Member-only story
Inside the Memory Card
My father’s ghost is haunting an Animal Crossing village.
Fifteen years ago, you could not save video games to the cloud: you kept the ones you liked on a memory card, and sometimes, when that card ran out of space and you couldn’t afford to buy another one, some of those games would have to go. There was always a balance to walk: what games are good enough that we don’t want to trade them in, but have had enough of the shine rubbed off that we know we won’t play them again anytime soon? Typically, we would delete those save files to make room for new games on the card, and put their discs in storage in case we ever wished to rediscover them. But Animal Crossing was different: we actually did sell that game, but I could never bring myself to erase its memory card.
A few of you may remember that the first Animal Crossing that was released in the United States, the one for the GameCube, came with its own memory card bundled with the disc. It was a large game, data-wise, for the relatively underpowered console to hold comfortably, and Nintendo seemed to not think it was right for players to have to delete four or five other games on their old cards for the privilege of saving their progress on this one title. So they sold you the game with a card of its own, complete with a cute little sticker on the front of Rover welcoming you to your new town.
