Video Game Consoles
Video game consoles use memory cards to hold saved game data. Cartridge-based systems primarily used battery-backed volatile RAM within each individual cartridge to hold saves for that game. The Neo Geo AES, released in 1990 by SNK, was the first video game console able to use a memory card. AES memory cards were also compatible with Neo-Geo MVS arcade cabinets, allowing players to migrate saves between home and arcade systems and vice versa. Memory cards became commonplace when home consoles moved to read-only optical discs for storing the game program, beginning with systems such as the TurboGrafx-CD and Mega-CD.
Until the sixth generation of video game consoles, memory cards were based on proprietary formats; later systems have used established industry hardware formats for memory cards.
Home consoles now commonly use hard disk drive storage for saved games, though most portable gaming systems still rely on custom memory cartridges to store program data, due to their low power consumption, smaller physical size and reduced mechanical complexity.
Read more about this topic: Memory Card
Famous quotes containing the words video game, video, game and/or consoles:
“I recently learned something quite interesting about video games. Many young people have developed incredible hand, eye, and brain coordination in playing these games. The air force believes these kids will be our outstanding pilots should they fly our jets.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“These people figured video was the Lord’s preferred means of communicating, the screen itself a kind of perpetually burning bush. “He’s in the de-tails,” Sublett had said once. “You gotta watch for Him close.””
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“The savage soul of game is up at once—
The pack full-opening various, the shrill horn
Resounded from the hills, the neighing steed
Wild for the chase, and the loud hunter’s shout—
O’er a weak, harmless, flying creature, all
Mixed in mad tumult and discordant joy.”
—James Thomson (1700–1748)
“The only thing which consoles for our miseries is diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries. For it is this which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves and which makes us imperceptibly ruin ourselves.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)