Random Thoughts – Randocity!

[Updated 1/5/2019] For SSBU and Printers. Tired of lugging all of your big plastic Amiibos around with you? Now you can carry them around on flat cards. Let’s explore.

What you’re going to need

• Blank Playing Cards
• NTAG215 stickers
• Android Phone with NFC capability
• TagMo Android App
• (optional) HP Sprocket Printer
• (optional) zInk Happy Printer with 2 inch Tape Roll
• and, of course, some Amiibos!

Updated for Super Smash Brothers Ultimate on the Nintendo Switch

If you happen to have a copy of the Nintendo Switch Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, you’ll need to convert your older Wii U or 3DS SSB Amiibos to use them on the the Switch version. Once converted, you won’t be able to use them on the older SSB games again.

For this reason, creating Amiibo cards is your answer. You’ll want to create the cards before you start using the Amiibos on the Switch SSBU version. This will allow you to use your Amiibos on both games if you want. You can create cards of your current Amiibos and continue to use those cards on the older SSB and convert your actual Amiibos for use on the new Switch SSBU. Of course, creating cards is flexible enough that you could create two sets and use them however you like.

It’s worth noting that a level 50 SSB Amiibo created on the Wii U SSB game becomes a level 12 character on the Switch version of SSB. You’ll need to spend time leveling it up again.

To clear any confusion now that Super Smash Brothers Ultimate has been released on the Switch, TagMo does allow you to level up limited SSB data within the TagMo app as described below. However, this SSB level data is strictly used by the Wii U and 3DS game versions. This SSB data does not apply to the new Switch SSBU version. A new update to TagMo will be necessary to support the Switch SSBU data in the tag. For now, the current 2.6.1 version of TagMo from September 2017 does not support the new SSB data format in use on the Nintendo Switch version of Super Smash Brothers Ultimate.

I’ll also add that to get the in-game level up cards for the Switch’s Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, you’ll want to raise your Amiibos up to level 50 using TagMo before importing them into SSBU. It seems that these level up cards may only appear when an Amiibo is imported at level 50. You’ll also receive support cards for characters that do not appear in SSBU such as the Revali, Urbosa and Guardian Amiibos from Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Why an Android Phone?

Why not a tablet or other Android device? Other than phones, few other devices offer an NFC reader / writer. Some older tablets may have this capability, but the TagMo app may not work if the device is too old. Stick to a recently released phone with NFC (newer than 4 years).

For example, I picked up a Samsung S5, but there are other phones that also support NFC besides this specific model. You can even find budget Android phones (less than $80) that contain NFC capabilities. I specifically chose the Samsung S5 because it’s got an OLED screen (read awesome), fully supports the most NFC formats and it is fully compatible with TagMo and the rest of the software needed.

Why not iOS / Apple?

The TagMo app must be side loaded onto the device rather than obtaining it through a ‘store’.  Because Apple phones are almost impossible to side load apps, these devices are excluded from using TagMo. Sorry Apple fans, no TagMo for you. It’s also very unlikely Apple would ever approve such an app to be in the store… hence, side loading.

This leaves Android as the only platform that has the necessary phone features and also allows for app side loading. If you don’t have an Android phone, then you’re going to need to go get one to use with TagMo.

Installing the App

Before you attempt to download and install the app, you will need to prep Android so that you can install software outside of the app store and side load the TagMo app. This setup is done through security settings.

After having set the security settings, using a browser, go to the app download link above on your phone device. Choose the latest version. Once the file is downloaded, clicking to open it will prompt to install it. You will then need to allow access to parts of your device for this app… specifically, the NFC hardware and anything else it might request. Once installed, the app will appear in your apps list like any other app. You can drag it onto your desktop like in the video above.

Setting up Keys

After the app is installed, you’ll need to set up keys to allow it to read the Amiibos properly. If you don’t perform this step, you can’t backup your Amiibos and create cards from them. The two file names are unfixed-info.bin and locked-secret.bin. You may or may not be able to download these directly onto your Android device from Google Drive. It seems that Google Drive doesn’t download properly with Android devices when the files are not part of your own Google Drive account. Instead, you may need to download them onto a computer, then upload them into your personal Google Drive using the Google account connected to the phone. Then, download these two files from your personal Google Drive account to your phone. Or, alternatively, you can use DropBox or other similarly supported file storage sites.

