.com/products/forever-pak-64I think the problem here comes from the fact that you're stupid.
>>11263506>Right, you need a $10 memory pak along with the ED64.Again, the ED64 has nothing do to with any of this. I might as well bring up my spaghetti recipe, it would have about as much relevance when we are talking memory cards.>I brought it up because the ED64 + a memory pak you already have is a near perfect replacement for what you're suggestingYou replace a Controller Pak with.... a ED64 and Controller Pak. Level 1000 IQ here ladies and gentlemen. You clearly don't even know what the conversation is about. I explained countless times, it's about saving your data on a memory card. The ED64 has zero relation to this.>The vast majority of people have a memory pakfalse>and I don't know why someone wouldn't have a ED64priceBut also, the ED64 is completely irrelevant to this discussion.>So there is no need for your hypothetical device that you want.Do you even know what this hypothetical device does? IT ACTS AS A MEMORY CARD, IT DOES NOT LOAD GAMES. You know, EXACTLY LIKE WHAT THE MEMCARD PROS DO!>The ED64 + memory pak solves the problem of lack of memory cardsThe ED64 has fuck-all to do with this, also, again, it's a device that costs far more than such a card would>The dreamcast vmu2 cost proves that it's not just some quick add-onNo, it just proves that you are a fucking idiot and can't understand that a VMU is considerably more complex than a normal memory card, hence why it costs more to make such a device. How about you look at the price of this and shut the fuck up?https://8bitmods.com/memcard-pro-for-playstation-1-smoke-black/>What are you not understanding about these examplesYou mean besides the fact that they have nothing to do with what I said?>I think the problem here comes from the fact that you're stupid.No, the problem is that you are irredeemably retarded.
>>11262663>Not an electronics engineer>but from my understandingSo literally just shit you heard from other kids on youtube
>>11263557>Do you even know what this hypothetical device does? IT ACTS AS A MEMORY CARD, IT DOES NOT LOAD GAMES. You know, EXACTLY LIKE WHAT THE MEMCARD PROS DO!It has already been explained to you these devices can't possibly act as a large memory card because the N64 has a limit of 256kb of addressable memory per memory card. The rest of the memory of such a device comes from loading off the sd card - same as loading off the Everdrive 64 to the memory pak. Get it now? The memory isn't in what's interfacing with the N64, it's in the microsd. It loads up a full controller pak worth of data at once, it can't load any more. There is no device that can hold all that memory in place on a memory card for a console like the N64. It creates a bunch of virtual cards which you juggle. What, you thought you could put a 128gigabytes microsd and it would show up as that amount of pages and space on the N64?
>>11263378>2 centsi don't think sopic related, mouser catalog from 1997, this is a few years newer than these consoles, but it's not wholesale prices like they would have gotten. it should give you an idea that these weren't dirt cheap thoughlike sure, a small internal save space wouldn't have killed them, the saturn for example did exactly that, though part of that will have also have been because they wanted a real time clock (which the psx and n64 didn't have)
>>11263992and if you're wondering what a clock has to do with it, well a clock requires a battery and a chip to count and record the time. because they can, such chips also provide some of its' sram for external use as well, so if you want a clock then you get the sram along with it
>>11263954>It has already been explained to you these devices can't possibly act as a large memory card because the N64 has a limit of 256kb of addressable memory per memory card.You're an idiot, these devices create virtual cards on the SD card and let you either manually or auto-swap across them. They don't create a single massive oversized memory card that would have a truckload of compatibility problems. Did you have any idea how these cards work at all?>same as loading off the Everdrive 64 to the memory pak.No it's not, you need to manually move saves off/on the card using that method. You really don't have any idea how those cards work do you?>The memory isn't in what's interfacing with the N64, it's in the microsd. It loads up a full controller pak worth of data at once, it can't load any more.>It creates a bunch of virtual cards which you juggle.Yeah, no shit. What kind of a retard thinks I was trying to claim it uses the entire SD card as one massive oversized memory card?>What, you thought you could put a 128gigabytes microsd and it would show up as that amount of pages and space on the N64?No, apparently the only one who was that stupid was you to think anyone here was implying that.
