Intro

You may have heard about data miners finding game details and releasing them before the game is ready. One such thing is amiibo IDs. However, I’ve been guessing amiibo IDs long before data miners even found them. Often times a game has amiibo support added before the amiibo is released. Guessing the IDs is fun for unlocking new items and behavior before the amiibo figure is available.

With the release of Sora for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, I’m going to reveal how I’ve been guessing the amiibo IDs. Once Nintendo finds this article, future IDs may be less guessable. Though this is a fun exercise in reverse engineering and knowing the process is enlightening.

DISCLAIMERS

The bulk of the data for this article came from AmiiboAPI with the rest coming from my own research.

I do not condone cloning amiibo and selling them as your own. Even though I unlock features early, I subsequently buy amiibo once they do become available.

Structure

The structure of amiibo IDs has been known for a long time. Here’s the ID for Zelda and Loftwing released with the remaster of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.

01010300 04140902

That’s the ID represented in hexadecimal form. Here are the parts broken out:

010: Game series = The Legend of Zelda

1: Character = Zelda

03: Variation = Zelda with Loftwing

00: Form = Figure

0414: Serial number = 414 hexadecimal 1044 decimal

09: amiibo series = The Legend of Zelda

02: Format version = 2

The first three bytes (010103) contain the key information for the character. The remaining five bytes (0004140902) contains metadata. Most games only look at the first two or three bytes. This allows them to be compatible with future amiibo without updating the game.

The rest of this post will dive into the details of each portion.

Game Series

Not to be confused with the “amiibo Series”. The game series represents where the character originated from, ex. Link -> The Legend of Zelda. For game series with many amiibo, there will be multiple game series IDs assigned. How this portion of the ID is more elusive and will be covered in detail later in the article.

Character and Variation

The character is the most important information in the amiibo ID. This is often the only information a game is concerned about.

For a single game series ID, there are 15 possible amiibo. Some series have much more than that. So when it exceeds 15, it add a new game series ID. The subsequent series ID is usually sequential. However, The Legend of Zelda series uses 010 but some Breath of the Wild figures use 014.

Speaking of The Legend of Zelda, here are some characters:

  • 0 Link
  • 1 Zelda
  • 2 Ganondorf
  • 3 Midna and Wolf Link
  • 4 Daruk
  • 5 Urbosa
  • 6 Mipha
  • 7 Revali

You might be thinking, where is the Sheik amiibo? This is where variation comes in. Zelda is variation 00. Sheik is variation 01 (25 year-old spoiler…Sheik is Zelda).

The variation is used to distinguish the “Player 2” figures. Specifically the Super Smash Bros. Cloud, Corrin, and Bayonetta figurines.

The variation has also been used to distinguish game-specific amiibo. For example, Zelda & Loftwing, Cat Peach, and Cat Mario are different variations from their base character. Scanning these amiibo into their respective games gave different rewards than scanning other variants.

The use of variants is not consistent. For example, shortly after the Skyward Sword and Super Mario 3D world remasters release came Metroid Dread. The Metroid Dread Samus amiibo gives different rewards than other Samus amiibo but it’s not a variant. This means that Metroid Dread must look at the full amiibo ID to distinguish this amiibo.

To further confuse matters, Toon Link is a variant of Link. However, there is no Young Link variant. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate treats “Link” and “Young Link” as different characters. So, the game must look at the full ID. This means if there is a new “Young Link” amiibo released, it will be treated as Link unless the game is updated.

Whoever made the Skylander amiibo completely ignored the variation and serial number. Hammer Slam Bowser and Dark Hammer Slam Bowser share the same ID. Same for Turbo Charge Donkey Kong and Dark Turbo Charge Donkey Kong.

Currently, the character with the most variations is Isabelle from Animal Crossing. She has three figures and seven cards wearing the following six outfits.

  • 00 Summer
  • 01 Winter
  • 02 Kimono
  • 03 Dress
  • 04 Tropical
  • 05 Sweater

Character ID

Though I treat game series, character, and variation as three different things they really get mashed into one thing: the character ID. Let’s take character ID for Pikachu: 191900. It can be helpful to think of the game series having four digits, in this case 1900. Then the character number is 19 hexadecimal or 25 decimal. Adding 1900 and 19 gives the base ID 1919. Append the variation 00 to get the full character ID of 191900.

Form

The form determines their physical representation. The options are few but Nintendo occassionally surprises us with new forms.

  • 00 Figure
  • 01 Card
  • 02 Yarn
  • 03 Band

You’ve likely seen the figures. They are the most common. You may have also seen cards such as the many Animal Crossing cards.

The other types are less common. With the Yoshi series came several figures crocheted from yarn. This is a reference to Yoshi’s Wooly World where Yoshi and others are made of yarn.

The newest form are wrist bands. You receive these at the Super Nintendo World theme parks. This is a clever way to introduce more people to the amiibo functionality within games.

Serial Number

By itself, the serial number is mundane. It’s simply a sequentially-assigned number. What’s more interesting is in what’s missing. There are several gaps. These gaps could indicate canceled amiibo. Or some card series carved out more numbers than needed. More on this below.

amiibo Series

Not to be confused with the “Game Series”. For amiibo figures, this determines the base the figure stands on. Each base has a slightly different design. The most notable difference between game series and amiibo series is the Super Smash Bros. series. It contains characters from a variety of games, ex. Legend of Zelda, Mega Man, Pikmin, Metroid.

