Gaming Hacks

Back Up, Modify, and Restore PlayStation Saved Games

Shuffle, swap, spindle, and mutilate data on your memory cards.

One of the most proprietary pieces of console hardware is the memory card. While you could copy games between cards on the original hardware, that’s a drag. What if your friend just moved to New York from California and took your save game with him? What if you’d like to see all 12 endings to Chrono Trigger without playing through the game 12 times? What if you want to archive your saves somewhere more permanent than a flimsy little piece of plastic and sand?

Fortunately, third-party manufacturers have jumped into the morass with utilities that can read memory cards to your PC and allow free online trading of memory card saves. Here’s how to copy saved games to and from memory cards, so you can trade them with friends, back them up, and hack around.

PlayStation 1 Memory Card Hacking

It’s best to start with the original PlayStation, because the saves are quite small and there are quite a few floating around online. This makes the PS1 really hackable.

Extracting saved games

The DexDrive from the now defunct Interact is by far the most common PlayStation 1 memory card copying device. You should be able to find it on eBay for $10 or so, a princely sum for such a neat device. Connect the DexDrive to the serial port on your PC, load the Windows-compatible software, and then back up entire PlayStation 1 memory cards as .GME files. You can then email these to your friends, trade ...