December 8, 1999
Web posted at: 3:59 p.m. EST (2059 GMT)

By John Robinson
CNN Interactive Senior Associate Editor

Tired of using memory cards that only hold a mere 15 blocks of memory? Nyko might just have what you're looking for with its x72 memory card. Imagine having 72 virtual memory cards all in one slot. Well, that's precisely what this device does and very well at that. If you do a little math you'll find out that this card has a grand total of 1080 blocks of memory available. That should probably be enough for even the most rabid gamer.

The x72 memory card plugs into the same port as your regular card but is a little longer and a lot beefier. There is a small LED window on the top of the card to let you know which of those virtual memory slots you are accessing. Since the memory card port is located above the controller port, it may be a little more difficult to plug in a controller if your PlayStation is located on the floor.

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Gaming

Saving games with the x72 is easy enough and all that you really have to do is find an empty block on the card. Changing which card you are accessing is a two-button operation. All you have to do is push and hold the select button and use the R1 and L1 shoulder buttons to scroll through the memory cards. Once you find an empty slot on a card (trust me, that won't be too hard), just push the X button to save your data.

Loading data is just as easy and the only real problem is how to keep track of which of those virtual cards your game is located on. It's probably a good idea to write down which games are saved on which cards so that you can avoid confusion in the future.

If you do forget which card your data is on, all you have to do is start the PlayStation without a game disc and use the memory card manager to find your saved game. This is also the way to go if you are deleting games or copying them to another card.

The x72 uses data compression in addition to extra flash memory in order to provide such a large amount of storage capacity. One might assume that compressing the game save data could lead to easily corrupted files. To test this product, we saved, loaded and transferred a large amount of game data without any problems at all.

Lots of memory is something that PlayStation memory cards have always needed, especially when you consider some games take up an entire 15 block card. For about twice the cost of a regular memory card, Nyko's x72 card is a good alternative for those who find themselves needing a little extra storage space.

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