Ben-DutkaYes, I know it sounds silly.
After all, hard drives hold a gazillion times more data. We now have the option to save wherever we want in many games. Autosaving is a nice little feature (most of the time). And memory cards could get corrupted. I get it.
But a few things to consider- If I wanted to go to a friend's house to show off a game, and I had already played for a while, I'd just bring along the memory card. Now it's a little more complicated than that, isn't it? I sorta liked the idea of having my memory easily portable and to be honest, I never once had a first-party memory card die on me. I had at least a dozen between the original PlayStation and PS2 and they all worked perfectly. The only one that got corrupted was one of those craptastic EB-branded cards, which were half the price of a PlayStation-branded card…and I figured out why the hard way. Didn't make that mistake again.
But anyway, they worked great. A hard drive can get corrupted, too. Yes, we can back our saves up on the Cloud, but doesn't it seem like we're taking more steps to do basically the same thing we did before, only because the sizes are so much larger? I've swapped data between PS3 systems with a USB drive before but some game saves these days don't even copy. They're protected from that, for whatever reason. Plus, if a hard drive goes, you're totally screwed. Memory cards didn't hold much so yeah, you had to have multiple cards, but if only one died, it didn't mean all your save data was toast. That's like a little outdated benefit.
I understand that we're all sorts of connected now and we can, technically, do more "things" with the data we have on our machines, but none of it is as simple as the techies attempt to claim. None of it comes close to the simplicity of a memory card and at the end of the day, isn't that all we're doing? Saving game data?
I wish Vita games didn't tie the save data to the game. It was pretty disappointing that I couldn't just delete a game off my Vita and still keep it's memory save on file.
I was unaware of that. Considering how expensive memory cards are for the vita, I think that was a terrible thing to implement.
Yah, so with the digital games I have to back up the whole file, sometimes like 3GBs, on my PC. It's slow and lame.
I agree, it's pretty crappy. The only thing you can do is backup your Vita to your PC using the Content Manager.
Though, I understand why Sony did it. Many PSP hacks came from exploits found in game saves. By making those game save files easily accessible Sony basically opened the door to hackers. And the PSP's hackability cost it dearly. Sony has taken steps to avoid that with the Vita, at the cost of user friendly-ness to the rest of us…
Yet again, the hackers ruin it for everyone.
Yeah stuff is more complicated, and when you do bring a save to another PS3 it has a small fit at you when you try to access it.
I had to buy another 30 GB card because I filled it up with por ….. eer hahahaha! I mean video games! They should really make a 1TB card for Vita. Really.
End of Line.
hows it more complicated?
insert USB stick.
triangle on the game save file.
copy.
magic, done!
not exactly rocket science.
only thing thats more complicated about it is the stupid ridiculous pathetic fact that $ony locks some game saves.
i mean WHY!?
or if you have PSN+ upload them to the cloud even easier!
3 things next gen games MUST have!
1 multiplatform game save support.
there are SO many games i want to get on PC, or vise versa, but refuse to because ill end up loosing my progress.
i REALLY want to get tomb raider on PC because its suppose to be one of the best looking games out there, but i refuse to because ill have to start all over again.
2 save ANYWHERE!
one thing i absolutely LOATH about allot of games this gen is the checkpoint system SUCKS!
metro last light a perfect example, so many times i have deviated off the path to explore a room, get ambushed by 100 monsters, survive and find a new weapon and heaps of resources.
continue back on the path a half hour later, bam your dam start all over again!
WTF!?
you would think when you find valuable items like a freaking all new weapon the game would auto save, but you would think wrong!
put auto saves in better more appropriate locations, is that so much to ask!?
again with the save files, another thing i HATE is the missing ability of just saving where you want whenever you want!
you use to be able to do this whenever you please, but now 99% of games dont even have a save function for you to use, and the 1% that do, far cry 3 for example, does not let you use it in mission.
why?
why cant i save the game where i want and load the game where i want?
no more of this no i cant turn it off yet because i havent hit the next checkpoint and i dont want to have to do all this sh*t all over again!
or eh im not tired yet i wont go to bed just yet just a little more.
oh but the past few checkpoints have been really long so maybe i should.
simple, just let us save wherever and whenever we want!!!!!!!!!
O, and last but not least, for the love of god get rid of this save locking bullsh*t!
one thing that PISSES me off still to this day is user locked saves.
3 people in this house use the same console but we have different users so we can have our own accounts.
but why should i have to use my own profile, to start my own game, when someone else has already done it?
or someone else is playing, than leaves to do something, so you carry on for them forgetting its not your profile.
then tomorrow you start up and awwwww you have to start all over again.
how FUN!
thats the problem with games this gen, there no longer about FUN, there about being the biggest pain in the A$$ as possible!!!!!!!
again, WHY!?
i thought games were suppose to be FUN, make people HAPPY!
not piss them off!!!!!!!!!!
