These days we take built-in hard drives and cloud accessibility for granted, but back in the 90s, saving your game progress was a little more complex. The shift from cartridges to optical media required a new method for saving, with ecosystems approaching the issue in different ways.
Sony has always had a certain zeal for proprietary memory formats, and thus we were all introduced to the Memory Card. For around $30 you could save 15 “blocks” of memory. Some games only required one per save, while others (like Tecmo’s Deception) could occupy half a card or more. With so many worthwhile games available and a finite amount of save space per card, this could quickly get expensive.
Well, forget about all of that! The Memcard Pro from 8bitMods is the last memory card you’ll ever need. Insert any old micro SD card you have laying around and gasp in abject wonder at essentially unlimited storage capacity. Just how “unlimited” you might ask? Each GB on your micro SD card equals 8000 virtual memory cards (or VMCs) on this device. That’s almost enough for a single game of SimCity 2000! There’s also a built-in wi-fi option for easy management of your myriad cards and files, though this has proven to be a tad finicky for me.
Still, if you’re the type of person who loves playing retro games on real hardware, I can’t recommend this device highly enough. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m about to head over to GameFAQs to download all of the clear saves I’ve had to delete over the last 25 years.