We’re now in the generation of hard drives, SD cards and even the occasional memory stick when it comes to backing up game saves. It almost makes it hard to believe that a few years ago the standard method was memory cards, plastic blocks gamers would shove into consoles or controllers so they could save their game progress. At the time, memory cards were the thing. They offered a sense of freedom gamers hadn’t had before, allowing them to take their game progress on the go with them, not bound by on-cartridge memory or those loathed passwords.

Some companies decided that maybe they should take memory cards a step further. Not only have these devices hold onto our valuable game data, but allow them to be game playing devices as well. The results were Sony’s PocketStation for the PlayStation and Sega’s Visual Memory Unit for the Dreamcast. Sony’s PocketStation crashed and burned, while the VMU could be helpful, but never really reached the iconic status Sega hoped for. This week, let’s learn a little more about both of them…

In light of this year’s Dreamcast anniversary I’ve decided to write up a guide for many of you who either are just diving into Dreamcast or rejoining the Orange Swirl Society.

I’ll try to cover as many aspects as I can about the system but if I miss some burning question, feel free to ask in the comments below and I’ll do my best to answer them.