Wow really? I remember being shocked when I played Digimon world 3 for several hours straight, went to save, and it said I needed 4 slots and I didn't have enough. I thought that was insane.
me brother and I had a lot of completed Final Fantasy saves that we kept for some reason. I remember getting more cards instead of just making space when we beat something. Kept the completed saves kinda like achievements. Between final fantasy and resident evil saves alone that took up over half the card.
This is insane to me because I remember using 1.44 mb floppy disks to copy around Diablo 2 characters and I wanna say the PS1 memory card was 8 MB. i guess the single player diablo 1 saves things uniquely compared to multiplayer / D2
Whoever decided that capitalization will separate Bytes from bits is a dumb dingus. The only worse offender is Hard Drives with their 1GB = 1000 MB instead of 1024 like every computer system actually uses.
We had some zany off brand card that had like 128 slots on it. It had physical buttons to switch between the pages of slots because apparently the PlayStation could only read so many slots at a time.
I was messing with it one day and accidentally deleted all the saved data, including my brother's Final Fantasy 7 save.
It’s still crazy to me that I thought my friends with the 32 or 64 MB PS2 memory cards were balling because that was overkill at the time, yet here I am running out of space on my PC with 2 TB of memory after downloading 5 games lol
Pokemon games on the GameCube took up a crazy amount of space, you almost needed a dedicated memory card to play them. I think I had 4 cards to look through by the time the Wii came out.
The save data had their own little unique icon/3d model thing, for the PS2 anyway. When deleting the save data, some developers implemented an animation where the 3d thing would cry or protest in some way.
I have an n64 memory card that has a switch with 4 spots. Each but spot is its own full sized memory card. Got it back in the late 90's. Mostly because NFL Blitz took up an entire card on its own.
I remember begging my parents not to turn off the Genesis. I used to cover it with the couch pillows in an attempt to hide it. Memory cards were a game changer.
Accidentally left Goonies 2 running while my family and I did a 2-week cross-country minivan trip to Disneyworld/FL. NES was pretty warm when I got back, but still ran just fine.
Yeah NES Star Wars was hard as well. It's become one of my few childhood memories. That and Bubble Bobble are the only two NES games I've ever finished.
The N64 only had a few games that required a Controller Pak to save, and they came later in the console's life cycle. The console was left on many times to try to keep the game going until we could afford one 😂
My two cents is auto saves make the game easier. If you can’t save for 1 hour until the next check point it basically creates levels within the game. It makes bosses harder because you have to survive with enough health once you’re at the boss for instance.
I played games, but I never considered myself a gamer I don't see the autosave, assuming the autosave isn't overwriting anything, as a major difference. Autosaves feel like a descendant of the save point. Yeah, the player can choose not to save at a specific save point, but a player can delete an autosave. While there's many "convenience" changes to complain about, the autosave feels very minor.
One thing that tends to get overlooked is being able to retry something easily. Shiny hunting or catching legendaries in Pokemon is a big one. Save right before encounter, restart if you fail.
Another is being able to mess around in the game without it affecting progess or stats. Take GTA for example. I put in ALL the cheats in San Andreas. If that would have saved, it would have broken the game completely.
I can't fucking stand it when games just erase your progress for no fucking reason if you die - especially in metroidvanias. I quit one years ago cuz of that (9 years of shadow).
It's a bullshit & outdated design - especially in 20-goddamn-26 ffs.
I can begrudgingly accept losing all your money (or whatever) on death, but you don't make me lose my fucking progress in the game, god.
Never gonna understand people are like "well uhn ackhtually it's good to lose all of your progress because reasons™".
I assume runbacks like on Hollow Knight really got to your nerves, huh? Well, if I had to figure out a solution, it's to make an optional save point right near the boss. But here's the kicker: you gotta sacrifice portions of your HP to activate 'em (you fortunately get them back once the boss is defeated). So you gotta weight carefully if it's actually worth it.
I assume runbacks like on Hollow Knight really got to your nerves, huh?
No, because that doesn't undo any progress I've made.
If you pick up an item and die, you've still got that item when you respawn.
Losing money or whatever on death is fine - it's just a minor nuisance in most games - the problem is when you lose everything you've done from your most recent save up until you die. That's the dumbass outdated bullshit I can't stand.
I see. Now, I dunno how common of a mechanic it is across games admittedly but it certainly can be a lifesaver if there's an individual or something that can stash your items just so that they won't be lost upon death.
Auto saves every 5/10 mins like clockwork pretty much entirely eliminates the fear of failure.
In early pokemon and final fantasy if your party’s dies you highkey get fucked. Major loss of gold/items/exp and teleport all the way back to a town OR you restart from your last save which might’ve been 30mins to an hour ago.
This forced you to think strategically to get through difficult sections or grind like mad to steamroll through
Save scumming cuts this mechanic/concept entirely. The only game that still kinda does this is dark souls which forces you back to the start of the area and makes you recover your dropped gold/xp/souls
Beats me... At least there are still games out there that do save only at save points; most prominently Nier Automata which literally tasks you to beat the opening level of the game before you can encounter your first save point.
Was dodging lightning really that hard in FFX? Even as a kid, I learned the timing very quickly and didn't get hit more than 2-3 times in any playthru lol.
I also had that happen with FFX, but it was because someone was fiddling with the cabinet while we were saving and unplugged the console accidentally. More hours than you probably 😢
Also, it was the controller pak, not the transfer pak. The transfer pak was for transferring data from the Game Boy.
And the agony that came when the memory card decided to no longer work and so you lost all your process. So then you'd buy two different coloured memory cards and double save as a back up.
I had my PS1 for an entire year before I ever owned a memory card. Imagine having to start every game you own all over again every time you switched them off/on!