You can’t USB load or use a zip unarchiver to place them into the download area of the phone. This won’t work because Android requires the DownloadManager service to register the files into the downloads area. This is only done if the files are actually downloaded. If you side load the files via USB or by placing them onto the microSD card remotely, the files won’t be registered in Android and, thus, won’t appear when you click to install them in the TagMo app.

These two files are required to enable TagMo to work with Amiibos. This download task is not hard, but thank Google for making this task more complicated than it should be. I’ll leave it to you to determine the best way to get these two files onto your phone. Once you have the files on your phone after downloading from your own Google Drive, continue to the next step. If you get stuck at this step, please leave me a comment and I’ll help walk you through it.

Once you have the keys ready to go, launch TagMo and your screen should look like so stating ‘Amiibo keys not found’:

With your keys ready, install the the keys like so:

Scanning your first Amiibo

Now that you have your keys installed, you can scan your first Amiibo. So, the TagMo app should look like the below with the SCAN TAG button now enabled (be sure to have NFC turned on):

Grab any Amiibo you own and click SCAN TAG like so:

Here’s what a scanned tag screen looks like:

To save the tag you’ve just scanned into the phone’s database, click SAVE TAG. Let’s go through the screen above to understand what each button does:

• LOAD TAG — Loads a tag from the phone’s tag database
• SAVE TAG — Saves the currently loaded tag to the phone’s tag database
• VIEW HEX — Not really needed, but let’s you view the HEX value of the tag
• SHOW QR CODE — Let’s you show a tag QR code for another phone to scan easily through the camera
• SCAN TAG — Turns on the NFC reader to read an Amiibo (card, figure or NTAG215 stored Amiibo)
• WRITE TAG — Turns on the NFC writer to write the currently loaded Amiibo shown at the top of the screen to an NTAG215
• RESTORE TAG — Let’s you restore SSB data from one Amiibo to another, but this only works if it’s the same Amiibo on both tags.
• SCAN QR CODE — Lets you scan a QR code from another phone and load it into your phone’s TagMo database… for easy sharing.
• Checkbox “Auto save scanned tags”, when checked, will automatically saved tags when scanned. This Checkbox does not stay checked between application runs. If not checked, you must save the tag manually after it’s been scanned.
• Checkbox “Allow restore to different tag” — When checked, allows you to attempt to restore one tag on top of a tag with something different. May not work.
• EDIT SSB DATA — Lets you modify the level and various limited data of your Amiibo before saving it to your TAG. If you want to level up a character to maximum, this is how to do it before writing a new tag out. This means you can fully level up your character without having to grind it.

Amiibo Database

As you scan your Amiibos and save each one to TagMo’s database, you’ll always have them available to create a card at any time. This means you don’t really even need to carry the pre-written cards around with you. You’ll just need to carry around some blank NTAG215 cards. You can then write out any Amiibo stored in your phone’s database at any time.

However, having pre-built Amiibo cards makes using them a lot faster. It also means you don’t have to rely on the phone to create a new card when you need it, especially if you’re borrowing someone else’s phone to do this.

The database screen looks like so:

Syncing the AmiiboAPI Database

Sometimes if you scan an Amiibo, the app won’t recognize it and it will appear on the screen with a red title and labeled as ‘Unknown’. If this happens, simply click the gear icon on the main screen that has the SCAN TAG button, scroll down and select Sync Amiibo info with AmiiboAPI. This setting updates and syncs your TagMo database with what’s in the AmiiboAPI database on the Internet. When you pull down the screen to refresh your Amiibo phone’s database, your recently scanned Amiibo should now show a proper name. If it doesn’t, it may mean the Amiibo is too new and hasn’t yet been added to the AmiiboAPI database.

SSB Data

As mentioned just above, you can edit the SSB data to increase the level and features of your Amiibos. This allows you to customize your backed up Amiibo without having to modify your original. This SSB data feature currently only works with Super Smash Brothers on the Wii U and DS. The currently released version of TagMo can’t manage character level data for SSBU on the Switch. A new update to TagMo will be needed to manage the SSBU character level data.

