Datel Max Memory Card Review

With the ever increasing size of save files in today’s games, it’s a safe bet that anyone reading this review has had to delete game saves that they wanted to keep. Sports gamers know the feeling of kissing that baseball season goodbye because there’s just no room for football and baseball on the same card. Nobody wants to deal with multiple memory cards; the hassle of trying to remember what game is saved where just isn’t worth it. In the past, high capacity memory cards promised to help alleviate the pain, but having to use a boot CD before playing a game made them more hassle than they were worth. Finally there’s good news for the memory challenged. Datel, makers of a variety of peripherals has finally solved the memory card dilemma once and for all with their new Max Memory cards. These high-capacity cards come in 16MB($25), 32MB($35), and 64MB($50)sizes, ensuring that you’ll be able to keep that Britney’s Dance Beat save for as long as your heart desires.

The best feature about the Max Memory card is that it does not require a boot CD to manage your save files. You simply pop it in the PS2 and voila, it’s like a bigger, badder version of the 8mb Sony card. Unfortunately, you’ll have to spend a bit of time transferring your game saves over from your old cards, but once you’ve gotten them on the card, it’s smooth sailing.

Many older 3rd party cards have had problems, particularly corrupting data, but the Max Memory card seems to be just as reliable as the 1st party card. I transferred a God of War save back and forth between the Datel card and the Sony card ten times and had no problem loading my data at any point. The rate of data transfer seems to be the same as the Sony card as well, with the load times not being noticeably different for any of the games I played. The only possible issue that one could have with the card is that there is a disclaimer inside the packaging that says that some older games will not work with the card. None of the older games I tried to play had any problems, but it would be nice for a list of incompatible games to be included.

While the price for the larger of the Max Memory cards may be a tad steep, it’s a small price to pay for an easy way to manage your game saves. Heck, you can even trade in or sell your old memory cards to help defray the costs. If you’re a sports gamer, there’s no question that a 16 or 32 meg card will make your life a lot easier. For anyone else with a lot of games – the reasonable price of the 16mb card makes it a wise investment.