The PS3, in addition to allowing you to record the screen, has compatibility with its predecessor consoles, which awakens the nostalgia of most veteran players who began their gamer path with the PS1 or the PS2. However, a prior procedure must be done to be able to play these titles, otherwise, the progress of the games cannot be saved.
To be able to save the game of a PS1 or PS2 game you will have to create a virtual memory card format; however, the procedure is quite simple and does not take more than 5 minutes.
Finally, to make your PS1 and PS2 games work, you will have to update the console, the latest Firmware allows you backward compatibility with the games. However, if you do not understand much, in the following article we will explain step by step how to save data and games from PS1 and PS2 on your PS3.
Steps to be able to save data and games of PS1 and PS2 games
It is important to mention that the PS3 Slim and the super Slim are not compatible with physical PS1 and PS2 games, being the first Playstation 3 model, the PS3 Fat, the only model that reads some original games, both PS1 and PS2.
However, on the PlayStation Store, you can find classic PS1, PS2 and even some PSP games.
The problem is that when purchasing PS1 or PS2 games in the Playstation Store, many users do not know where to save the games, but the procedure to be carried out is really very simple.
The first thing you should do is start your PS3 and you will have to wait until it loads to the XMB bar. This is the main bar where we can see the titles, games and other options on your console.
Later we will have to go to the game option and go up to the option called memory card tools.
While there, you will get two options where you can save your progress, either it can be on a USB device or, on the contrary, create a new Memory card.
Creating a virtual memory card
In case you choose to create a virtual Memory card, you must bear in mind that the data that is generated and saved will occupy memory in the storage of your PS3’s hard drive, depending on the capacity of your hard drive, it may be a good alternative to save your progress since you won’t need to connect an external USB memory.
Likewise, the weight of this virtual memory card does not exceed one MB, so it does not imply a great load for the hard disk storage.
When creating the memory card, it will have a weight of 150 kb, which is equivalent to 15 blocks, in each of these blocks you can save the progress of a different game, so in total you will have space to save the game of 15 games.
When creating it, we can rename it as we want and later we will see a message that will say that the memory card has actually been assigned to slot 1.
It must be made clear that this virtual memory card system simulates the old PS1 console, so you can only have two slots and each have a memory card. The same applies to PS2 games, where we can have two slots and a memory card in each of them.
Tips and Recommendations
The emulation of PS1 and PS2 games is usually quite good, it is possible that the Memory Card files get corrupted, losing all the progress of the possible games played, although it sounds a bit archaic, it is still the best option to play on a retro console since this risk is reduced to zero.
Similarly, it should be noted that if you have a lot of data on your PS3’s hard drive, it is likely that you will not be able to create a virtual Memory card, so it is always recommended to have at least 100 MB available on your hard drive.