Blank Line,
Sony is NOT generally responsible for copy protected save files, and if they have implemented it in any of their more recent games, then I was unaware of it.
I have only really seen copy protected save files on EA titles, and maybe some Activision games.
I really don't know any other publishers that copy protect save files, but I usually don't have to worry about moving save files, unless I'm trying to transfer save files from one PS3 to the other, but I have cloud saves for that purpose as well.
Last edited by JROD0823 on 5/17/2013 8:58:31 PM
I miss memory cards, too. I never had an origianl Playstation or PS2, but I loved the VMUs for the Dreamcast. I only ever had one card for both my Sega Genesis and Nintendo 64.
Flash drives are nice, but are no substitute, really.
I do not mind if a game has auto save along with allowing you to save when you want, but if it's auto save only, I cannot stand that.
before i got an external hard for storage, i was using an ipod
for storage 🙂
Man, I made the cheap memory card mistake too… lost my FFX save after getting almost all the ultimate weapons (only missing Lulu's because I hated dodging lightning bolts…)
Yeah, I lost about 30 hours of Front Mission 3 data and maybe about 5 hours of Vagrant Story. 🙁 Never started FM3 over but I definitely restarted VS and finished it.
As for the lightning bolts…come on, that wasn't too hard. There was one particular place to stand and when the screen flashed, you just pressed the dodge button. I don't remember, but I THINK you could leave to save in between, so you could do like batches of 25 or 50 or something (I know you needed to dodge it 200 times). I did manage to do it, at any rate. Got all the ultimate weapons for all the characters. 🙂
I was over 70 hours into Dragon Warrior 7… corrupted… I must have sat there for at least 30 minutes in disbelief.
My take on memory cards:
http://wrinkledgamer.blogspot.com/2013/03/memories.html
What an odd thing to miss. Memory cards were expensive, small, easily lost, never had enough memory, had to be constantly switched out. I miss a lot of things about old school gaming, but that's not one.
The HDD on my PS3 Slim died on me. I lost every gamesave from 3 or 4 years. And before anyone says something, cloud saving wasn't functionally then.
Never happended something similar with the old memory cards, I even still have one PS2 card functionally.
Yesterday I was saving my game data from Deadly Premonition and tough that only this gamesave would fill a PS2 Memory Card and laughed about it… and sudenly this article appears.
I don't miss memory cards in the slightest. I like the fact that the PS3 has memory built in so I can just save it there.
I've not had corruption problems, but I liked the games that let you create as many save files as there were memory card slots. One trend I cannot stand is the need to erase your existing save file just to start a new game. It's not like there's a lack of space on HDDs these days, so I don't get why they can't let you make multiple saves. My playthrough of the first Assassin's Creed ended up being a joint project with a roommate because of that. (While it was fun to tag-team, there were story elements I missed because I wasn't there while he was playing it at times.)
Sorry Ben, but I have always hated memory cards.
The reasons why I hate memory cards are as follows:
They were/are generally proprietary pieces of technology.
The old ones held only a handful of save files each, which meant you needed to buy tons of them if you had lots of games.
They were/are expensive as hell, and rarely see a price cut until late in the console's life cycle.
Save file corruption was a problem you have to keep front and center in your mind when using them. Not saying that it doesn't happen with hdd's, but it seems like it happened a lot more to me in the past with memory cards.
If you went the cheaper off-brand route, say Mad-Catz (or insert your own favorite off-brand here), they were notoriously unreliable and were typically of inferior build quality, and could void your warranty if they weren't officially licensed.
So when I think of memory cards, I only see red, I don't experience fond memories.
But hey, that's just me. 🙂
Last edited by JROD0823 on 5/17/2013 8:48:51 PM
This is why I like sticking to name brand even when it is ridiculous. The hdmi thing for example, yes I'm that person that buys the PS3/Sony branded hdmi. Even though their is probably enough evidence saying it doesn't make a difference
2 experiences I have had that makes me do this. 1) PS2 can read ps1 memory cards, but I had a 3rd party memory card and my ps2 would not recognize it. The official ps/sony name brand memory it recognize (a different 3rd party one also went corrupt on me). 2) I bought a off brand DS battery and it worked like crap. Bought the ones from nintendo's store and it worked fine. Notice the pattern hear?
I also like sticking to buying from certain sites…
PS
I'm glad the 3ds is using SD cards!
Last edited by Ydobon on 5/17/2013 9:40:13 PM
That's funny that you mentioned the PS2's reaction to off-brand memory cards.
Every time one of my PS2s reads my MadCatz PS1 memory card, it brings up an image of the PocketStation in the memory card menu, that is if it even bothers detecting it at all, which is kind of a crap shoot.