Reddit reviews Gamecube Memory Card 251

That's probably not how it works; they almost certainly use a dirty bit.

When you start playing, it marks your save game in persistent storage as "unsaved".

Whenever you save, it clears that mark.

If you ever load a saved game which was marked as "unsaved", Resetti shows up and berates you.

In fact, Windows knows to bother you if you don't shut down properly using the same technique.

(they also have a timestamp in order to prevent time-traveling shenanigans; however, that's probably unrelated to the dirty bit. Note that timestamps can only work to detect players going backwards in time, not forwards).

Gamecubes clock at 3.25A. Let's say this nominal is not very accurate and give it a whopping 50% inefficiency. So we stand at 4.875A, rounding up to 5A. If you only play half an hour a day, that means you leave it on unnecessarily 23.5 hours a day, or 8583.375 hours a year (assuming a year with 365.25 days). Remembering it pulls energy from a 110V source, but actually converts it to 12V, it has an "effective" potency of 60W (since we already added a 50% inefficiency factor on the current).

Now all we need to do is multiply those two numbers to get roughly 515 kWh of energy spent in a year. I don't really know a lot about US electricity prices, but this source gave me an average of 13.01 cents per kWh. So you'd be spending pretty much 67 dollars per year of doing that.

I'm gonna take an educated guess and say a 16MB memory card for the gamecube was 20 bucks at the time. If you plan on keeping it on for less than 109 days, it is actually cheaper to not buy the memory card. There are disadvantages, sure, like only having one save of one game and the possibility of losing everything due to a power outage. But hey, it is an alternative. Maybe paying those 20 bucks over the course of 109 days is actually better than just shelling it out up front, depending on the financial situation of the family.

You need one of these

http://www.amazon.com/Gamecube-Memory-Card-251/dp/B00012D0SG/ref=sr_1_1?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1421942290&sr=1-1&keywords=gamecube+memory+card

This is way better and I have never heard of anyone losing data on this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00012D0SG?keywords=gamecube%20memory%20card&qid=1456970865&ref_=sr_1_2&sr=8-2

Also I have lost data on two third party memory cards before so I wouldnt even bother with that one.

Here, see for yourself: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00012D0SG/ref=gwm_tlc_pi?pf_rd_p=beee8abb-3aa0-4da0-b989-2bf814c32e0f&pf_rd_s=grid-6&pf_rd_t=Gateway&pf_rd_i=mobile&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=MK04YS9WSXCA59YKQJGH&pf_rd_r=MK04YS9WSXCA59YKQJGH&pf_rd_p=beee8abb-3aa0-4da0-b989-2bf814c32e0f

I think Nintendo still makes GameCube memory cards. I may have to look into those instead of these knockoffs.

Edit: It seems they do.

No I didn't inspect it. However it says its by Nintendo on amazon's site. Plus it was still in its package. https://www.amazon.com/Gamecube-Memory-Card-251/dp/B00012D0SG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1480618501&sr=8-1&keywords=gamecube+memory+card