Few times can be spoken where 3rd party memory cards for Nintendo game systems have been completely hassle-free. The age of the N64 left an absolute foul taste in the mouths of many, as few, if any, 3rd party memory cards were reliable, leaving Nintendo's much smaller and more expensive cards as the dominant choice.

Today, buyers remain understandably very wary of these cards, as they don't want to risk losing their precious data to faulty 3rd party options. We got our hands on Interact's much-hyped 8 megabyte (64 megabit) Mega Memory 16x memory card, touted by Interact as having, "undergone rigorous testing to virtually eliminate file corruption and lost saves" due to the assist of Flash memory technology. It sounds like music to our ears, but we’ve been shafted before by 3rd party memory cards that should have been recalled and pulled from the market. That all sounds well and good, but as consumers, we know better. Are all of our problems of expensive Nintendo memory cards behind us? The answer still isn’t definitive.

First, here is a qualifying statement regarding how GameCube’s memory cards work, since there was some early confusion. There is a physical limit of up to 127 FILES per memory card. Those files can contain any number of BLOCKS. For example, Super Smash Bros. Melee uses 11 blocks, but it is only one file/game. Some were confused and thought that no more than 127 blocks could possibly be on a memory card. Not so. There is a limit of 127 files/games. The amount of blocks on a memory card is limited only by the storage capacity of the card.

Interact's 16x Mega Memory card features about 1000 blocks of memory in which users can store data, as opposed to the 59 blocks that Nintendo's official memory card supports. The label on Interact's official packaging indicates 1000 blocks, and Interact's press releases say 944 blocks, but our own card actually indicates 1019 blocks based on available blocks, plus the sum of used blocks.

Given the history of failing 3rd party memory cards, our priority was to test the card's reliability. We spent more than a week deliberately running our 16x Mega Memory card through a gauntlet of tests to get it to fail. Those tests included:

-Game Saving to Slot A

-Game Saving to Slot B

-Overwriting Existing Saves

-Copying from Slot A to Slot B

-Copying from Slot B to Slot A

-Power Supply Cuts

"Off-shoot" tests that we performed (as a result of the above test) include:

-Copying from Nintendo (59) to 16x

-Copying from 16x to Nintendo (59)

Much to my surprise, the final results were respectable, but not perfect. Try as I may, for small file saves, I was completely unable to crash the 16x Mega Memory card. After saving more than 20 games, consuming hundreds of blocks, re-saving games, copying games, and even cutting the power supply to the GameCube mid-game by pulling the plug, all done several times, Interact's 16x Mega Memory card stood its ground. To be fair, I did not cut the power supply during a game save, as that is almost guaranteed to fail regardless of the memory card's manufacturer.

The problem arises outside the "small file saves" qualifier indicated above. The only game I had trouble with was All-Stars Baseball 2003, which requires a whopping 153 blocks of memory for the franchise mode. The first time I plugged in ASB 2003 and attempted a mid-season franchise save, I got a, "Cannot save to slot A. Memory card damaged." error message. However, the game DID still save correctly. It happened only once. Repeated attempts to duplicate the error message went unsuccessful. The other game saves on the card were unaffected by this blunder.

PGC has received outside reports that there were ASB 2003 game saves that worked correctly, many that have NOT worked correctly, and that the errors messages DID appear more than once, so I believe that it is a widespread issue, and not a one-time fluke incident during testing. I did not, however, have any problems with ASB 2002, which requires approximately 80 blocks of memory.

This news poses the concern that the Interact 16x Mega Memory card may have issues with games that use extra large file saves, as the library of games used for this test (generally 20 blocks and under) had absolutely no problems whatsoever. It also emphasizes the issue of some developers getting sloppy with their coding due to the excessive amount of memory blocks that their violating games consume. (Please work on file saving efficiency a little harder.)

It's also interesting to point out that the Interact card transfers data faster than Nintendo's card. Particularly noticable in games that use more blocks, game saves and copies transfer in a second or two less time than usual.

It’s difficult to change the perceptions of others in an area such as memory cards, with all the bad blood stemming from previous experiences. Still, the Interact 16x Mega Memory card is a reliable 3rd party memory card for your average file saves. Though there are likely issues with large file saves, the risk is worth the reward. It's a recommend purchase because you won't be able to save those large-save games at all without one.

If you are still reluctant to try the 16x, I recommend using it as your primary memory card. In case of failure, use your current 1st party Nintendo Memory Card(s) as BACKUP for your more precious game saves by copying the files from this card to the other. That way, you can recover from any potentially fatal errors, should they ever arise at all.