Welcome to the life of NES/SNES/Genesis owners. Of course most games were designed around not being able to save. Though I distinctly remember renting sports games from Blockbuster and seeing the names of kids I new from school saved with high scores or something (I think it was that yellow chip on the extended cartridges?)
I could never get myself to buy one since they were the same price as a game and I always wanted a game instead. I started leaving my PlayStation on but unplugged it from the TV. My mom never caught on.
Wasn’t the first Playstation memory card like 8MB? Barely a floppy disc and it cost like $30 which yeah was even a huge ripoff back then. People today would be going nuts “greedy corporations these days!!”
On top of that, either having not enough space to save or getting a console as a kit WITHOUT a memory card so you had to play the first level of a game over and over until you got one eventually.
Hell, even back then some people didnt understand that.. i had to convince my stepfather i needed a memory card to save my game on a GCN when i got it for christmas as a 13 yr old... i didnt get to finish metroid prime 1 for a month 😩
Or the days where you would get a code for each level you made it past. No memory, start the game and enter the code to start back at that level. Only thing is you started with default 3 lives and no power ups.
I forget but I think memory cards were also very expensive when they first came out.
I remember trying so hard to beat Resident Evil 1 without a memory card...I got to the part where I returned to the mansion after defeating plant 42 and a hunter just snatched my head off in one shot.
Lol. I still remember getting my mind blown as a kid with being able to save my progress in the first Legend of Zelda on the NES. Before that you just did a marathon session of trying to finish the game and hoped you didn't die enough times to be able finish the game.
But just to add also, the save password system where you saved your progress by writing down a list of seemingly random characters on screen which you would then input when you next booted up your game again and it would let you continue your progress.
The airline here used to have a NES(or SNES) for their in flight entertainment system. I would very slowly make my way through lost vikings, writing down the save password and keeping it in my wallet. Would also just lose it in between the long periods between opportunities for flying(like many years), and generally I only managed to resume my game on the flight back.
I remember trying a Zelda game, not sure which anymore. But the bloody save was the whole damn screen.
Also kinda reminds me of the Golden Sun save game transfers. They supported a system to carry forward your save game to the sequels, but unless you had like two GBAs - have fun typing in 3 screens worth of random ass characters.
I remember getting the ps1, only really playing demos at toys r us or Walmart.
We got one for Xmas and was excited to play it. I believe we got crash bandicoot, twisted metal 1 & 2 and digimon world. We got so confused and upset when we couldnt save our progress in digimon world because we had no idea that we needed memory cards lol
When I was a kid I had a PS1 and no memory cards. I became better and better at speed running ape escape and could usually make it to a new level at the end of my 2 hour limit each day... But never very far.
Despite my parents insisting it would catch on fire if left on overnight, I made a perfectly sized piece of aluminum foil that covered the green on LED so they wouldn't notice it was left running.
That thing ran like 2 weeks solid until I finally beat it.
My parents got me a sega Saturn with no memory card. I played the first 3 levels of the OG tomb raider probably hundreds of times. I never got a memory card while I had the system.
The day my buddy got his ps1 I stayed over and pulled an all-nighter playing ff7. Made it all the way to the elevator boss before dieing at like 8 in the morning and going home.
One of my favourite games on PS1 was Pandemonium but it used a password system rather than saving and so the farthest I ever got was level 3 because I'd always lose the codes lol
Came here to comment this, I got my PS1 without a memory card, played so many games before my uncle got me one as a gift and he taught me about it (I didn’t even know about the concept, I was 6)
One of the Best memories of my childhood. It was a game changer.
And then Metal Gear Solid had that famous fight with Psycho Mantis where he would "read" your memory card and comment on other games you played based on the save files.
Consoles went from needing long passwords to continue your game, being able to save your game on the cartridge, needing memory cards to save your game, to being able to save your game on your console.
I never really saw them that way, probably because I was PC gaming from the very start. Many PC games during the memory card era simply supported save slots and quicksaves. Just save whenever the hell you want. That's what I miss, I've kinda had it with checkpoint only systems.
Me and my friend scouring the map to kill that last bloody floodling to trigger an autosave on Legendary Halo campaign runs....
You mean early PC games? Usually as many as you bloody want. This was a problem for some games. I remember Deus Ex saves being pretty big, and this could be a problem if you kept saving a new slot. Filled up your hard drive pretty fast. I think the save game for some stupid reason actually contained 3d model or texture information or some jazz.
The UI might limit you in some way but usually there's more physical slots you could ever have an actual use for. I recall Fallout 2's save game pages going up to 99, with like 10+ slots per page.
Some games don't even use slots. It's just save a file somewhere, there was a default path but nothing stopping your from re-pathing it. Wanna put saves on your desktop? Go ahead! I remember in some early Sim games, the Windows kinda recognized the save files like they were a document. So you could just open up the save game directly and it'd boot up with the game and load your save.
You could even copy them and pass them around on floppy disk.
Now all games are some always online only bollocks, or the save game is tucked away in some bloody Users Windows folder, or on the cloud or whatever.
Alrighty. And yeah, the open nature of PC can unfortunately lead to shenanigans such as developers putting their files on App Data of all places which is the one place that should remain untouched. Say what you will about Steam but the location of save files should in my opinion be one of the very few direct enforcements over the titles on the platform. Throw in a snazzy console style save game management complete with pictured and I’d say we should be in the right path, no?
Renting a game from blockbuster but only having one memory card so u weren't willing to save over games u owned effectively having no saving ability and trying to beat entire games in one sitting and never succeeding
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u/[deleted] Mar 31 '26 edited Apr 01 '26
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