Well, I THOUGHT I was going to beat Chrono Cross tonight...

Mad Catz... a name that should've foreshadowed the events to come, but I didn't know. Here's my story, I'll try to make it brief but thorough.

About three months ago, I went to my local "Software Etc." to purchase a new Playstation memory card. After all, Vagrant Story did require three memory blocks and Suikoden requires two memory blocks while a memory card (unless "enhanced") only has fifteen memory blocks and that's just too easy to use if you're into sports games or roleplaying games. Sadly, though, they didn't have any Sony made memory cards but suggested the Mad Catz Memory Card as it was reliable and only ten dollars. So, I trusted the salesperson and brought home this memory card.

First of all, I feel I should mention I already knew not to normally buy a product made by any other company than who the original product is produced by. Sometimes you can't avoid it, as the first-party producer is no longer supporting a product, but the third-party producers are as in the case of my Super Nintendo's controllers (luckily, ASCII makes quality SNES controllers). But, when the first-party producers are still supporting a product, you're better off paying extra money for the originator's product. So was the case with my "N64 Performance Memory Pak." Until you've lost a whole season of All Star Baseball 2000, you don't know what frustration is (as I was 159-0 with only a few more games to go). But, I took a chance still, trusting that Mad Catz could produced better quality products than Performance, and used this memory card fairly regularly.

I removed the memory card from its packaging, which was ridiculously large, and placed the label that came with the card on it. Aside from the cardboard, plastic, label and card, there was nothing else with it. It's been a while since I last purchased a Sony made memory card, so I couldn't tell you if this was a big loss, but I knew how to used a memory card already. So, I put it into regular gaming rotation, and copied some game data from my normal card onto this one.

A month or so went by and, as I was trying to load my saved Final Fantasy Tactics game, a message came up on the television screen that looked familiar, though I had never seen it on the Playstation before. "Game data corrupted." Game data corrupted? Well, no big deal, as I still had a game save file on my other memory card and really only lost about four hours of game time. It's a good game and I knew a few more tricks, so I let it go. I finished Tales of Destiny and Final Fantasy Tactics with little or no problem from the card after this one incident. I figured it was isolated and, well, the sales clerk said it was reliable, meaning it must be, and I soon forgot all about the problems.

Skip ahead to yesterday, as I neared what I figured would be the final hours of Chrono Cross. I tried to load my game while talking to some people in the room at the same time. Then, when I heard the loading sound, I pressed my button to close this screen and get to the game. But, the game just went back to the memory card slot selection screen. I attempted again to load the game paying more attention to what was going on. Then, after a few moments, the tone played again, and a small message was on the screen. Once again, the game data was corrupted... a seriously big deal this time, as I was only relying on this memory card to save my games. Now, I have to start over after about fifteen hours of Chrono Cross. But, to make matters worse, Vagrant Story and Suikoden have both had their files recently corrupted as I tried to get some good quality roleplaying in last night. I thought to myself "Reliable, huh?" Then, I recalled recently watching a Funcoland salesperson tell someone that WWF Royal Rumble was a really good game... maybe the best wrestling game ever released... the same one who told a mother that Killer Instinct was a good game for kids and didn't have blood (I told her otherwise and he threw me out). Then, I realized that this damn clerk was just trying to make another sale. Countless hours (okay, actually just over fifty, which is still a lot) have been lost of my life just because my memory card has failed on me and because I trusted some guy who was making minimum wage (and video game discounts) at the mall.

Yet, to this day, I still haven't had any problems with my Sony made and licensed memory card and from here on, that's all I'm going to use. So, the moral of this story is (and remember, I'm not exactly Aesop), if you're going to use any memory storage for your video games, make sure you use storage that's made by the company that makes your video game system. You'll save yourself from losing hours of game time and gaining tons of frustration. Personally, I'm MAD at myself for ever buying a third-party piece of dung like this.