'>>10859270
because some games had competent programers and some games didn't';

'cards were a scam. America never even used the arcade to home data gimmick once.';

'>>10859270
Games that only load from slot 1 are the reason who I constantly have to swap my PS2 memcard and my PS1 memcard on my Playstation 2.';

'>>10859715
>cards were a scam
They were necessary with the advent of disc games
Backup ram is often too small';

'>>10859715
Are you ok?';

'>>10859270
Because the programmers were lazy/incompetent

>>10859270
>cards were a scam

Sega Saturn:
Has a chip in the console to store saves... that is kept alive by a battery, the same battery that powers the clock which will run down the battery in 2-3 years.

Want more? You can buy a backup cartridge too, except not all games are compatible with it so you will have to manually move the saves around for those games, and you can't just keep the cartridge plugged in there either because sometimes you will need to swap it for a RAM cart for some games.


N64:
Some games save to the cart. Some use a battery that will eventually die, some do not but the chip might be finicky in other ways. Some require a memory card, which also uses a battery that will eventually die, and you will need to swap out if you want to use a rumble pak. For many games it's practically impossible to bring over your saves without bringing the entire cart. Oh, also, the memory cards have both a capacity and file limit, if you use up all the files you can't create more saves even if you have enough space. The N64 had no built in memorycard manager either, you had to rely on a game's built in memorycard manager, which was different and had different features between every game.


PSX:
All games use a memory card that you can plug into any PSX, it just simply has 15 slots, vast majority of games take one slot, and it does not need a battery.

Yeah, what a total scam, why didn't they do what Sega or Nintendo did? That was clearly so much better.

>America never even used the arcade to home data gimmick once.

Blame the shitty state of arcades in the US compared to Japan.

>>10859937
>They were necessary with the advent of disc games

Basically

The only other options besides cartridge would have been.... magnetic storage like the FDS or N64, not exactly ideal.';

'>>10859270
I think a better question is why did some games require more than 1 block (out of 15 on the memory card) for a single game save. There are a few games that used the entire memory card for a single game save.';

'>>10862415
>a better question is why did some games require more than 1 block for a single game
FFFFFFUCKING VAGRANT STORY';

'>>10862415
>>10862523

Because the game saved more data than can fit in one block? Each block was roughly 8KB, if a game uses say, 10KB of data for it's save, it's going to have to take up two blocks. Whether the game in question really needs more than 8KB or the devs were too lazy and/or shitty to compress it enough to fit is an entirely different matter.

One of the main reasons among many others I am glad the PS2 ditched that made up "blocks" nonsense and just listed it's cards free space in MB, without it being partitioned off into even "blocks" or whatever that would be a huge waste of space to do.

Though the Xbox was the worst offender. You toss a 8GB HDD in it and use some fucking made up "blocks" system? Where the system is almost always just going to list "500,000+ blocks free" unless you somehow managed (without hacks) to completely filled up the HDD to the brim? IIRC a block was 16KB, so it was completely fucking USELESS to measure a 8GB drive in made up blocks that were 16KB each. Yes, a few gigs were reserved for system/cache stuff, but that's still an incredibly braindead stupid way to do it. It's like if Windows still to this day only measured the size of HDDs in megabytes and topped out at 1000, just showing "1000+MB" as long as you still had a gig of free space left.';

'>>10862415
> the entire memory card for a single game save
Diablo was bad for this. I blame it on the simple fact it was a PC port. Games can also just be badly designed. Quake 4 on PC had saves that would just dump the ram to disk. My saves were 512mb at a time.';

'>>10862617
Wait, the RAM the game was using or all of your system's RAM? I have 128GB on this thing.';

'>>10859715
I took the memory card with my GT tuned cars to my friends place and had head to head split screen races against him and his tuned cars. That wouldn't be possible with internal memory.';

'>>10859281
fpbp';

'You young'ns just don't understand. It's a memory card. It's not just for your save games. You leave your memories there, too.';

'Most developers simply didn't give a shit and assumed people only ever had one memory card and that it would always be in slot 1.

It's not even a competency or time saving issue, it was literally just devs making a stupid decision that would have taken like a minute to implement properly.';

'>>10863717
So that's where you left your memories of how to make a funny.';

'>that ps2 demo disc that had a glitch that would corrupt all the save files on your memory card

memory cards were cool though, i dont like the ps2 as much as the xbox or gamecube but most games having a cool 3d animated model on your save card was cool. i would collect them because you could fit a lot of them on one card.';

'>>10862523
>VAGRANT STORY
>uses 3 blocks
bitch please, romance of the three kingdoms vi uses 7 BLOCKS!';

'>>10864768
jesus fucking christ what were they thinking';

'>>10860441
>run down the battery in 2-3 years
More like weeks';

'>>10864768
yeah and sim city 2k used damned near all the blocks on the card';

'>>10863845
It's not a joke, anon. Do you have any old memory cards?';

'>>10864739
>Play Tekken 5
>Turn on autosave
>Turn off PS2
>Play Tekken 5 again
>"No data found" and blue block found in it's place on the Browser screen';

'>>10860441
>PSX
>X';

