You Can Now Run Your Entire PS2 Library From This $50 Memory Card – Time Extension
GuestLogin | Sign UpTime ExtensionGuestUserMemCard Pro 2 benefits from new MMCE systemOnce upon a time, memory cards were simply for saving your progress and little more, but in 2025, these once-popular accessories have been given a new lease of life thanks to the modding community.A team of coders have created the Multi-Purpose Memory Card Emulation (MMCE) protocol, which allows games to be loaded directly from new ‘smart’ memory cards, such as 8BitMods’ MemCard Pro 2 and the open-source SD2PSX memory card.Our friends over at Macho Nacho Productions have created a brilliant video summary of how MMCE works, but in short, this new system allows your smart memory card to alternate between save data and game data, allowing you to boot games from a MicroSD card using Open PS2 Loader and then have individual ‘virtual’ memory cards for each game.When you next boot up that game, the memory card automatically finds and loads the associated virtual memory card, making the whole process seamless. What makes this even more appealing is that no modifications are required to your PS2 console to get this working, and it runs on both the original PS2 model and the slim version. All you need is a compatible smart memory card, a MicroSD card and a computer (the latter being used to set up the correct file structure and copy over games).MMCE is supported by the MemCard Pro 2, the SD2PSX and certain variants of the original MemCard Pro. You’ll find detailed instructions on how to enable it in the video below.Version 1.4.0 is now available to downloadThanks for the memoriesA save data solution for 2023, and beyondPlease note that some external links on this page are affiliate links, which means if you click them and make a purchase we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Please read our FTC Disclosure for more information.[source youtube.com] PrevNext About Damien McFerranDamien has been writing professionally about tech and video games since 2007 and oversees all of Hookshot Media’s sites from an editorial perspective. He’s also the editor of Time Extension, the network’s newest site, which – paradoxically – is all about gaming’s past glories. Comments 21I just keep reminding myself on how much money I’m gonna save next generation by just simply updating/hacking all the consoles I haven’t done that too yet.What a time to be alive!The greatest thing is…… all the main developers are trying to sell us all those games again anyway…. and I already own them!The video doesn’t mention anything about bandwidth available via loading from memory card slot. I can’t imagine it’s anywhere near as fast as reading a DVD. Is there any impact to loading times or FMVs etc?@Angelus3K I played around with it over the weekend, I didn’t have any issues with FMVs stuttering and load times seemed normal length but I didn’t go into depth on anything. Being able to access the SD card on the MemCard is way easier that taking out and putting in the hard drive.@Angelus3K My only experience with this kind of thing is the SAROO Saturn cart, which is using the console’s expansion port, and that loads things super-fast. I couldn’t say for sure but it wouldn’t shock me if loading from this thing is just as fast, if not faster, than loading from optical media.@PanicOnFunkatron This is good for someone like me with a slim model that doesn’t have a hard drive expansion port.Does it all work fine if you’ve got a mod chip in the PS2?I think I read somewhere once that the data transfer rate of that little memory card slot is actually higher than reading a DVD so if that’s true, I can’t see this having any problems at all.This could be just the thing I need to slim down my PS2 physical collection.Can you run ps1 games on it like this too?I’m not sure there are any ps2 games I want to play that I can’t play elsewhere better and more easily. But there are ps1 games!@Angelus3K compared to what we’re used to now, dvds are laboriously slow, and I can’t imagine the ps2 has some kind of super fast optical drive. (That said, it could have been possible that the memory card read is slow since it never had to transfer much data, but happily, it apparently isn’t.)Wait so like. Is this basically a card that lets you play any game ever released for the ps2 on genuine hardware.If so like. I might need to hop on this LOLif you paid $50 for the memcard pro 2, you got scammed.those go for $25 on aliexpress.@Angelus3K slower than the DVD drive, but often depends on the game as to stutter etc. Way faster than USB though. On a fat PS2 I prefer the HDD option and a NAS running on a RPi on slim. But for convenience these memory card solutions are great. I don’t know about this card, but some you have to be aware of SD Card compatibility and also Fat32 limitations for games over 4GB.From what I’ve read, the memory card slot maxes out around 3 MB/s, which is faster than reading the inner edge of a DVD, but slower than reading the outer edge (which is just over 5 MB/s). That sounds bad, but might not matter so much in reality.The memory card doesn’t have moving parts, which means no seek times- removing a major factor that caused some games to load slowly. Well-optimized games tend to load from the outer edge of the disc with minimal seeking, so that would probably perform worse from a memory card, but those games can probably afford a small increase in loading time without becoming unbearable.The PS2’s DVD drive is 4x speed, so it’s several times faster than it needs to be in order to play DVD-quality video, and dozens of times faster than it would take to play audio, so that’s no issue under normal circumstances.@Sakitoshi I would much rather support the actual creators (8bitmods) than Chinese cloners. They’re a good company with incredible product support.@PinballBuzzbro not every game is compatible with OPL (the program used to launch games on PS2) but most games are playable.If this does read fast, that would be great. I have a FreeMcBoot (or whatever it’s called) memory card, and loading ISOs from the USB 1.1 ports off of a memory stick makes FMVs stutter a lot. The gameplay is generally okay though.@bobrocks95 the design is open source, anyone can make it, it is called SD2PSX, and the creators don’t have any way to receive donations.@Sakitoshi SD2PSX sure, thought you meant MemCard Pro 2 (which has some features SD2PSX has not implemented yet like auto cloud backups I believe)aaaaaa, awesome. This is an incredible step up from McBoot and replacing my old PS2 discs for hundreds of dollars 🫤If only they would make an update to the MemcardPRO for the PS1 to load the .iSOs in the same wayI’ve been running my games over SMB on my slim – this would tidy things up nicely – I imagine data transfer might be faster as well. 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