Memory Card
It has been requested that this article be rewritten and expanded to include more information. Reason: Highlight and write about its relation to games of the Super Mario franchise. Some of the information is also a bit too technical. Also, add info about the Wii U and Switch.
A Memory Card is a video game accessory that has been a part of many gaming consoles. Essentially, it is an external memory database where game data is saved.
Nintendo consoles[edit]
Nintendo 64[edit]
The Nintendo 64 was the first Nintendo system to have a memory card. However, it is officially known as the Controller Pak. It plugs into the controller's accessory slot. The Controller Pak, however, is not necessary for many games, as the cartridges that the system uses allow for data to be directly saved onto them (much the same as the cartridges for the Game Boy). Many games just use the Controller Pak for storing non-main game data. An example of this is Mario Kart 64, where all race data is saved onto the game, but Ghosts from time trials are saved onto the Controller Pak. Most Controller Paks can only hold up to 123 pages of memory, and have 128 pages total, with the remaining 5 pages reserved for formatting purposes.[citation needed] Each Controller Pak is 32 KB, making each page 256 bytes. However, there was an unofficial accessory released in 1998 to allow users to transfer saves onto their computer known as the DexDrive, bypassing the need to buy multiple Controller Paks.
Nintendo GameCube[edit]
Unlike the Nintendo 64, the Nintendo GameCube is very dependent on the memory card. As with many disc-using games, data is either saved on internal memory or on a memory card. The GameCube has no internal memory, and has two slots for memory cards. Games played without the memory card inserted act as if they were being played for the first time, and data cannot be saved.
There have been three different kinds of GameCube memory cards that were released. The first could store up to fifty-nine blocks; the second could store up to 251; and the third could store up to 1,019. These cards were often color-coded to differentiate themselves: 59-block cards were light gray, 251-block cards were black, and 1,019-block cards were white. Despite 1,019 blocks being the highest capacity of any first-party GameCube memory card, the console is capable of supporting ones up to 2,043 blocks in size, a utility alluded to in unused text in various games and in GameCube development tools.[1]
Nintendo of Europe lists the rate for GameCube memory cards as 59 blocks (4 MB),[2] which would result in 66-70 KB per block; other sources contradict this, indicating that Nintendo of Europe mistakenly measured in megabytes instead of megabits, instead resulting in 7-8 KB per block.
| Game | Blocks | Kilobytes (KB) |
|---|---|---|
| Super Mario Sunshine | 7 | 56 |
| WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Party Game$! | 4 | 32 |
| Mario Party 6 | 5 | 40 |
| Mario Kart: Double Dash!! | 8 | 64 |
| Mario Kart: Double Dash!! (each Time Trial ghost) | 5 | 40 |
| Super Mario Strikers | 5 | 40 |
| Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door | 17 | 136 |
| Mario Party 7 | 6 | 48 |
SD cards[edit]
Starting with the Wii, Nintendo became less dependent on proprietary memory cards. The Wii has files of internal memory for saving game data (unlike the GameCube). It does, however, have a slot for an SD card (also used in cameras and other devices). SD cards can store the Wii's channel data and some game data. Pictures taken on a camera saved on an SD card can be displayed on the Wii's Photo Channel. Some games also use the SD card to store non-main game data (like Mario Kart 64 did on the N64). An example of this is the snapshots that can be taken in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. These snapshots can be saved onto either the Wii itself or the SD card.
Before Wii System Menu 4.0 was released, Wiis could only use standard SD cards, which could store up to 2 GB of memory. System Menus 4.0 and later gained the ability to use SDHC cards that could store a maximum of 32 GB of memory. However, most games do not support SDHC cards, such as Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
One block on the Wii (and on Nintendo 3DS) is 128 KB.[3] If the 512MB capacity of the internal memory were split into 256MB for user use and 256MB for system use, the user gets 2048 blocks ideally.[citation needed]
| Wii | Wii U | Nintendo DSi | Nintendo 3DS | Nintendo Switch | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SD | 
|
|
|
|
3
|
| SDHC | 1
|
|
|
|
3
|
| SDXC | 2
|
2
|
2
|
2
|
3
|
1 - Needs to be on Wii System Menu 4.0 or higher. Most older games are incompatible.
2 - The SDXC card has to be formatted to FAT32 with 32k clusters.
3 - MicroSD only