These are the current series:

amiibo Series ID Series Name
00 Super Smash Bros.
01 Super Mario
02 Chibi-Robo!
03 Yoshi
04 Splatoon
05 Animal Crossing
06 8-bit Mario
07 Skylanders
09 Legend Of Zelda
0A Shovel Knight
0B …
0C Kirby
0D Pokemon
0E Mario Sports Superstars
0F Monster Hunter
10 BoxBoy!
11 Pikmin
12 Fire Emblem
13 Metroid
14 Others
15 Mega Man
16 Diablo
17 Power Pros
18 Monster Hunter
19 Yu-Gi-Oh!
1A …
1B Xenoblade Chronicles
… …
FF Super Nintendo World

Format Version

The final byte is the “format version”. So far it’s always 02. If a new format is ever made, then this number could be different. It’s not likely, so just expect this to always be 02.

Game Series Assignment

Now to dig into the most critical data, the game series. For existing series, it’s trivial to look up the game series ID. But for new games, how can you guess the series ID?

The game series numbers are arbitrarily assigned. Fortunately, people (especially programmers) like organization. I’ve deduced some patterns through what I call “playing solitaire with the data”. Basically categorizing data and finding similarities.

I’ll start by dumping a large table of data then explain what it means.

Series ID Name Publisher/Developer
000-002 Super Mario Bros. Nintendo
004 x  
008 Yoshi Nintendo
00C Donky Kong Nintendo
010 Legend of Zelda Nintendo
014 Breath of the Wild Nintendo
018-051 Animal Crossing Nintendo
054 x  
058 Star Fox Nintendo
05C Metroid Nintendo
060 F-Zero Nintendo
064 Pikmin Nintendo
068 x  
06C Punch Out Nintendo
070 Wii Fit Nintendo
074 Kid Icarus Nintendo
078 Classic Nintendo Nintendo
07C Mii Nintendo
080 Splatoon Nintendo
… … …
09C-09D Mario Sports Superstars Nintendo
… … …
0A4 ARMS Nintendo
… … …
190-1D4 Pokémon Nintendo/GameFreak
… … …
1F0 Kirby Nintendo/HAL Labs
1F4 BoxBoy Nintendo/HAL Labs
… … …
210 Fire Emblem Nintendo
… … …
224 Xenoblade Nintendo/Monolith Soft
228 Earthbound Nintendo
22C Chibi Robo Nintendo
… … …
320 Sonic Sega
324 Bayonetta Sega/Platinum Games
328 x  
32C x  
330 x  
334 Pac-Man Bandai Namco
338 Dark Souls Bandai Nameco
33C Tekken Bandai Namco
340 x  
344 x  
348 Mega Man Capcom
34C Street Fighter Capcom
350 Monster Hunter Capcom
354 x  
358 x  
35C Shovel Knight Yacht Club Games
360 Final Fantasy Square Enix
364 Dragon Quest Square Enix
368 x  
36C x  
370 x  
374 Super Mario Cereal Kellogs
378 Metal Gear Solid Konami
37C Castlevania Konami
380 Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball Konami
384 x  
388 x  
38C Diablo Blizzard
390 x  
394 x  
398 x  
39C x  
3A0 Persona Atlus/Sega
3A4 x  
3A8 x  
3AC x  
3B0 x  
3B4 Banjo and Kazooie Rare/Microsoft
3B8 x  
3BC x  
3C0 x  
3C4 x  
3C8 Fatal Fury SNK
3CC x  
3D0 x  
3D4 x  
3D8 x  
3DC Minecraft Mojang/Microsoft
3E0 x  
3E4 x  
3E8 x  
3EC x  
3F0 Kingdom Hearts Disney/Square Enix
3F4 x  
3F8 x  
3FC x  
400 x  

The series IDs 000-319 are reserved for Nintendo. They don’t appear to follow a distinct pattern. So I won’t say more about them.

320 and beyond are for third-party developers. Notice that I set up the table so that each entry ends with 0, 4, 8, or C (12 decimal). I call each entry a “slot”. One slot is can have 64 amiibo (ex. 3740-377F) ignoring variants. Smaller publishers (ex. Yacht Club Games, maker of Shovel Knight) are assigned a single slot. Larger publishers that make multiple games are given five slots. This is enough for 320 amiibo (ignoring variants) across five game series.

The latest amiibo, Sora from Kingdom Hearts, was assigned series ID 3F0. Following this pattern, if a new publisher released an amiibo, it’s series ID would be 404.

You might think this is a large waste of space slicing out five slots at a time. However, from 404 to FFC inclusive, there are 767 slots. That’s enough for 153 more major publishers. amiibo have been around for almost a decade. The numbers aren’t running out soon.

Possible Cancelations

The following tables show gaps in the serial numbers. There’s also some speculation about what might have used those numbers. At the time of writing, the latest serial number is 043E.

Range Size Speculation
3B 1 Possibly Chibi-Robo amiibo
1D9—237 95 Probably Animal Crossing cards, increase 405 to 500
23C 1 Maybe another Skylander or Pokémon
2C3—2E0 30 Probably more Mario Sports Superstars, increase 90 to 120
31F—34A 44 Probably Animal Crossing cards, increase 56 to 100
351 1 Probably a Toon LoZ amiibo (Ganondorf?)
357 1 Probably a BotW amiibo (Calamity Ganon?)
39A 1 Probably a Link’s Awakening amiibo (Marin?)
3D8—40B 52 Probably Animal Crossing cards, increase 48 to 100
416—417 2 Possibly Splatoon 3 or Tears of the Kingdom
42F 1 More Power-Up bands? (Link?)
431—432 2 More Power-Up bands? (Donkey Kong? Diddy Kong?)
436—43C 7 Maybe Splatoon 3 or Xenoblade but probably not

Conclusion

For just being eight bytes of data, there is a lot that can be inferred. It’s similar to how the periodic table of elements came about. Or the German tank problem. Next time you see a mess of data, see if you can tease out those little patterns.