Hmm, recently I discovered the Memory Base 128, an underutilized external memory device for the PC Engine / TurboGrafx-16. I know that it's a memory device that attaches through the controller port, which can hold up to 128 KB of save memory powered by AA batteries. This is ideal because it connects to the controller port, which is accessible to both card and CD games... The internal backup RAM of the Super CD / Duo is only 2K, and memory cards like the Tennokoe Bank take up the card slot of the console -- which makes them only useful for backup purposes. It's kind of a shame really, you get 192K of extra RAM with the Super CD, and a whopping 2MB with the arcade card, but it's not persistent.
I do know that games such as A-Train III (which I own) support directly saving/loading with this, and a few others have a special backup memory manager but play using the internal save RAM. But it's a very small set of games overall.
The Memory Base 128 tried to address this save memory shortage, and never really took off. It seems like most games used very small saves, even when they could have taken advantage of it: Was it because of needing to share the internal 2K RAM among several games and not wanting to be greedy? Or was it some kind of certification requirement to release games for the PC Engine? I guess it makes sense that requiring an external peripheral for extra save memory would probably hurt sales, so that's why it was optional.
Anyway, I'd be curious about reading/writing data to it -- homebrew music applications or RPGs/simulations with lots of persistent state could benefit from the added storage. I don't think any emulator supports this memory card at the moment. Is anyone else familiar with this device / tried to make documentation for it?
I do know that games such as A-Train III (which I own) support directly saving/loading with this, and a few others have a special backup memory manager but play using the internal save RAM. But it's a very small set of games overall.
The Memory Base 128 tried to address this save memory shortage, and never really took off. It seems like most games used very small saves, even when they could have taken advantage of it: Was it because of needing to share the internal 2K RAM among several games and not wanting to be greedy? Or was it some kind of certification requirement to release games for the PC Engine? I guess it makes sense that requiring an external peripheral for extra save memory would probably hurt sales, so that's why it was optional.
Anyway, I'd be curious about reading/writing data to it -- homebrew music applications or RPGs/simulations with lots of persistent state could benefit from the added storage. I don't think any emulator supports this memory card at the moment. Is anyone else familiar with this device / tried to make documentation for it?