Amiibo

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Various collectibles and figurines designed to be used as add-ons to mostly first party Nintendo games, and their emulation support.

Nintendo Amiibo

An Amiibo is a small figurine produced by Nintendo, which stores and relays various information for related video games via near field communication (NFC). It was supported on the Wii U and the Nintendo Switch, as well as the Nintendo 3DS (natively on new 3DS, with an add-on peripheral on old models).

The figurine had some unique data about its type, sometimes some user save-data, but its size is too small to hold any true add-on game content. When read by the game during in-game prompts, it would unlock various bonuses and content already on the disc (just like on-disc DLC), depending on the figurine's type and various other conditions.

Emulation

Related Console Emulators
Name Operating System(s) Latest Version Amiibo Support
Nintendo 3DS
Citra Windows, Linux, macOS Nightly
3dmoo Windows, Linux Git
TronDS Windows, Linux 1.0.0.5
LemonLime Windows, Linux, macOS Git
Wii U
Cemu Windows 2.0
Decaf Windows, Linux Git
Nintendo Switch
yuzu Windows, Linux Nightly
Ryujinx Windows, Linux, macOS Git
NSEmu Windows ✗ (WIP)
SphiNX Windows ✗ (WIP)
  • Cemu has partial Amiibo support. While Amiibo dumps (.bin) can be loaded and read in-game to trigger their appropriate effects, they can't be written back to. This affects, for example, the Wolf Link figurine, that's supposed to store the number of hearts for Link from Twilight Princess HD's save file, and summon in Breath of the Wild a wolf with as much HP. With the way Cemu's implementation is, this never happens and the summon only has a default of 3 hearts. Nevertheless, this can be circumvented by writing to the Amiibo on real Wii U hardware, dumping it, then using that dump with BoTW.
  • yuzu added Amiibo support. It can do the reading part, but it's yet to be known if it can do the write part.
  • Citra added Amiibo support in late 2018. [1]
  • No 3DS to date has a functional software implementation.
  • 3DS custom firmware has an app that can load Amiibo in software, but it's buggy and has limited compatibility (SSB4 3DS), and no longer under development.

Amiibo Dumps

These are little more than NFC tags. There are multiple ways to dump, store and fake these. Their common format accepted by emulators is .bin files. Additionally, there are some complete sets shared online that regularly get updated.

  • TagMo: An open-source Android mobile application that can be used to store and relay the same information as any given amiibo (provided they have the appropriate encryption keys). Download
  • n2elite: A little puck sold commercially that uses the "amiiqo emulator" for storing and transferring data to official Nintendo consoles.

Game Boy Advance Figurines

Some Japanese-exclusive game series on the GBA offered peripherals mandatory to game progression. The gameplay was similar to Pokemon, and used figurines not unlike Skylanders before their day. There were two series, each with their figurines that only work across their respective franchise:

  • Bouken Yuuki Pluster World: Plust Gate/EX/Pluston GP
  • Legendz: Island of Ordeal/Sign of Nekuromu

Emulation

None to speak of, though in the case of the Legendz series, the scene dumpers made a patch that spoofs the figurine reading code to trick it into believing a successful reading of the first figurine registered everytime it's prompting a read. This makes initial progression possible on emulators.

References