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GameCube Coders Caught Out By Gigantic Memory Card
Thanks to GamerFeed for its news story discussing compatibility problems with some GameCube titles and the new Nintendo Memory Card 1019. The news story explains: "The [official Nintendo-produced] card has 17 times the memory capacity of the original Memory Card 59", and describes issues, some due to the card's four-digit block size, with a number of more minor third-party games, including Sonic Adventure 2 Battle ("If there are more than 999 free blocks on the Memory Card 1019, the game cannot display the amount of free blocks"), WTA Tour Tennis ("The game does not recognize the Memory Card 1019 properly, and should not be used"), and, disastrously problematic for many memory cards, Mary-Kate And Ashley: Sweet 16 ("Graphics sometimes will not display properly if a file is loaded and restarted after quitting the game.")
That's the thing-- from what I can gather/infer/guess there was never a capacity cap to begin with. Remember, Nintendo promoted a SD Card adapter when the Cube was first announced; they had to be ready for the possibility that an SD card would eventually be larger than the largest standard memory card they could produce, and as a result they would have made sure games were ready for this, probably by providing standardized memory card libraries for their developers. With the exception of SA2, most of the games listed were by off-brand developers who would be more likely to tweak the memory card libraries or ignore them completely in favor of their own versions, not realizing that Nintendo's code was ready for whatever would be announced. (I suspect that Sega used an older version of the library or was using a "homebrew" one for SA2 as it was one of the first Sega titles for the Cube. IIRC, when I had SA2 it for whatever reason did not like the off-brand 2x size card I had, but that was a good ten months ago or so.) As for why NOA missed the memory card thing, I imagine it was because they themselves didn't have such a large memory card, either in prototype form or otherwise.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
You must be thinking of the Playstation 2, which is widely considered the hardest console to code for since the Sega Saturn. Indeed, one of the things developers like about the Gamecube is that it's relatively easy to code for (thanks in large part to its PowerPC processor). Also, I have my doubts that Nintendo will give any of the ground it has unless they become massively unprofitable. And since Nintendo's had only one unprofitable quarter in over 20 years, that could be quite a while.
Where on earth did you see a PS1 that only had one memory card slot? Every model of the Playstation, from the SCPH-1000 (original model with AV connectors on the back) to the PSOne, has had two memory card slots. There's one above each controller port.
Now, there are certain games that insist on the card being in slot 1, but that's a coding issue not a hardware issue.
I honestly do not know anyone that owns a gamecube. Most people I know have PS2 systems or nothing at all.
And therefore, we can extrapolate that Nintendo has not sold a single game cube! Or that any units they have sold are merely "statistical noise".
Seriously, who cares that you and your buds don't have a GC? I know lots of people, myself included. It hasn't sold as well as PS2, but it has some great exclusive titles. IMO GC and Xbox are both MUCH better systems, games-wise. Without the PS1 (and arrangements to get FFs and GTAs first) the PS2 would be in the obscurity it deserves.
Why would Nintendo introduce a new memory card this late in the game?
I dunno, I thought it was kind of odd how low capacity their initial offering was. They may have been trying to game the system a bit, which is kind of irritating.
This is Nintendo's fault. They should have tested this new card with a number of games, old and new BEFORE they released it to the marketplace. Nintendo should be working on either a workaround to trick games into seeing a smaller card or a full solution that allows it to be seamless to all games.
Frankly, no it isn't, just like Y2K wasn't the fault of the holy roman empire or whoever set up the calender. Assuming they published a spec, Nintendo isn't obliged to complexify w/ special case issues and add expense to what is probably a pretty straightforward memory device just because a few game writers have a lack of foresight.
You can always still use the old smaller card in the other slot.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
It looks to me that Nintendo did something very very smart when they initially set up the design of the memory card system, ie allowing it to be any arbitrary size (as opposed to the old PS1 cards which were 15 blocks, take it or leave it), and these are just poorly-coded games (SA2 included, though it pains me to admit). It's not that big of a deal in the long run, but of note if you happen to have the games mentioned.
You should remember that Sega has another (and more critical) bug in its game line up, namely, Phantasy Star Online I&II, which had a buffer overflow in the networking code, allowing to load arbitrary code, allowing to hack (to some extent) the gamecube, allowing to port linux and PostgresSQL (yay!) to the gamecube.
By the way, the team that did the PostgresSQL port to the gamecube must be thrilled by the new memory card! more space for these giant databases!
Doomstalk, try 40 years. Nintendo went public about 40 years ago (actually, I think it's been 39.5 years, now). Only one unprofitable quarter out of about 160. Not bad, I'd say.