'>>10865221
Constructor took the whole memory card also. They had the decency of packing a memory card with the game though, so no big deal.';

'>>10864739
the 3d models were cool and full of soul but wasted a lot of space, the actual savedata was only a tiny fraction of the file size with overwhelming majority devoted to the 3D model, even worse if it had different animations for copying or deleting';

'>>10865659
Don't make me tap the sign';

'>>10865165
It's weird, I thought my Saturn was defective. I put a brand new battery and it died in a couple of months. I don't understand, I think the console drains the battery like crazy when it's not on. Pain in the ass to have to make copies of the save files to a cartridge every time you finish playing. It could've been great, but it's one of the worst ones in practice.';

'>>10862415
VS has a lot of data to keep track:
Flags for each monster and chest.
Each piece of equipment in the inventory has its own set of stats and affinity. And the inventory size limit (+chest storage!) may be pretty high.';

'Hexen 64 used 90 blocks of memory or something ridiculous it was most of the card anyway';

'>>10865597
Dozens. And I remember exactly where they are because I didn't leave my memories there.';

'>>10865713
the PSX is its own machine, its irrelevant what people called it back then.';

'>>10866460
You are either zoomie or a troll, or both, but everyone did and still does call it the PSX. Nobody gave a shit about the PS2 with a DVR duct-taped to it's back. Sony calling it the "PSX" is about as stupid as Microsoft naming their THIRD console the "Xbox One". 99% of the time when someone says PSX, they are referring to the "PS1", the console that everyone even back then called the PSX.';

'>>10866603
But nobody back then called it PSX, it was just "playstation" because it was the only one... even if you were going to shorten the name in writing why would you choose "PSX" over simply "PS"?';

'>>10866678
Do shut the fuck up';

'>>10859715
I specifically remember seeing NFL Blitz machines with memory card ports.';

'>>10862605
>Whether the game in question really needs more than 8KB or the devs were too lazy and/or shitty to compress it enough to fit is an entirely different matter.
Data compression is not difficult, but there's a point where it starts to have a massive impact on saving and loading times, especially in RPGs or if you exceeded 16/256 thresholds. The fact FF7, 8, and 9 all managed to use only one block for save data was a very impressive feat.';

'>>10866727
I can't imagine that even very complex compression algorithms would have given the PSX's processors much trouble with just decompressing 8KB of data, or even the full 128KB, not unless you are starting to get into .kkrieger levels of compressed data.

... huh, this just made me realize that you could fit .kkrieger on a PS1 memory card. Course, the system would never have a chance in hell of being able to actually run it.

Also, pretty much every RPG I ever played on the PS1 took up one slot. Almost every game I ever played did, I know there were multi-slot games, but just about none of the PS1 games I had used that (Probably helps that I had no interest in spots games, which IIRC were infamous for taking up a lot of space to save)

In fact, I just went through the backups of all the memorycards I use in my PS1 back in the day, and the only game I can find out of dozens that used up more than one slot was strangely DDR 2nd Mix (But no other DDR game, import or not).... and a save from a music making game a friend had.

I do see some left over second/third slot saves that have no first slot, this was one of the cards I bought used so I am guessing whoever owned it deleted whatever save it was and the PSX only deletes the first slot when that happens, even had leftover saves of a game I never played that used two slots (Alien Isolation and Syphon Filter).

But other than those, I see saves for FF7, 8, 9, Legend of Legaia, BOF3, BO4, Chrono Cross, Chrono Trigger, Beyond the Beyond, Threads of Fate, Star Ocean 2, Legend of Dragoon, Grandia, Monster Rancher, Jade Cocoon... Final Fantasy Tactics? (Must be another save that was left over on a used card), Xenogears, and shitloads of other non-RPG games like Tomba and MediEvil and Ape Escape among many more that are just one slot. From what I have seen, multi-slot games outside of sports games were uncommon.';

'Is Psycho Mantis a lazy and incompetent dev?';

'>>10862605
>It's like if Windows still to this day only measured the size of HDDs in megabytes and topped out at 1000, just showing "1000+MB" as long as you still had a gig of free space left.
Yeah I don't understand why the Xbox used blocks instead of megabytes either. If you never softmodded it; is there even a way to fill up the hard-drive aside from ripping music CDs? The games were pretty small; I have a softmodded OG Xbox with a 80GB IDE HDD and I have 24 games installed on there with all their applicable updates and DLC too. I think I read somewhere that the entire OG Xbox game library can fit on a 2TB HDD.';

'>>10860441
>Sega Saturn
It was supposed to receive a memory card reader attachment for the 3D pad, but all 3D pad accesories were cancelled, leaving the Saturn with gaps in certain areas.';

'>>10866603
>Sony calling it the "PSX" is about as stupid as Microsoft naming their THIRD console the "Xbox One"
Not really I mean the ps2 and ps3 aren't called the psII and psIII nor is the ps4 the psIV';

'>>10862415
Sim City on Saturn required the entire internal memory to save (460 blocks), and it took 2 minutes to save a city. Apparently the programmers worked tooth and nail to implement a compression system so saving even works at all, and even then you could make a city complex enough that it would sometime fail.';

'>>10862605
Xbox has that for two reasons. One was that you could still buy memory cards for it, I think they were 64MB in size? Two, it's so it could wow everyone by how much capacity it had. The entire thing of the OG Xbox was being the goddamn best, biggest, fastest, most feature packed console on the market by a margin as large as possible, and it doesn't even cost much because Microsoft is underpricing it by $100 cause they can afford it. It's like when your rich uncle buys you some cool gadget that is way beyond what any of the other kids have.
So if the PS2 says it has 8000 Kbytes free memory, then the Xbox says it has 600000+ blocks free. If the PS2 can do 20 million polygons, the Xbox can do 150 million. You get the idea.

