I'm a computer science major that's been working closely with the data stored on amiibo, and I'd like to share a brief summary of what I found based on patterns in their identification numbers, as well as conclusions as to what this may mean. I made a new Reddit account for anonymity.
Scroll to the bottom if you want to see the meat instead of bits and bytes.
So every amiibo character has an 8-byte identification on pages 21 and 22 of the NFC chip. This info contains the general character on page 21 (ie. SSB Mario, SMB Mario, and Golden Mario all have the same page 21), and the print number on page 22 (basically sorted by the number that appears on the upper-right of EU packaging).
Page 21 findings----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here's an example of Mario's page 21.
00 00 00 00
Simple, right? Here's Luigi and Peach.
00 01 00 00
00 02 00 00
Now take Pit:
07 40 00 00
It appears that the first byte as well as the leading 4 bits of the second byte define what game series the character belongs to, while the trailing 4 bits define the specific character. 000_ is the Mario series; 074_ is the Kid Icarus series.
However, there are some odd cases. The following are (in order) Link, Toon Link, Zelda, and Sheik:
01 00 00 00
01 00 01 00
01 01 00 00
01 01 01 00
Toon Link and Sheik are defined as the same character as Link and Zelda respectively, but have the third byte set to 01 rather than 00 like all the others. It appears this represents alternate identities of the same character, and is very likely the same for Dr. Mario and ZSS.
Here's another interesting case, Rosalina & Luma:
00 04 01 00
Rosalina & Luma is defined as the second version of the Rosalina character with this third byte, meaning an amiibo of Rosalina alone is very possible.
The Pokemon characters also don't follow this ID convention as strictly. Below are the Pokemon in the order Charizard, Pikachu, Jigglypuff, Lucario, Greninja:
19 06 00 00
19 19 00 00
19 27 00 00
1a c0 00 00
1b 92 00 00
It would appear from the previous findings that these characters are all from different series, but that is actually not the case. For the Pokemon, the second byte represents a simple number, and the first byte represents a multiple of 256 to add to that number, with 19 being 0, 1a being 1, and 1b being 2 (512).
When you convert the hex to decimal and add the 256s, you get some oddly familiar numbers:
06 from hex = 6, 6 + 0 =
6
19 from hex = 25, 25 + 0 =
25
27 from hex = 39, 39 + 0 =
39
c0 from hex = 192, 192 + 256 =
448
92 from hex = 146, 146 + 512 =
658
These are the Pokemons' corresponding National Pokedex numbers. This means that there is space reserved for all 700+ Pokemon.
Page 22 findings------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Page 22 seems to correlate to the printed order of the figures, currently sorted by SSB, then SMB, then Splatoon. However, there is some interesting blank space mixed in here.
For example, here's page 22 for SSB Mario and SMB Mario:
00 00 00 02
00 34 01 02
It appears the first 2 bytes are for the print number, the third byte is the series (00 for SSB, 01 for SMB), and the 4th byte is always 02 (probably a data consistency check).
What's interesting is that SSB seems to continue from hex 00 to hex 33, leaving exactly 52 spaces for Smash Bros. characters. This means that the Mii Fighters are very likely to be printed alongside the regular 49 characters (especially since a Swordfighter prototype has surfaced).
In addition, take SMB Mario, SMB Bowser, and Golden Mario:
00 34 01 02
00 39 01 02
00 3c 01 02
There's a skip from 39 to 3c in these print numbers, leaving 3a and 3b unaccounted for. This could point to the possibility of there being two more Mario-series amiibo (with one of them potentially a Luma-less Rosalina).
Last point. The third byte of this page represents figure series, so here's SSB Mario, SMB Mario, and Splatoon Girl:
00 00 00 02
00 34 01 02
00 3e 04 02
SSB is 00, SMB is 01, Splatoon is 04. Either Animal Crossing and Yoshi's Wooly World are 02 and 03, or there are 2 more series being planned we haven't heard of yet.
Conclusions-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, here's a conclusion of what you can see from these data patterns:
- It's very likely ZSS and Dr. Mario will work the same as Samus and Mario respectively in games like Mario Kart 8 and Ace Combat, with Dr. Mario being usable in Mario Party 10.
- There may be a Rosalina amiibo without Luma, likely for the Super Mario series.
- Space is reserved for every Pokemon, which could mean anything. NFC-enabled Pokemon cards, anyone?
- Mii Fighters are coming.
- It's likely there are 2 more Mario-series amiibo yet to be announced.
- There are two amiibo series in limbo. They could either be YWW and AC, or two completely unannounced ones.
Well, that was a fun write. See ya guys around.
EDIT: I just noticed I believe I may have miscounted the Smash amiibo. The
52 accounted for would include Mewtwo, as there are 51 characters in the base game and one slot after those 52 accounted for in the number pattern described below. Looks like Lucas will be fit in sometime in the future.
