How many people use these?
Are they reliable?
Any brands to avoid?

Thanks!

Avoid!

(unless you like replaying your entire game again from the beginning)

http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthr...hreadid=337998

You get what you pay for. Don't buy anything but 1st Party.

I've had a Mad Catz 4x (251 block) card for about two years and I've had no problems with it. But the thing is, the MSRP is the same as the official Nintendo card, so there's not really any point, unless you were at a brick and mortar store and they were all sold out of the Nintendo brand. Cheaper memory cards (like the ones you see on eBay for five bucks) use compression to keep costs down, which causes the data loss problems most folks complain about. Unless you know for sure that the card doesn't use compression (which is pretty much impossible to find out), don't bother.

NEVER, buy third party memory cards.

Some people use them with no problems, but I've had two (one on the N64 and one of the PSone) go bad, and there are tons of horror stories on the net.

It's just no worth the risk to save a few dollars (and I'm a huge tight wad) when you can lose hours of progress.

I mean, look at all the work it takes to unlock everything in Mario Kart (where at 150cc winning is probably at least 80% luck). I'd probably just sell the game if I lost my save, so I'd rather spend a few more bucks and have my save on a reliable first party card.

I agree with Groucho. Only use first-party stuff, memory cards especially. A friend had some MadCatz controllers and they just sucked to high heaven. If we were playing Smash Bros. Melee or something, we would always bitch about getting the "crappy controllers." I think he saved $5 on each.

I'd say more like 99% luck to unlock everything in Mario Kart. I agree though, never buy third party memory cards. I had one fail on my Playstation (a regular one) and N64 (One of those 4X ones). Its just not worth it. I definitely won't go through the hell of unlocking everything in Mario Kart again.

As a matter of fact I would never buy third party anything. Its all junk from my experiences.

I bought a third party card, and have had no problems, but I consider myself lucky. In fact the only reason I bought the card was because of the amount of blocks it could hold. I agree though, try and buy official Nintendo cards if possible. I remember learning my lesson the hard way about 5 years ago when I used a third party card in my old Playstation. I was shocked to find out all I had accomplished on FF VII was gone.

I did a bunch of research on that mega memory card for GCN before I bought one. I was mainly interested in it because even the biggest Nintendo memory card is too small if you have sports games and other things on it. I remember reading a bunch about it and how people weren't having problems... but in general I always buy 1st party stuff...

I've had nothing but rotten luck with 3rd party memory across all consoles, all the way back to my psone. Typically, I have no problem with 3rd party peripherals, but when it comes to memory, I've always had bad luck. Makes me wonder why I even try any more. Thankfully the Xbox has a built in hard drive for saves (hope that didn't sound like a sales pitch), which I hope other companies think about doing in the future. (Though I still back up my Halo saves to memory cards before going to LAN parties, since everyone likes to create their own profiles or mutilate the good ones I have stored on the disk)

I think memory cards in general are bogus. The technology to save games without them has been around FOREVER. Remember saving Nintendo games in the cartridge? I think it's just another way to keep the base console price a little lower, and just force people to add on costs in addition to that.

Who isn't going to buy a memory card with their console? Who isn't going to buy a game with their console? Who isn't going to buy a second controller? That's at least another $60 added to the base price of your new PS2 or Gamecube...

...but yes that did sound like a sales pitch...

I don't. My Xbox's hard drive crashed, and I lost all my saves. Haven't had a bit of problem with any of my Cube saves (or the Cube itself) and it's a full year older than my Xbox.

Same thing happened to mine and I had the internal memory corrupt on my 3DO. It sucks when you lose all your saves for every game in one shot. There is no full proof solution, though I've never had a first party memory card on my PSone, PS2, Dreamcast or GameCube ever fail.

I agree with you on most of your point, but I never felt that Nintendo's "save your game on the cartridge" was very reliable...especially in the long run. After a few years of use, most cartridges (especially RPGs) are practically worthless. I like the idea of memory cards myself, mainly because of the portability. Still, it would be nice to get one packaged in a bundle.

I've had some large Interact memory card in my cube with save games with no issues but it's never been removed. I also have a few first party cards that came free with a few games that I alternate in slot #2 for RPG/action games that I'm just not going to risk 10+ hour game saves.

That's been scaring me, as I've had bad luck with PC Hard Drives. Guess I should crack and buy a X-box mem card and back up my game saves periodically.

The only problem is that the Battery eventually dies (can be replaced, but you lose your saves when doing so), and as far as I know that's a problem with memory cards too. All my SNES games memory still works.

The problem is that several titles don't even support this.

I'm hoping that in the next generation, they put CD burners in the consoles, so you can just back up your saves to disc.

Can you not just boot up the console and copy the saves from the HD to the memory card?

With the PS2 and GC you can boot it up without a game in and copy saves from one mem card to another.

CD burner Idea would be ok, but I imagine it would drive up cost way past my $199 max for a console, so I'd rather just take my chance with HDs and mem cards rather than pay more.

Not for every title. Kotor and Halo, for instance. The saves are too big.

That sucks, figures it would be the two games I really don't want to lose my saves for.

Aren't memory cards essentially the same kind of battery technology that had been used in cartridge games before and in older CD consoles that had internal memory (Turbo Duo, Sega CD)?

That's what I was saying above. As far as I konw they all have batteries that eventually will die and erase all your data.

Just making sure for whoever posted that "Nintendo's cartridge saves are garbage" post.

I still have plenty of NES games with working saves..

They are flash technology and should have no battery of any kind. There is a limit to the number of times they can be overwritten (probably in the hundreds of thousands), but I have never reached it on any card I owned.

Same technology as the SD and memory sticks used in cameras and PDAs.

Cool I didn't know that.

Still, I've also never had a cartridge "die" either so I'd hardly say that technology was garbage as both forms eventually die.