Author Topic: Gamecube's memory usage (Read 8477 times)

GoodRiddance2222 · « **on:** July 30, 2003, 10:50:58 PM »

Anyone else as mad about this as I am? I am almost starting to regret getting Gamecube for this reason only. Everything you save takes up so much room. I have All Star Baseball 2003. To save one season, it takes about the whole 16 mb card! On PS2 and Xbox, you can save almost everything right to the system. Why should I buy Gamecube, then have to pay another 100-200$ on memory cards, so I can save everything I want to. I already own 2 16mb cards and 2 other "grey" cards, and it still not enough...

HereticPB · « **Reply #1 on:** July 30, 2003, 11:09:13 PM »

Memory Card 251 or import the sd adapter!

Raijin Z · « **Reply #2 on:** July 30, 2003, 11:26:22 PM »

PS2 has no internal storage. WTF are you smoking?

GoodRiddance2222 · « **Reply #3 on:** July 30, 2003, 11:48:47 PM »

Eh, I dont know much about it, I just heard from a friend that has PS2 that they never have any problems saving. And I was talking about the 251 card, already have 2 of them.

Tell me about the sd adaptor, what will it do? I read a little about it online, but did not completely understand...

PIAC · « **Reply #4 on:** July 30, 2003, 11:50:40 PM »

ps2 has a HDD now? most of the games that arn't sport games dont require enormous amounts of space, i have a 59 card for fifa 2003, and a 251 for everything else, and its not nearly full.

Quote
Why should I buy Gamecube, then have to pay another 100-200$ on memory cards, so I can save everything I want to.

way to exagerate

2 251's SHOULD tide you over for a long time, unless you exclusivly play sport games, and if such i suggest getting rid of your cube and get an xbawx or something, as the cubes biggest strength is in its first/second party/exclusive titles.

aoi tsuki · « **Reply #5 on:** July 31, 2003, 01:14:36 AM »

The SD adapter is only for games that support it. It can't be used as a big memory card.

ruby_onix · « **Reply #6 on:** July 31, 2003, 02:21:39 AM »

The PSX memory cards were 1 megabit (which is a nice round number).

The GameCube's MC59 (the grey memory card) is four times as big, and is 4 megabits (or half a megabyte). The blocks are supposed to be the same size as PSX blocks (but with an index of some sort taking up 5 blocks, instead of 1 block on the PSX).

The GameCube's MC251 (the black memory card) is four times as big again, and is 16 megabits (or two megabytes).

The PS2's 8 megabyte (64 megabit) memory card is another four times as big.

When Sony made the leap to a memory card that was sixty-four times the size of what they were using, Nintendo just thought (yes, I'm a psychic) that was a pointless waste of money, designed to give the PS2 more inflated statistics and make it look more impressive, without giving people something that they actually needed.

Game save data doesn't increase as you make the graphics better or add more FMV to a game.

But, developers will take anything you give them.

By having two 16 megabit cards, and two 4 megabit cards, you have about the equivalent of fourty PSX cards at your disposal. But, the makers of sports games don't think that's enough. You should go buy another MC251. Or pester Nintendo to come out with the next stage of cards (which would be the, most likely purple, 8 megabyte card). Your games will be more fun that way. You should thank them.

My brother (who has a PS2) was watching me play Metroid Prime back when it came out, and he was stunned when I pulled up the GameCube's memory manager screen. "How can the save possibly be only taking up one block? That doesn't seem possible. It's gotta get bigger as you go farther in the game or something."

DRJ · « **Reply #7 on:** July 31, 2003, 04:02:11 AM »

I have a 64Mb card that has 1017 blocks and thats probably all that I will ever need. I dont play sports games too much so most of my games use under 20 blocks. OoT is 15 blocks, SSBM is 11, but thats pretty much as high as they get as most games are under 10 blocks.

I was really hoping that the SD adapter would be good. I wanted to be able to back up my game saves to my PC. Plus I thought I would be able to download game saves from the net, but unfortunetely the SD card is only for games designed to use it (i.e. you can use it to email pictures taken from Animal Crossing etc.).

If you really need extra memory pick up a 64 Mb third party card, or wait for Nintendo to upgrade from their 251.

Termin8Anakin · « **Reply #8 on:** July 31, 2003, 04:23:48 AM »

i have ten games stored on my mem card 251:
Mario Sunshine
Eternal Darkness
Metroid Prime
Wind Waker
Ocarina of Time and Master Quest
Star Fox Adventures
XG3
Rogue Leader
Nightfire
Harry Potter

And it's only taken up a fraction of the card.
Is it cause i don't play sports game? Well, yeah

Those games that take up 59 blocks are ludicrous.

Rhoq · « **Reply #9 on:** July 31, 2003, 04:45:05 AM »

Quote
Originally posted by: Raijin Z
PS2 has no internal storage. WTF are you smoking?

The new version of the PS2 that will be released later this year called the "PSX" will feature an internal hard drive.

Grey Ninja · « **Reply #10 on:** July 31, 2003, 05:22:25 AM »

Nobody is actually going to buy that unless they just won the lottery or something Rhoq.

I have two Memory Card 59s, and a Memory Card 251.

The 251 is almost full, but it has saved games from about 30 different games.

One of the 59s has my Animal Crossing data on it.

The other 59 is empty.

I really don't see what there is to bitch about.

Rhoq · « **Reply #11 on:** July 31, 2003, 06:20:02 AM »

Quote
Originally posted by: Grey Ninja
Nobody is actually going to buy that unless they just won the lottery or something Rhoq.

