Don't forget. (Sega Dreamcast Visual Memory Unit)

Member Name: Dringostarr

Product:	Sega Dreamcast Visual Memory Unit
Date:	02/01/02 (131 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It can display data, You can play games, You can save games.

Disadvantages: Bit short on space.

Once upon a time Carts ruled the world and all we ever needed to use was carts, carts were so cleverly designed that you can save games onto them without using these new fangled Memory cards. When the Disc era of gaming appeared and Sony used these memory cards. These Memory cards though had an advantage, you could transfer data from one game to another so if you rented a game out save it on the memory card when you buy the game you can upload your old saved file. So the N64 decided to use them despite being cartridge based (only a few games used the memory card though so it wasn’t as important as they were on the Playstation). The N64 was the first to alter these memory cards from simple memory systems by creating in built rumble facilities.

Nowadays Memory cards are getting posh the big spaced but stupidly priced PS2 memory card is examples of companies revolutionizing that area. The Gamecube and Panasonic are using new memory cards with memory space exceeding that of the console itself and with the help of Panasonic you can transfer data from a video camera and use it on a future Gamecube title or a digital camera. These nice Memory card ideas are all well a good but there was a special memory card developed for SEGA’s Dreamcast.

The Visual memory unit is just that a memory card that displays your data but it does much more than that oh yes. Fans of Resident Evil will know a bar shows how well your doing with a Fine, Caution and Danger rating. Instead of pressing pause to view it you can now look down at your VMU and it will show you. Some games such as Ready to Rumble round 2 shows your health ala Resident Evil Code Veronica but also how many punches you have landed and a score. You can download information off of the Internet onto it and you can even download small games to play.

The VMU’s are an ingenious idea from SEGA on their sadly ill-fated Dreamcast system. Meanwhile the Nintendo memory cards that can carry NE
S games on are coming about which you might be able to upload onto your Gamecube. Also the GBA has been implemented as a separate controller so the same data a VMU showed can be done via the GBA. So SEGA’s idea lives on but if you have a Dreamcast and don’t have one of these then you better get on sharpish their running pretty low.

Dringo.

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