Aging Gamer: Memory Cards

<p>If you can believe it&comma; there was a time when about ninety percent of consoles needed memory cards for you to save your game&period; Preceding that was an even more antiquated system of logging back into your save file&comma; but that&&num;8217&semi;s a tale for another time&period; Gather round youngling&&num;8217&semi;s&comma; it&&num;8217&semi;s about time you heard a tale of games from yesteryear&comma; when not everything was easy and you had to put in some elbow grease to save your game&period; Hard to believe&comma; right&quest; How did we ever get out of the Stone Age of gaming when everything wasn&&num;8217&semi;t all &&num;8220&semi;auto-save&quest;&&num;8221&semi; Well&comma; to do it we had to walk uphill&period; In the snow&period; Twice&period; Both times to the local GameStop in order to have enough memory&period; Scared yet&quest;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Starting with the original PlayStation&comma; Sony decided to make <a href&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;bagogames&period;com&sol;remember-when-memory-cards&sol;">memory cards<&sol;a> a thing&comma; they went with a disc based game system and you couldn&&num;8217&semi;t save on a disc like you could with some cartridges&comma; emphasis on &&num;8216&semi;SOME&excl;&&num;8217&semi; It was a new concept to buy a little card to insert into the console and hope that it would contain your game&period; Instead of saving at the completion of levels like on some prior consoles you&&num;8217&semi;d have to find a &&num;8216&semi;save point&&num;8217&semi; in most games&period; This was challenging at the best of time times and downright infuriating when Mom was yelling that supper was ready and you needed to find a &&num;8216&semi;save point&&num;8217&semi; so you wouldn&&num;8217&semi;t lose two hours of progress&period; This happened countless times while playing through my favorite survival horror game&period; Nearing twenty years on&comma; my Sony memory cards still contain all my <em>Resident Evil<&sol;em> saves&comma; which are priceless to me&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<figure id&equals;"attachment&lowbar;136545" aria-describedby&equals;"caption-attachment-136545" style&equals;"width&colon; 640px" class&equals;"wp-caption aligncenter"><img class&equals;"size-full wp-image-136545" src&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;cdn&period;bagogames&period;com&sol;wp-content&sol;uploads&sol;2018&sol;03&sol;09234510&sol;Resident&lowbar;Evil&lowbar;2&lowbar;PSX&lowbar;24jpeg&period;jpg" alt&equals;"" width&equals;"640" height&equals;"480" &sol;><figcaption id&equals;"caption-attachment-136545" class&equals;"wp-caption-text">&lpar;<em>Resident Evil 2<&sol;em> &&num;8211&semi; Capcom&rpar;<&sol;figcaption><&sol;figure>&NewLine;<p>I don&&num;8217&semi;t know if I actually <a href&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;gamefaqs&period;gamespot&period;com&sol;boards&sol;691087-playstation-4&sol;77373621&quest;page&equals;4">MISS memory cards<&sol;a>&comma; the &&num;8216&semi;save points&&num;8217&semi; were cumbersome and infrequent&comma; which led to loss of progress and some angry suppers&period; In today&&num;8217&semi;s games you can usually manually save whenever you want&comma; or schedule an auto-save after five minutes pass&period; It&&num;8217&semi;s rare now for a game to make you use &&num;8216&semi;save points&period;&&num;8217&semi; I remember firing up <em>Final Fantasy XIII<&sol;em> and being surprised that I have to get to a &&num;8216&semi;save point&&num;8217&semi; in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 generation &period; It was refreshing and brought back some great memories of having to hunt down those glowing save orbs&comma; but it wasn&&num;8217&semi;t as much of a bother as I had remembered&period; Maybe Square Enix decided to put more of the save orbs in there just to make it a less tiresome game&comma; but they didn&&num;8217&semi;t really annoy me as much as some older &&num;8216&semi;save point&&num;8217&semi; games&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>This is one of those little mechanics that we all take for granted now&period; I&&num;8217&semi;ll be honest&comma; it takes me awhile to get use to playing older games due to the fact we are babied now by developers&period; I set up a nice chunk of time if I&&num;8217&semi;m playing an older title&comma; I make sure that I have space on my memory card&comma; and I have to remember to actually save&period; You can&&num;8217&semi;t just play some PS1 for a few minutes and log off like you can in <em>Skyrim<&sol;em> or <a href&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;bagogames&period;com&sol;resident-evil-7-not-a-hero-dlc-review-no-more-boulder-punching&sol;"><em>Resident Evil VII<&sol;em><&sol;a>&comma; you find that save point or lose your progress&period; I generally dislike the hand-holding in gaming today&comma; but the auto-save is an awesome mechanic and I&&num;8217&semi;m thankful it&&num;8217&semi;s here now&period; As a child&comma; it didn&&num;8217&semi;t matter when I saved my game&comma; unless of course supper time was approaching&period; an adult with too many responsibilities and too little time&comma; I would loose so much progress in my games if &&num;8216&semi;save points&&num;8217&semi; were still the norm&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>So now comes the time for me to thank the developers for auto-save and manual saving&period; A lot&&num;8217&semi;s changed in the gaming industry these last few decades and not all of it for the better&comma; but it&&num;8217&semi;s safe to say i&&num;8217&semi;m glad save points are a thing of the past&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&nbsp&semi;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<hr &sol;>&NewLine;<p style&equals;"text-align&colon; center&semi;"><strong>Like what you read&quest; Check out more of my <a href&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;bagogames&period;com&sol;tag&sol;aging-gamer&sol;">Aging Gamer<&sol;a> series on BagoGames&period; <&sol;strong><&sol;p>&NewLine;<hr &sol;>&NewLine;<p>&nbsp&semi;<&sol;p>&NewLine;