Modifying Final Fantasy VIII (FF8) PSN saves

Recently I made a rather big mistake in buying the gimped PAL version of FF8 on PSN.  After spending 20 or so hours doing a “no level up” challenge, I bought the NA version off the US Playstation Store instead and was desperate for a way to convert my PAL save game over.

After hours of tinkering with the .psv file straight from the PS3, I sadly discovered there’s currently no way to actually do this, as the PS3 puts some kind of protection on it’s PS1 saves which prevents modifying them directly. 

Allow me to repeat.  There is currently no known way to edit a .PSV file and re upload to your PS3.  Your PS3 will treat it as corrupted data due to some checksums put on the file.  Hence the need for this guide.

Instead, I found another way, which was to use the PSP to fix up the save before copying it over to the PS3.

While I wasn’t able to convert my save over, I was able to get the next best thing, which was to hack up a saved game with all my previous items on it.  However, if you do know how to convert PS1 saved games between regions, then this guide can also be used.

Here’s what you need for this:

• A modified PSP with FF8
• A PS3 with FF8
• CWCheat installed on the PSP
• PSX Game Edit
• PSV Exporter
• Hyne’s FF8 save file editor (which edits saves from every single version of FF8 possible, including emulator, PC, PS1, PS3. It can edit .PSV files but obviously you can’t use them)
• A USB drive

I’ll assume you already have CWCheat on your PSP and know how to use it somewhat.  And here’s how to do it:

1. Insert the USB drive into your PS3, go into PS1/PS2 memory card management, and copy one of your FF8 saved games into the drive.
2. Load PSV Exporter and extract the save file from the PSV.  This will create a .mcs file, which means a “single PS1 saved game”
3. Load PSX Game Edit and load the .mcs file.  Save it as a Memory Card file with filename “SLUS_00892-0.mc”.  It needs to have this filename because CWCheat is extremely anal about which files it can use with which game.
4. Rename “SLUS_00892-0.mc” to “SLUS_00892-0.mcr”
5. At this point you can load up the .mcr file you just created in Hyne’s save file editor and proceed to hack the livinng daylights out of your saved game.  Alternatively, if you know of some way to convert your FF8 save game between regions, you can just do that using this .mcr file.
6. Copy the mcr file you just created into the CWCheats memory card folder on your PSP (/seplugins/cwcheat/mc)
7. Now launch FF8 on your PSP.  When the title screen comes up, hold select and the CWcheat menu should pop up.  Select memory card management, then Load memory card 1 from memory stick.  See this guide if it doesn’t make sense.
8. Now load up the save game which should have appeared on memory card slot 1.  After the game loads, it is important to immediately save again, as the PSP won’t write any changes to the memory card made by CWCheat until you do so.
9. Connec the PSP to your PS3 and copy the save game back onto the PS3 Virtual Memory Card.
10. Enjoy your modified save game!