67 out of 67 people found this review helpful.
PlayStation Memory Cards for PlayStation Consoles!
Date of Review: Sep 16, 2000
A memory card is a must for anyone playing games on their PlayStation. The majority of games out there allow you to save after each level completed or allow you to save data that might be otherwise pertinent to the game (i.e. Grand Turismo saves the information about the car you have built). The question is...do you want to save your data and be positive that it is safe, or do you want to save a couple of bucks and risk having to start all of your games over from the start if your off-brand memory card fails?
Here's the situation. You've just purchased a PlayStation console and a couple of games and you're ready to sit down for a couple of hours to play. You play for a while and realize that you would like to start saving your games, so you take a trip down to your local games store with the mission of picking up a memory card. As the clerk points you to the memory card section, you see all your options hanging on the wall but are confused as whether you should buy 10 blocks, 15 blocks, or the mega 120 block monster card. You have brands like Sony, Nyko, Transcend, and Interact. So which one do you get????
First off, I highly recommend that you stick with the Sony brand. All other cards are referred to as unlicensed cards (since Sony does not support them for use with your PlayStation) and some are prone to huge problems. Even though the Sony cards are a couple of dollars extra, this is not a case where you are just paying extra for the name on the box. What you are paying for is a stable saving environment. Unlicensed manufacturers just have not been able to duplicate the stability that Sony memory cards have to offer.
Second, since I recommend that you stick with Sony cards, this automatically means that I recommend you stick with the 15 block cards since Sony doesn't make anything but 15 block cards. Why is this?? Because all of those mega-memory cards don't save the game data in its native format. Instead, they compress the data which means that every time you want to access the data, it has to be uncompressed. It is during the compression and decompression that data is often corrupted and your game data becomes inaccessible. So if you want stability, stick with Sony.
The downside to this is that you will need to either manage your memory card well by deleting old data or your will need to purchase a couple of memory cards since some games use up 5 memory blocks alone. I personally have three and have no problems switching them out when I play different games.
The final, and most important reason I highly recommend that you use the Sony cards and not some off-brand is this:
THIS WARRANTY SHALL NOT APPLY IF THIS PRODUCT: (a) IS USED WITH PRODUCTS NOT SOLD OR LICENSED BY SCEA
This statement comes straight out of your PlayStation console manual. What it means is that the moment you stick a non-Sony memory card in your PlayStation machine Sony will no longer honor the warranty.
Basically, it is a good idea to store all of those valuable games on a Sony card. Buy two, buy three, buy however many you are going to need...but make sure you buy Sony!
