ZN-2 Memory card options?

[GeeDee]

So obviously this is more-so a question about the ZN-2 in general rather than specifically the G-net, so hopefully, it's fine to put this thread up here since it's still relevant.

I've been working on a little video project involving the ZN titles and just started looking into this the other day; was there ever anything made to support these ports in any way? There are definitely a few G-net games I'm not extremely familiar with, but from the bit of searching I've done, I haven't come across any games that used anykind of PS1 peripheral board or anything...which, frankly, is what I was hoping to find. Anyone have any insight?

 

[Hammy]

1: The motherboard has NVRAM anyway so the memory card is not needed (and the bios board in development gives many more ram banks).
2: Yes it's possible to read and write to there, and some games support it
3: There should also be a way to hook standard PSX controllers for _some_ games
4: No known hardware actually released so the game DEV's only used those features for testing.

If you stripped down a early gen PS1 and track back from the memory card / controller port block area it may be similar enough to adapt.

Edit
This thing:

 

[Hammy]

One more thing, some konami and namco stuff <arcade boards> such as DDR have optional memory card for the player maybe that "setup" would be another place to check out.

 

[GeeDee]

Interesting! I'll have to look into scavenging some sockets from a spare ps1 and see what comes of it as far as controls go. A more official peripheral with that kind of purpose is pretty much exactly what I've been looking for. Not so much in the hopes to actually /use it/- more than anything, I was trying to find some kind of proof of concept/existence that the dev's considered a VMU sort of capability; i.e bring your saves to and from the home console versions and the arcade versions etc etc. I know some later games like tekken 5 had pretty widely available PS2 adapters mounted in those specific cabinets, but I've never seen much for the PS1 era titles.

2: Yes it's possible to read and write to there, and some games support it

What games exactly? I'm sure it's nothing I can actually get any significant use out of, but just so I can do a little reading into it, which titles have some kind of hint at using that memory card header?

 

[Hammy]

I don't have a list of games unfortunately.
The features will get enabled when it's detected, and i guess control pads etc would either work or not.

Until someone builds such a device it's unknown, there's lots of docs on the PSX side of things, here is a good start:
https://electronic-jack.blogspot.com/2018/