Can anyone identify these PS1 memory card icons?

[Red | 437]

I've been playing a lot of PS1 lately and thought it was time to organize all my memory card files.  There were a few files I couldn't identify the icons for though.  The first one says [VIEW] on it, so my best guess is maybe it's for Viewpoint?  I don't have the game at the moment so I can't check.  The other two don't have any text, so I can only go by the picture.   They're animated, so I took pictures of a couple frames of the animation.  Can anyone tell which games these go with?

 

[JamesRobot | 5,800]

Last couple look like Castlevania.  Chronicles?

[Red | 437]

22 hours ago, JamesRobot said:

Last couple look like Castlevania.  Chronicles?

Unfortunately, that wasn't it.  I just tried loading from that memory card with Castlevania Chronicles and got nothing.

[TDIRunner | 2,740]

Is the first one possibly Omega Boost?

[RH | 4,903]

By this image, Omega Boost does look right for the first icon... looking for the others.

[Red | 437]

53 minutes ago, TDIRunner said:

Is the first one possibly Omega Boost?

That seems to be it.  Thanks!

35 minutes ago, RH said:

By this image, Omega Boost does look right for the first icon... looking for the others.

 

Ha ha.  I was looking for something like this and couldn't find it, but there it is as the first image in Google search results.  That's what I get for having DuckDuckGo as my default search engine.

[TDIRunner | 2,740]

1 hour ago, RH said:

By this image, Omega Boost does look right for the first icon... looking for the others.

 

45 minutes ago, Red said:

I was looking for something like this and couldn't find it, but there it is as the first image in Google search results.  That's what I get for having DuckDuckGo as my default search engine.

 

Yep, that's where I got it. 

I didn't have any luck with the others, but I'm leaning towards a ninja type game for the third one.  

[RH | 4,903]

I can't believe someone's not made a db of these.  It'd be a fun project to work on. 

You know, if these icons had to be of a specific format, one could write an app to search through an archive of ISOs by a binary search and extract these.  I'm sure you'd find them, as well as probably more than a few that weren't used.

If only I had a complete archive of all PS1 titles, I could probably do it, again, so long as there's a spec regarding how these icons must be defined.

[TDIRunner | 2,740]

9 minutes ago, RH said:

I can't believe someone's not made a db of these.  It'd be a fun project to work on. 

You know, if these icons had to be of a specific format, one could write an app to search through an archive of ISOs by a binary search and extract these.  I'm sure you'd find them, as well as probably more than a few that weren't used.

If only I had a complete archive of all PS1 titles, I could probably do it, again, so long as there's a spec regarding how these icons must be defined.

That's exactly what I was thinking about last night.  I'm surprised Game-Rave hasn't done something like this yet.  While I'm far from a full set, it's something I would be willing to work on.  But I don't know how one would get the image saved to a computer.  Not sure if those newer third party PS1 memory cards that save to an SD card would help with something like this or not.  

[RH | 4,903]

3 minutes ago, TDIRunner said:

That's exactly what I was thinking about last night.  I'm surprised Game-Rave hasn't done something like this yet.  While I'm far from a full set, it's something I would be willing to work on.  But I don't know how one would get the image saved to a computer.  Not sure if those newer third party PS1 memory cards that save to an SD card would help with something like this or not.  

Nah, I think it's a bit simpler than that.  These images first reside on the game discs.  Game discs have ISOs and if someone has an archive of ISOs on their machine, then all of the icon data exists already on PCs, it's just a matter of extracting them.

If these icons are nothing more than something like a 8x8 array of colors (I'm not sure of the resolution, but that looks about right) then it could be tough to spot in data.  However, if these  icons require any type of header information and mapping, I could easily write a program to look for that type of pattern and extra the data.

If there is a spec for  the icons already published, I could rolls something like that.  The rest would be basically brute, but not a lot in the grand scheme of things.

I know some of you emulate.   Anyone have any idea how big the full PS1 Official library is on disk?

[spacepup | 2,404]

By the way, you can use a program "MemcardRex" and save data available on places like GameFAQs to directly export images to BMP.  I don't think it works with animated icons, but you can get save data and extract the icons directly from there.

MemcardRex works with all sorts of save backups.

https://github.com/ShendoXT/memcardrex

You can test this out yourself if you'd like:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps/196844-bushido-blade/saves

 

[TDIRunner | 2,740]

14 minutes ago, RH said:

 Anyone have any idea how big the full PS1 Official library is on disk?

Mine takes up 460GB, but that's obviously compressed.  I'm not 100% sure it's a full set.  I've never gone through and checked game by game, but if it's not a full set, it's close.  