>>10865221
>>10864768
>>10862523
Populus The Beginning used the entire memory card too, and that was just to start a level at the beginning, not where you saved it.';

'>>10866678
>But nobody back then called it PSX,

I have magazines with store adverts, all of them calling it PSX.';

'>>10866727
you don't need to save that much in final fantasy; the level only reaches 100 and it gives you the base stats, which you cannot change. The final values with your equipped stuff can be calculated on load. it would surprise me if the game kept track of now than a couple thousand values and flags.';

'>>10862415
The Jak and Daxter games drove me fucking nuts.

The first game, like the actual collectathon, has the smallest save file out of all of them, and then every game afterwards has like fucking 2mb saves.

What the fuck is even in a Jak 2 and 3 save file? Like 200 story and collection flags tops? Shit should have been able to fit on a PS1 memory card';

'>>10865676
nonsense';

'>>10867818
>which you cannot change
Sources in FF7, permanent Devour buffs in FF8, and there's a bug in FF9 where reused character slots result in things like Eiko's stats being higher than they should be.';

'I remember being so fucking pissed that populous the beginning required an entire memorycard to save.
Fuck off if you thought I was going to buy a dedicated card for that shitty game';

'>>10868183
picrel';

'>>10866985
>If you never softmodded it; is there even a way to fill up the hard-drive aside from ripping music CDs?

I don't think so. There was a few DLCs/installable expansions and a very small amount of download-only digital games, but every one of those would still take up a tiny fraction of the total space.

>>10866985
>I think I read somewhere that the entire OG Xbox game library can fit on a 2TB HDD.

I'm incredibly skeptical about that, especially if it's all regions. Although the Xbox can't handle a partition over 1TB so if you wanted that you would need to add additional partitions to the drive to store all that. If this is true I wonder if then stripping out stuff like every Madden, NBA, NHL, etc game would bring it down to 1TB or less. Not like I would ever care to play a 20 year old Xbox sports game (and I assume most would not either, who replays Madden 98 on their PS1 or whatever these days?), I don't even pay modern sports games.

>>10867395
>It was supposed to receive a memory card reader attachment for the 3D pad, but all 3D pad accesories were cancelled, leaving the Saturn with gaps in certain areas.

Huh? The 3D control pad did have a detachable connector, but it did not have any ports to connect it to anything other than another controller, it's not like the N64, Dc, or Xbox controller where it had a port for accessories. The Saturn already had a cartridge slot in the back that memory cards plugged into, why would they put one in the controller that would require it to be a different format? That would make no sense.

>>10867664
>Xbox has that for two reasons. One was that you could still buy memory cards for it, I think they were 64MB in size? Two, it's so it could wow everyone by how much capacity it had.

You can still just use MB for memorycard capacity, like the PS2 did. And yeah, I assume it was to "impress" people, but IMO once you realize that it's just intentionally hiding the space from you it goes from "wow" to "wtf".';

'>>10867606
>>Sony calling it the "PSX" is about as stupid as Microsoft naming their THIRD console the "Xbox One"
>Not really I mean the ps2 and ps3 aren't called the psII and psIII nor is the ps4 the psIV

And it was not called the "Gamecube Nintendo" but it's abbreviated as "GCN" not "NGC", your point? Literally everyone called it PSX, not "PS1". Nobody would call a system the Anything1 until there is an Anything2. Nobody called it the NES1, or the Genesis1. Insisting it was called PS1 exposes you as the zoomer you are, nobody who was old enough to game before the PS2 was even announced would think the PSX was called the PS1.

Not going to reply to any more of your zoomer brainrot.';

'>>10867664
>I think they were 64MB in size?
The official OG Xbox memory cards were only 8MB.

>>10868938
>I'm incredibly skeptical about that, especially if it's all regions.
Apparently the ENTIRE library (all regions, etc) can fit on a 3TB HDD which will have 2.3TB of actual storage space. A 2TB HDD will store around 850 games.';

'>>10868939
> Literally everyone called it PSX, not "PS1"
Literally the wrong use of literally because literally here in Bongistan we called it PlayStation for literally the reason you stated: there was literally no second one. Never once did I literally hear anyone say “PSX” out loud; maybe online but if you were literally permanently online in the late ‘90s then you were literally fucking older than me (I’m literally 42 now) and you were literally so detached from reality I don’t think you should be weighing in on what regular people were literally saying in the real world because you couldn’t fit through your front door… probably.';

'>>10869226
You're literally spazzing out';