True. LOL

I was only trying to validate what GoodRiddance2222 posted regarding the PS2 being able to save "right to the system"

Not that I care, I would never own a PlayStation, unless of course Nintendo bought out Sony and made the PlayStation a Nintendo branded console. But...That would never happen.

thecubedcanuck · « **Reply #12 on:** July 31, 2003, 07:18:47 AM »

I have no problem at all saving games and all I have is one 251 card.
This topic seems like simple flame bait, and you guys think I am a bad guy, LOL

Ian Sane · « **Reply #13 on:** July 31, 2003, 07:26:03 AM »

I have three memory cards total. One is a 59 I got when I bought my Cube which is currently used for my brother's town in Animal Crossing. Another is the Animal Crossing memory card. The third is a 251 and I not only have every game I own saved on it but every game I've ever rented as well and it still has plenty of space. The 59 is a little small but the 251 is a perfect size. If some sports games take up a whole card blame the idiot developer who doesn't know to manage memory worth a damn. For most games, both first and third party, the 251 memory card is a perfectly acceptable size.

BlkPaladin · « **Reply #14 on:** July 31, 2003, 08:57:27 AM »

This is one of the reasons I don't play sports games. The other is that I rather play the real thing.

ThePerm · « **Reply #15 on:** July 31, 2003, 12:39:17 PM »

i have 3 memorycard 59s. One has just Super Smash Bros. elee. The other has most my other games. The other is the one that came with Animcal Crossing. Then i have an 8MB(64Mb) card and it has a second Animal Crossing Town.

Raijin Z · « **Reply #16 on:** July 31, 2003, 01:46:56 PM »

Apples and oranges, Rhoq. Also, Gamecube and PS2 don't save in "blocks" like the PSX. Each file has a different filesize, so Ruby Onix's bro is confused.

For the record, I have a 3rd party 118 card.

ThePerm · « **Reply #17 on:** July 31, 2003, 04:46:28 PM »

they use blocks..there is 59 blocks on a memory card 59...they no longer use pages

dafunkk12 · « **Reply #18 on:** July 31, 2003, 06:27:56 PM »

DexDrive was the best peripheral ever made. ::sigh::

Anyway, if you stop an import game shop, like lik-sang.com or lan-kwei.com, you oughta be able to get a memory card that you can backup to your PC's hardrive (or a diskette, even).

Raijin Z · « **Reply #19 on:** July 31, 2003, 07:20:41 PM »

Quote
Originally posted by: ThePerm
they use blocks..there is 59 blocks on a memory card 59...they no longer use pages

There are 67 or so kilobits to each "block", but the save files themselves vary in size vastly. They take up one icon apiece in the memory card manager no matter their size. PSX save files larger than 8.5 kiloBYTES take up more than one "block". If a file takes up, say, 5KB, you can't put a 3.5KB file in the same block to fill it out. If a file on a Gamecube card is smaller than 30Kb, you can't put another file of equal size to fill out the extra space in the "block", because Gamecube files aren't saved in "blocks". You could have 80 separate files on a 59 "block" card, if they were small enough, because once again, Gamecube files aren't saved in "blocks". It's only a term applied to the cards for familiarity's sake, so people don't mistake megabits for megabytes. If you wanted to, you could rate your hard drive in blocks, by counting the sectors it contains. It doesn't mean that only one piece of data can fit in each sector.

progmac · « **Reply #20 on:** July 31, 2003, 09:48:21 PM »

i agree. i see the memory thing as a real problem to those of us who play sports games. NCAA Football 2004 takes up 175-200 blocks for a save. From what i understand, some of the EA baseball games do about the same. That means a 251 block for every sports game you buy. I love the cube, but i really envy the hard drive of the X-Box.

you can't be like.."it's no problem, i have one card for this one for this and one for that, that's only 3 cards." The whole thing seems like an absurd ploy. Nintendo won't discourage games from taking up bunches of room, they do make money selling the cards. Ugh.

Grey Ninja · « **Reply #21 on:** July 31, 2003, 10:51:24 PM »

Quote
Nintendo won't discourage games from taking up bunches of room, they do make money selling the cards. Ugh.

Then explain the generally low requirements of first party games.

PIAC · « **Reply #22 on:** August 01, 2003, 01:05:10 AM »

its all a feindish plot to make people play cards instead of first party games!
but now you know too much... expect some hired goons at your door any time now

WesDawg · « **Reply #23 on:** August 01, 2003, 05:01:12 AM »

Doesn't some third party make an 8 MB card for the Cube? People worry about how stable they are, and there was some sort of internal limit in the Cube (dig around IGN if you really want to find that story), but what with those two 251's you already have, you can back up anything you think is important.

DRJ · « **Reply #24 on:** August 01, 2003, 06:21:38 AM »

There is a 127 file limit for the GCN no matter the size of the card. You can only have 127 different files. Those files can use any amount of blocks. So if you have 127 games that use 10 blocks each you would need a card with 1270 blocks of data (8MB +) or if all you games were one block they could all fit on a 251 card.

Source

The 127 limit is a flaw in the GCN memory manager, there is nothing the memory card can do to increase this limit, however, I dont think anyone will use that many files unless you are taking tons of pictures in SSBM or something like that.

I have a 64 Mb (8MB) card and havnt had any problems. It has 1017 blocks and I have used up only a hundred or so. Most of my games (Nintendo First Party) take up <20 blocks. Pikmin is 19 and OoT is 15, MP is 1 (I dont know how that is possible), SSBM is 11 etc.

If you dont play lots of sports games then a 251 should be fine.

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Author Topic: Gamecube's memory usage (Read 8477 times)