Hey everyone, this is Try from My Life in Gaming. We’ve just returned from a bit of an accidental hiatus due to having a lot on our plates and such, but Coury just recently released an excellent episode that goes in-depth on a variety of ways to backup, transfer, and restore saves to and from memory cards for PS1, PS2, N64, Dreamcast, Xbox, and GameCube. Coury has been passionate about preserving saves since he was a teenager, and he even still has a CD-R with DexDrive saves from back in the day! And he has continued to put a lot of thought and effort into discovering ways to achieve these goals. I really enjoyed watching this one because I didn’t know that much about a lot of these software tools and newer devices myself.
A lot of people may not really understand the purpose of preserving saves (they’ll say “it’s just data” or “you keep the memories in your head”), but this is especially useful for content creators in particular, I feel. If you make videos about video games, you probably wish you weren’t always showing the first level all the time. Having easy access to mid-game or end-game saves improves your potential selection of game footage considerably! And especially when it comes to the memory card era of games, you’d often have to sit through unskippable opening movies or cutscenes before getting to any good gameplay. I know for sure I’d show a lot more PS1 games in videos if it weren’t for things like that, so I really should get around to backing up and organizing my saves as well as Coury has!
I’ve long thought memory cards are kind of the ultimate save solution. They aren’t tied to the cartridge, and they aren’t tied to the system. You can bring your save to a friend’s house without bringing the game, copy your save to your friend’s memory card, and pretty much do whatever you please with them. So give the episode a watch and unlock even more of their potential!