What is an “amiibo spoofer”? What are amiibo “.bin files”?

by Doc, Owner, Founder, May or May Not Be Spoofed

“Spoofing” in the typical usage talks about fooling a device into thinking something is there, when it actually isn’t. Think Pokemon Go GPS spoofing: you’re telling the game you’re in San Francisco, when you’re actually in Nowhere, Minnesota. The Pokemon Go app thinks that your GPS is somewhere that it isn’t.

Amiibo has the same thing. Amiibo run using things called .bin files, that are just the data on the chip of an amiibo. When you scan your amiibo figure into the Nintendo Switch, the Joy-Con reads the .bin file of the chip and applies it to the game as intended. When you’re spoofing an amiibo, you’re just finding a way to make the Nintendo Switch believe that an amiibo is there when it actually isn’t. There’s two methods to doing this:

1. Powersaves for Amiibo

The Powersaves for Amiibo device uses amiibo emulation to put an amiibo .bin file onto a unique chip. This unique chip, called a Powertag, is what you scan into your Nintendo Switch. The Powertag chip fools the Nintendo Switch into thinking you’re scanning a real amiibo, when in reality you’re scanning the significantly less expensive Powertag. That’s the first method, and it’s by far the most widely used. I recommend it to everybody.

If you’ve found this article help so far, please support Amiibo Doctor by checking out Powersaves for Amiibo at this Amazon Affiliates link! We make a commission by using this link.

2. Switch Mods/Joy-Con Droid

This is one method that’s much newer, and information on this is much more scarce. Switch modding is not something I’m familiar with, but I’m told that you can cause the Switch to scan in any known amiibo, which is something that we’ve done on the Amiibo Doctor Youtube channel. We’ve caused Minecraft Steve amiibo to function in Smash Ultimate.

Joy-Con Droid is in a similar boat. JCD requires that you have a very specific and expensive type of Android phone that can emulate the same kind of connection that Joy-Cons use, and it will tell the Switch that the Right Joy-Con has detected the desired amiibo… and that there’s no drift. However, not many people own this type of phone and use amiibo, so information on Joy-Con Droid is scarce.