>>11264041>No, apparently the only one who was that stupid was you to think anyone here was implying that.So why are you trying to insist so hard that the Ed64 + controller pak is so different when it forms the same function? Like I said, there is a convenience factor, but at the end of the day it's first world problems. You can have all the memory paks you want at the same time and transfer them to the computer with ease. Also contrary to what someone else said maybe half of games use only a tiny amount, like 3 of the 128 pages or so in the memory card. It's unfortunate though that far too many titles do hog the card and sometimes taking up most of the card. Nintendo should have laid down a maximum amount of space each game could take, unless you're you really need an incredibly small amount of data.
>>11259257Some games like MGS could use an entire memory card or more.
>>11248924Yeah the xbox had all the bells and whistles, which made the console insanely expensive to produce and caused it to be very short lived and never make a profit despite outselling the gamecube.
>>11264080>why are you trying to insist so hard that the Ed64 + controller pak is so different when it forms the same function?Because it doesn't? The ED64 requires you to manually shuffle around saves and still needs you to have a least one memcard to do so, it would be cheaper to buy several memcards than to use an ED64 and would be less hassle. The memcard pros, which you seem to seriously not understand how they work, do all of this for you automatically on top of many other features the ED64 does not do.>but at the end of the day it's first world problems.No, it's called not being an idiot. I have never seen someone suggest a "solution" that is both a poorfag's way of solving a problem while also being a waste of money, so bravo on that I guess. Look, I fucking get it, you saved up your allowance and bought a chink bootleg ED64, and now you want to put it on a pedestal as if you are special or something. But no, it's not the same thing, it never will be close to the same thing, and you have done nothing but prove what a colossal idiot you are by insisting this overpriced solution is anything like the same thing while going off on tangents with the Dreamcast and other nonsense.>You can have all the memory paks you want at the same timeYou know what else lets you do that but much easier, faster, and cheaper? A memcard pro-like device.>half of games use only a tiny amount, like 3 of the 128 pagesDoesn't matter, because they had not only pages but "notes" too, which were basically save slots. You only had 16 notes per card, meaning regardless of how many pages a save takes up you can't save more than 16 per card. Less if a save takes up a lot of pages even if you had notes free. It's a design that's about as stupid as your posts. You don't seem to even understand how N64 cards work yet you have been BSing this entire time about them and the ED64 that is nothing like the Memcard Pros which you also have clearly no idea how they work.
>>11251064>>11251068You probably pushed the buttons too fast, like most kids would do. You need to cycle a single mc at a time until you get to the one you want. I still have mine and it works like a champ.
>>11254734Still need to grab a GC MemCard Pro, glad it seems like it will work with the FlippyDrive
>>11251303Transferring saves through a generation is still one of the most kino gaming feelings
>>11265203Nope, it just died overnight one way when I wasn't even using it. Plenty of similar stories, just about everyone who remembers having one of these remembers it dying on them.
>>11255487It did seem like a better alternative to the originals. They will have to suffice for now as there wasn't much better at the time.>>11265884They are pretty feature rich. Should make your time with the Gamecube more enjoyable.
Having the memory card slot on the controller was kinda clever.
>>11247189made perfect sense in Japan, Literally pointless everywhere else (except maybe Brazil, they can get a little funky). Thank god for them though seeing as they are the key to a lot of simple softmodding. have a very fond memory of driving literally 28 hours to meet a guy I met online who had a modded ps2 memory card I could copy.
>>11269123how were they pointless
if you guys think they were being cheap by not including some sram built in, keep in mind that around the time of the 5th gen, you could find lots of cheap pc motherboard with literal /fake/ l2 cache sram "chips" on them, as in they look like chips but are just empty packages with no chips in them, along with modified bioses that say they have cache when they don't. sram isn't cheap. now sram for saving doesn't have to be as fast as sram for cache, but still, it was enough to make some companies put out mobos with fake chips just to save on that cost
