The original PlayStation may be over 26 years old, but companies are still producing unique bits of hardware for it. 8BitGames, an online retro gaming store, is developing a new memory card for the PlayStation 1 that will be the first high-capacity memory card for the console, meaning life is getting a lot easier for managing your PlayStation 1 saves.
Developed in-house by 8BitGames, the MemCard PRO is designed to help overcome the problem of having many memory cards for your PlayStation 1. The preorder page explains that normal PlayStation 1 memory cards only hold 15 "blocks" of data, and some games can take up an entire memory card by themselves. The MemCard PRO, however, uses a standard microSD card (from 1GB to 1TB) to hold "virtual memory cards," and each gigabyte is equal to 8,192 conventional memory cards. In total, that's 122,880 blocks worth of PS1 save data, easily making it PS1's first high-capacity memory card. All of this is powered by an ESP32 module and a dual-core processor running at 240MHz.
But high memory capacity isn't the only big feature of the MemCard PRO. It's also able to connect to your WiFi network, allowing users to browse and control the virtual memory cards via an OLED display and receive firmware upgrades over the Internet. If you have a modern PlayStation 1 Optical Disc Emulator, the MemCard PRO can automatically mount the correct virtual memory card and create several if it's your first time playing that game. There are also plans to add new features after the initial release, depending on the hardware capabilities of the MemCard PRO. Some of these potential features include being able to share saves with your friends, local and cloud backup functionality, and downloading saves and memory cards through a URL.
The MemCard PRO is not yet available for purchase, but you can preorder it here and it'll ship around the first month of March.