Amiibos and Backups

TagMo allows backing up and restoring any Amiibo of any type. This includes the plastic figures as well as cards or any other type.

NTAG215 and Reuse

An NTAG215 is simply known as a tag. A tag can be written once with a single Amiibo. If you attempt to write to it a second time with an entirely different Amiibo, this won’t work and will likely destroy the tag. Tags are write-once. Get a new unused tag if you want to write a new Amiibo. With that said, an NTAG215 can write SSB data multiple times because only the values are changing, not the entire character. So, a tag Amiibo will function just like a plastic figure Amiibo on any game that supports them.

Purchasing NTAG215 Tags and Printers

Now that you have the app installed and functional, you’ll need to head over to Amazon and place an order for some NTAG215 tags and some blank white playing cards. Optionally, if you choose to buy a printer, you can print a nice looking image to stick on the card to identify what Amiibo you put onto the tag. The Zink printers are a little expensive at around $99 (or more) + paper, but they do make the cards look and feel a whole lot more professional.

If you’ve read this article before, you may have noticed that I recommended the Polaroid Zip. Because Polaroid recently changed its app quality, I can no longer recommend the purchase of the Polaroid Zip. The newest version of the Polaroid app (Android and iOS) is completely broken and no longer produces high quality prints. Instead, choose another brand of printer with a better quality app. Because devices like the Polaroid Zip and the HP Sprocket entirely depend on a high quality app, Polaroid illustrates the danger of investing in products that only work with a single proprietary app. You should always read the app reviews before purchasing a product that depends on that app. Even then, like Polaroid, the company can burn you by releasing a new app version that completely ruins the functionality of a formerly working product.

If you’re a little more flush with money, you could consider buying NTAG215 plastic cards and a Dye Sub printer for the cards. This will produce very high quality images printed directly on the plastic card. Though, the cards are more bulky than the paper cards. These printers are usually used to produce corporate ID badges, but you could just as easily use them for printing your Amiibo cards. It’s just that these printers are very expensive, starting at $475 and going up from there.

If you’re feeling creative, you can buy some markers or colored pens and draw the character onto the reverse side of the card. I prefer the Zink printer approach as it takes about 2 minutes to print an impressive image of the Amiibo and stick it on the card. The print will then cover over the tag.

Some people have chosen to put their NTAG215 round tags into plastic coin holders. You can do this, but it makes for a jumble of little plastic coins that aren’t easy to read or label and more difficult to carry around. The cards can be wrapped in a rubber band, the plastic coins would have to remain loose or in a case (if available).

You can skip buying the playing cards or any other type of holder. However, without cards, keeping track of your Amiibo tags becomes more difficult and the tags can be easily damaged. The cards help reinforce the tag to keep it from bending and make it easy to scan them into the games. The cards also fit nicely into a card binder. Though, if you really want, the bare minimum to get a functional Amiibo is just the tags.

Types and Sizes of Tags

You may also notice that there are many types and sizes of NFC tags (like NTAG213 and NTAG216) that you can also find on Amazon when searching. You don’t want these as they won’t work. Be sure to buy only NTAG215 tags. The NTAG215s hold a maximum of 540 bytes of data. The other tags are either larger or smaller, but these won’t work as an Amiibo. Only buy NTAG215 tags. Note, some sellers may mix up tags with the wrong size, so be sure to test your tags immediately when you get them. If they don’t work, the seller may not have sent you NTAG215s even if the listing said that they were.

If you’re unsure if a tag will work as an Amiibo, read the listing closely. Most of the listings will tell you if it works as an Amiibo. If not, check the questions and answers section of the listing. If it’s not there, then ask a question or email the seller and ask. However, the link I give here are tags I’ve personally tested and know that they work. I also prefer the smaller physical sized tags over the larger ones. The physical dimensions of the tag don’t matter, what matters is that they are formatted as NTAG215. As I said, I prefer the smaller physical size tags because they fit on the blank playing card better and are more easily covered by a printed Polaroid Zip sticker.

Happy Carding!

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