12th October 2005, 10:10 PM
Ack, N64 memory cards... I have two, one Nintendo and one Interact. I don't think that either one has ever had a REAL problem... however, becaus of stupidity I've erased them both at least in part before. You know, when it says 'memory card corrupt, do you want to try to repair the error" and when you say yes it deletes part/all of the stuff on the card... and it's only a long while later that I figure out that the problem probably just is that that message can appear when the card isn't seated quite right in the cart slot, or the contacts are dirty, or something like that...
At least I haven't lost anything REALLY important, though. When the Interact card 'messed up' (a few months after getting it, which would be a while ago now...) all I lost was Wipeout 64... which I played through again, fairly quickly... and when the Nintendo card did, I lost some stuff, but only one game of note, and I didn't mind playing Goemon's Great Adventure again. :)
Anyway, though, neither card has truly failed me yet... but I am of course afraid of them failing. Especially the third party one, naturally... I'm always scared that that thing will fail... since I have my Rush 2049 save on the thing and the only way to back it up/copy it to another card would be to have a dexdrive or something like that, which I don't have...
Oh yeah, my GC memcards are all first-party, but I did have a problem once... one file got corrupted (Midway Arcade Treasures), and I had to delete that file and recreate it... but just that file, oddly, and not anything else... and I haven't seen any more problems (can't remember if that was on the 251 or 1019 or whatever)...
As for controllers, N64 first party analog sticks dissolve. My original GC first-party controller is somewhat broken and in games sometimes some buttons don't work, or multiple buttons are mapped to the same button (like L doing both L and R's functions and R doing nothing), and stuff like that... very annoying... my third-party controller (Mad Catz) is junk of course, and one button broke... thankfully the useless programmable M button... and its buttons are sticky, and the dpad is abysmal and always has been, and the analog sticks are loose and imprecise and always have been that way...
My other controller of course works (not perfect actually, the main analog stick's deadzone (where it goes before you have to start pushing it) is too large (and wasn't always that way - not good), but that doesn't affect gameplay and hasn't seemed to be growing), but for multiplayer it's a tough choice... do you use the controller which, depending on the game/time of day/whatever will have nonfunctional buttons, or do you use the junk third party thing?
Oh yeah, and the screen on my GBC broke a year and a half ago. Got fried in the sun or something... I'm sure everyone has hand broken consoles before, even Nintendo ones... (like my ... other ... N64, which erases or messes with or fails to recognize on-cartridge-save (that is, not memcard) carts' saves) Yes, third party stuff is usually worse, but not always. Just look at my two N64 memory cards (or my cousins' third party psx or n64 memcards), they seem to work decently after some years...
But even so, I am definitely more scared of that third party thing breaking, and really, really don't want to lose that Rush save... all those hours and all those stats cataloged there... :(
At least I haven't lost anything REALLY important, though. When the Interact card 'messed up' (a few months after getting it, which would be a while ago now...) all I lost was Wipeout 64... which I played through again, fairly quickly... and when the Nintendo card did, I lost some stuff, but only one game of note, and I didn't mind playing Goemon's Great Adventure again. :)
Anyway, though, neither card has truly failed me yet... but I am of course afraid of them failing. Especially the third party one, naturally... I'm always scared that that thing will fail... since I have my Rush 2049 save on the thing and the only way to back it up/copy it to another card would be to have a dexdrive or something like that, which I don't have...
Oh yeah, my GC memcards are all first-party, but I did have a problem once... one file got corrupted (Midway Arcade Treasures), and I had to delete that file and recreate it... but just that file, oddly, and not anything else... and I haven't seen any more problems (can't remember if that was on the 251 or 1019 or whatever)...
As for controllers, N64 first party analog sticks dissolve. My original GC first-party controller is somewhat broken and in games sometimes some buttons don't work, or multiple buttons are mapped to the same button (like L doing both L and R's functions and R doing nothing), and stuff like that... very annoying... my third-party controller (Mad Catz) is junk of course, and one button broke... thankfully the useless programmable M button... and its buttons are sticky, and the dpad is abysmal and always has been, and the analog sticks are loose and imprecise and always have been that way...
My other controller of course works (not perfect actually, the main analog stick's deadzone (where it goes before you have to start pushing it) is too large (and wasn't always that way - not good), but that doesn't affect gameplay and hasn't seemed to be growing), but for multiplayer it's a tough choice... do you use the controller which, depending on the game/time of day/whatever will have nonfunctional buttons, or do you use the junk third party thing?
Oh yeah, and the screen on my GBC broke a year and a half ago. Got fried in the sun or something... I'm sure everyone has hand broken consoles before, even Nintendo ones... (like my ... other ... N64, which erases or messes with or fails to recognize on-cartridge-save (that is, not memcard) carts' saves) Yes, third party stuff is usually worse, but not always. Just look at my two N64 memory cards (or my cousins' third party psx or n64 memcards), they seem to work decently after some years...
But even so, I am definitely more scared of that third party thing breaking, and really, really don't want to lose that Rush save... all those hours and all those stats cataloged there... :(