One of my favorite hobbies is to go recycle store shopping in Japan. Recycle Stores are places that sell second-hand goods. You can also sell your things there for a fraction of the price. It’s a lot like Good Will, or going to Yard Sales in America. There’s a lot of recycle stores in Japan… each have their strengths and weaknesses. As with general shopping, it’s always good to shop around, as one store will not have the lowest price for anything. I might write up a guide on buying used games in the future. For today, I wanted to talk about a strange collectible: GameCube memory cards. While browsing recycle stores, I stumbled upon these collectibles and looked into them.
The GameCube, lacking internal memory storage relied on memory cards that were inserted into the front of the console. There are three official sizes in North America: 59 (gray). 251 (black) and 1019 (white) blocks. However, the story doesn’t stop there as there are a ton of variants. Information about these variants are still being documented, so I thought I would collect all the information I could find.
Special thanks to sunmarsh for his amazing post on Nintendo Age. A lot of this post builds upon their research. I also moved the images here in order to ensure the images stay up.
There is a lot of unverifiable information in this post, as labels could have been printed and custom made. If you have additional information, please share it in the comments below.
Note: Dol is short for Dolphin, which is the internal name for the GameCube. Each accessory for the GameCube has a unique model number. For the full list, check out Nintendo Hard Number.
Versions that I could confirm came in a package are marked by bold text.
The ones are not bold are variants that have been found in-person/on auction sites, but I haven’t been able to confirm if they are an official release. Therefore, they might be homemade, or have stickers that were released in a different way.
The one with the most variants is the standard (usually) gray Memory Card. Games such as Animal Crossing, which took up a significant amount of blocks, sometimes came packaged with a card.
Memory Card 59 Blocks (Dol-008):
Standard gray (all regions)
Transparent black (NTSC-J)
Animal Crossing (NTSC) – Rover decal, standard gray
Animal Crossing (PAL) – KK Slider decal, standard gray
Animal Crossing (NTSC) – Late player’s choice release, Rover decal, black face, red back
Animal Crossing (NTSC) – Has the Villager on it (sporting his viking hat). No copyright on it, means it’s an unofficial source.
Capcom vs SNK 2 EO (NTSC-J) – Logo decal on front, standard gray
Doshin the Giant (NTSC-J) – Doshin decal, standard gray
Doubutsu no Mori+ (NTSC-J) – Game logo decal, standard gray. I think it’s official, but I haven’t been able to confirm it.
Doubutsu no Mori+ (NTSC-J) – Gyroid & game logo decal, standard gray (official website is still up)
Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (NTSC-J) – Black variant, with the title and the King of Red Lions. I own this! I don’t think it’s official.
Mario 128 (NTSC-J) – A picture from the Mario 128 tech demo. I don’t think this is official at all, but it’s a neat decal.
Pokemon Box: Ruby & Sapphire (NTSC-J/PAL/NTSC) – Blue front, red back, stickers separate (NTSC-J/NTSC)
Pokemon Colosseum (PAL/NTSC-J) – Game logo decal, standard gray (PAL), black (NTSC-J)
Resident Evil (NTSC-J) – Game logo decal, standard gray, stickers separate
Resident Evil Zero (NTSC-J) – Game logo decal, standard gray. Stickers separate.
Star Fox Adventures (NTSC-J) – Black, with Fox, Krystal and Tricky.
Super Mario Sunshine (NTSC-J) Mario and Yoshi
Super Smash Bros. Melee (NTSC-J) – Roster decal, standard gray. (Haven’t been able to find this anywhere else…I really want it!)
Memory Card 251 (DOL-014):
Standard black (all regions)
Club Nintendo (NTSC-J) – Club Nintendo decal, white face, blue back
[HORI] Kirby (NTSC-J) – Kirby riding on star with game logo on front, game logo (Kirby) on back, transparent
[HORI] Fantasy Star Online Episode III: C.A.R.D. Revolution (NTSC-J) – Sil’fer on front, transparent. Comes with a trading card.
[HORI] Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles (NTSC-J) – Features game case art + characters, transparent. Comes with a memory card case.
[HORI] Tales of Symphonia (NTSC-J) – Lloyd Irving with game logo on front, game logo with map on back, transparent. Comes with a character sticker.
[HORI] Silver (NTSC-J) – A silver memory card. Comes with a clear case and a sticker.
[HORI] Orange (NTSC-J) An orange memory card. [Memory King] – 251 Blocks. Purple tint, clear memory card. [???] 32 MB Memory Card [Premium Memory 251] – Clear, 3rd Party memory card. [NTSC-J]Memory Card 1019 (DOL-020):
Standard white (all regions?)
Other:
SD Memory Card (NTSC-J only) – Could work with Animal Crossing e+ and Pokemon Channel to take pictures! Was sold only online. Here’s a list of supported SD Cards.
Nyko 81540 GameCube Memory Card – I had this growing up.
Development Cards:
Known Sticker sheets:
Nintendo Power Vol.152 – Luigi’s Mansion, Pikmin, Wave Race: Blue Storm, Super Smash Bros. Melee, GC Controller & Logo
Nintendo Power Vol.165 – Super Mario Sunshine, StarFox Adventures, Metroid Prime, Animal Crossing
NGC Magazine – Metroid confirmed in picture. Not sure which issue the sticker comes from.
So, what did we miss? Let us know in the comments below!
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Recycle Stores are awesome! It’s fun seeing all the different types of things you can find there, including memory cards.
The mention of the White (1019 block) memory card though reminded me of how mine became corrupted somehow, probably just from age… all that hard work and 100% completed GC games gone, just like that : (
I miss memory cards, it was so much easier to carry one over to a friends house to use all the unlockables.
now I have to carry over the entire system just to use what I have.
I’ve offically become one of those old gamers who say that it was so much better when I was a kid.
That is actually something Sony has fixed. I can upload my save data and download it on any other system when I log in with my profile (even DL games!).
Hope Nintendo also make this possible for their next console.
I have a purple 8mb memory card – not quite as big as the 252 memory card but it really helped out.