Topic: Are the memory cards region specific?

[TiK Fisher]

Hi.
I live in Europe (Portugal), but I'm staying in the US for a semester.
I bought on ebay a 3rd party 2043 Gamecube memory card.
I've shipped it back home, so my brother could start using it, but he got some problems:
he said that after copying some saves to the new card, these saves would become corrupt and could not be used.
The game icon that appears on the block doesn't appear, he says, and the two line description of the save were all "YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY". The only thing that was correct was the amounts of blocks used by the save!
I've made some research over the internet, and I canĀ“t find out wether or not the memory cards are region specific.
Can someone help me out here?
Thanks

[smf1978]

I believe that they are, I know a buddy of mine ran into this with a PS2 memory card, and if I remember correctly I saw somethign about this on TV.  It could also be as it is a third party memory card.  I bought one for my cube when I first got it and it corrupted all my save files within a few days, I returned it and got a offical Nintendo one.  You may save a bit of cash by getting a 3rd party card, but they usually cause more trouble then thay are worth.  They only third party card I can reccemond is the ones by Nyko, no problems there.

[Zero]

the GC memory cards are formatted differently for different regions, so you can't have Japanese saves on the same memory card with North American saves (for the most part), luckily your GC can reformat a memory card for your GC's region

problem is, i dont remember what you have to do in order to format the card  

[TiK Fisher]

Thanks

What about if it is an official memory card? Because now I'm thinking in buying a genuine 251 card so I won't get more trouble.
I've found this:
"The card is international: if one Japanese save is on it, only Japanese games can be saved, if American games are saved on it, only American games will be saved. It can be formatted later. DOL-008"
This is about the 59 card, but I guess you should be true for the 251 card also?

[TiK Fisher]

Quote
Originally posted by: Zero
the GC memory cards are formatted differently for different regions, so you can't have Japanese saves on the same memory card with North American saves (for the most part), luckily your GC can reformat a memory card for your GC's region

problem is, i dont remember what you have to do in order to format the card

Formatting won't be a problem, I guess... I'm just concerned that there is hardware issues.
By the way, I've sent an email to nintendo costumer service, saying that I bought "a memory card" here that doesn't work on a PAL GC, and they said that the voltage difference was likely to be the problem. They didn't exactly said that it souldn't work...!

[KDR_11k]

That "No mixing saves" is bullshit, my 251 has 245 blocks filled with European saves and 6 blocks with US saves, another card of mine houses both European and Japanese saves. I reformatted the 59 for Japanese usage but no PAL game complained about making saves to it. I haven't tried US and Japanese saves on one card yet but I doubt that'll be much of an issue, either. For reference, my Cube is a PAL model.
If a game gives you trouble about reformatting, give it another card, reformat that and copy your save over to your main card (for convenience's sake)
It could be your memcard being defective, copying saves around doesn't corrupt them, no matter whether your card is formatted for western or eastern usage.

[RABicle]

I have had PAL, Japanese and US saves all on the one memory card 251. I've also had US and PAL saves of the same game (Soul Caliber 2) and they didn't reconise each other (ie. US copy wont pick up PAL save.) I have heard that putting Japanese saves on your card can formatt the whole thing so for safety I have a 59 card just for my copy of Ikaruga but I once accidentally left my 251 in and played it and it seemed to be undamaged.

However keep in mind that all the cards I've bought have all been bought in Australia, as was my Cube.

[Renny]

KDR, are you using AR? That formats the files so they'll save to another a card with a different formatting. I believe all Western regions' saves will coexist nicely without an AR, though.

[KDR_11k]

Nope, I use the Freeloader. Maybe problems arise when you add a switch to a US/JP Cube but apparently there are no issues with PAL Cubes.
The japanese game reformatted the card I gave it on first use but it could still read the save after I copied it over to a euro-formatted card.

[Renny]

Sorry, I meant: Are you using Freeloader? One in the same, really.

Maybe it's only the system that pays any attention to formatting. If you try to view a  card's contents through a differing region's system it'll prompt to format it.

[GothicFaerie]

I had the same problem and I'm from the US. We took the memory card out and then replaced it when the GC was off and it worked again but the next day it did it again. The only way we figured out how to fix it was taking it out while GC is off and then replacing back in and then turning on the system again.

Gothic Faerie

[GothicFaerie]

Quote
Originally posted by: smf1978
I believe that they are, I know a buddy of mine ran into this with a PS2 memory card, and if I remember correctly I saw somethign about this on TV.  It could also be as it is a third party memory card.  I bought one for my cube when I first got it and it corrupted all my save files within a few days, I returned it and got a offical Nintendo one.  You may save a bit of cash by getting a 3rd party card, but they usually cause more trouble then thay are worth.  They only third party card I can reccemond is the ones by Nyko, no problems there.

I own a Nyko and that's the one that we are having problems with.

Gothic Faerie

[Hostile Creation]

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

*o*

[S-U-P-E-R]

I see it

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