[RH | 4,903]

51 minutes ago, spacepup said:

By the way, you can use a program "MemcardRex" and save data available on places like GameFAQs to directly export images to BMP.  I don't think it works with animated icons, but you can get save data and extract the icons directly from there.

MemcardRex works with all sorts of save backups.

https://github.com/ShendoXT/memcardrex

You can test this out yourself if you'd like:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps/196844-bushido-blade/saves

 

That's a different approach!  You have any idea of there's a massive, downloadable save state database?  I mean, not one where you can go game by game, but does someone have a zip with thousands of memory cards/save states?  I could adapt there code, and even see about modding it to export GIFs for animated icons.

[spacepup | 2,404]

I'm not aware of any large centralized database unfortunately.  GameFAQS does have a lot of them, but getting them would be very tedious.  

One thing to note, is that some of the individual game save files, do include full memory cards with other games on them, but that is very random.

I have no idea how the data is stored in an archived digital version of the game.  Obviously it is stored there somewhere, in some capacity, so that approach could be effective, but we'd need to figure out exactly how it is stored and extract it, and it could differ by game, I have no idea.  You could always try and dig into this with just one game, to see.

I work with several groups and preservation projects - I haven't seen anyone mention a particular project of saving these, but I'll ask around and see what I can find out.

WORST case scenario, one could theoretically use emulation to create virtual memory cards/saves and extract icons, but that would be a VERY time intensive process.

[JamesRobot | 5,800]

13 hours ago, Red said:

Unfortunately, that wasn't it.  I just tried loading from that memory card with Castlevania Chronicles and got nothing.

They look really familiar to me.  Road Rash 3D maybe.

[spacepup | 2,404]

I'm guessing not Road Rash 3D:

[RH | 4,903]

Well @spacepup, I forked that project. It no doubt has some pretty good code.  I'll see what I can find.  I"ll also go over to gamefaqs at some point and see how easy it is to scrape save files.  Alternatively, I'll see if I can extract icons from ISOs. I  have a couple.  If I can pull from a few, I might be able to pull from more.  I do think that should be a last ditch effort because that the search will take a lot longer and might have to take a heuristic approach.

Sorry to derail your conversation @Red.  Hope you don't mind.l

[spacepup | 2,404]

It's an interesting project

I've worked with other groups on similar projects for specific preservation of items like this, and there can definitely be interest for it.  Feel free to PM me @RH if you have success with the code or locating from an image, and we can definitely discuss further / I may be able to help.

[Red | 437]

21 hours ago, TDIRunner said:

 

Yep, that's where I got it. 

I didn't have any luck with the others, but I'm leaning towards a ninja type game for the third one.  

I was thinking it might be a game set in Japan or at least have significant Japanese influences.

11 hours ago, RH said:

I can't believe someone's not made a db of these.  It'd be a fun project to work on.

11 hours ago, TDIRunner said:

That's exactly what I was thinking about last night.

That's exactly what I was thinking right before I posted this topic.  besides a Google DuckDuckGo search, I checked Game-Rave and The PlayStation Datacenter thinking that if anyone did it, it would be one of them.

9 hours ago, RH said:

Sorry to derail your conversation @Red.  Hope you don't mind.l

 

No problem.  I like where the conversation is going.  If this thread inspires the creation of such a database, I'd say it got better results than I had hoped!

[Hiccup | 3]

It seems like PS1 memory card data may contain the game serial. If you could backup the memory card to your PC, you could find those serials then look them up on the internet.

[DoctorEncore | 3,691]

On 9/2/2022 at 11:29 AM, JamesRobot said:

They look really familiar to me.  Road Rash 3D maybe.

That was my first thought as well. Not sure what else it could be.

I always thought these PS1 save icons were really cool. I believe some games have multiple possible images for your save data so you can tell different saves apart. I believe SotN had that, although don't quote me.

One more reason to go after a full PS1 set!

[Red | 437]

I figured out the second one.  It's ESPN Extreme Games.  That leaves just the third one.

Edited September 7, 2022 by Red

[austin532 | 467]

I asked the man himself (Jason Dvorak) and it's from Road Rash.

[Red | 437]

17 minutes ago, austin532 said:

I asked the man himself (Jason Dvorak) and it's from Road Rash.

Haha, I just found that out earlier this evening and was just about to post about it.  Thanks for looking into it for me though!

It's kinda weird how I found out.  I was playing Jersey Devil and when you choose which block you want to save your game in, it shows all the other games saved on the memory card.  For some reason, it was able to identify the game as Road Rash when my PS2 could not!  Now I'm wondering if the names not displaying have something to do with the console.  Maybe if I checked using an original PlayStation the names would have shown up?  I'll have to dig out my old console sometime and check.

Anyway, mysteries solved.  Thanks to everyone who helped.