Nintendo Badge Arcade

Nintendo Badge Arcade is an application that allows getting badges for the 3DS's Home Menu via a claw machine-like game.

SpotPass usage

The game can use four different URLs to retrieve game data.

• https://npdl.cdn.nintendowifi.net/p01/nsa/<regionID>/FGONLYT/playinfo_<gameVersion>.dat
• https://npdl.cdn.nintendowifi.net/p01/nsa/<regionID>/data/data_<gameVersion>.dat This file is a SARC archive with all game data (like machines and Miiverse posts) that is available within a period of one week. This data is updated every Friday at 1:40 AM GMT
• https://npdl.cdn.nintendowifi.net/p01/nsa/<regionID>/data/allbadge_<gameVersion>.dat This has a SARC archive with all game badges and machines for the game.
• https://npdl.cdn.nintendowifi.net/p01/nsa/<regionID>/news/<language>/news_<gameVersion>.dat

Where gameVersion goes the version of the game, which can be v130 or v131, langcode is the two-character language codes from config, and regionID is from the below table.

Region	ID
JPN	j0ITmVqVgfUxe0O9
USA	OvbmGLZ9senvgV3K
EUR	J6la9Kj8iqTvAPOq

RomFS

Inside the romfs data, we can find the following folders:

root
├── message
├── primitive_renderer
├── region_common
└── region_XXX

• "message" has all in-game dialogues
• "region_common" has a similar scheme to data.dat, but has all in-game assets
• "region_XXX" is similar as region_common, but has all region specific files, like the first badge machine. Where XXX goes the region name (EUR, JPN, USA)

message

The message folder has the following structure:

message
├── boss_EUR
    └─ XXxx
├── boss_JPN
    └─ XXxx
├── boss_USA
    └─ XXxx
└── rom
    └─ XXxx

Where XX goes the region and xx belongs to the language. The dialogues are stored within SARC files.

The boss folders store the default online-related game dialogues. The rom folder has the gameplay and error dialogues. The boss dialogues can be overridden when they are providen by SpotPass.

Dialogue is formatted with Format Tags.

region_common

The region_common folder stores all assets that aren't region dependent. Below are the assets folders:

region_common
├── banner
├── camera
├── cfl
├── effect
├── layout
├── model
├── scene
└── sound

banner

This folder has the game banner for each region on an ICN file?

camera

This folder has all camera animations? The contents are stored on Yaz0 compressed BCH files.

cfl

This folder's contents are unknown (Mii related?). The contents are stored on Yaz0 compressed BCH files.

effect

This folder stores all of the effects used ingame. These are stored on the following files:

• effect_CTR.ptcl
• elink.elk

layout

This folder's contents are unknown. The contents are stored on Yaz0 compressed SARC archives that have the following folders:

root
├── anim
├── blyt
└── timg

model

This folder has all of the games models. The contents are stored on Yaz0 compressed BCH files.

scene

This folder's contents are unknown (scene related?). The contents are stored on Yaz0 compressed BCH files.

shader

This folder stores the shaders of the game. The contents are stored on Yaz0 compressed BCH files.

sound

This folder has the sounds and music used ingame. It has the following files inside:

sound
├── center.bcsar
├── center.bkas
├── dspaudio.cdc
└── stream
    ├── <audio file name>.aac
    └── <audio file name>.bcstm

ExtData

Inside the extdata, we can find the following files:

• "addSaveData"
• "allbadge.sarc" A register of all badges retrieved from data_<gameVersion>.dat file?
• "boss.sarc" The data_<gameVersion>.dat file retrieved from SpotPass
• "savedata"

allbadge.sarc

This file uses the PrizeCollection structure.

boss.sarc

All game data stored here has the following structure:

root
├── message
├── post
├── sharc
├── talkpic
├── xml
└── Schedule.xml

message

This folder stores all online-related game dialogues on each language supported by the region. It goes down the following directories:

message
└── boss_XXX
    └── XXxx
        └── boss
            └── slotAXX
                ├── BossText.msbt
                ├── Emergency.msbf
                ├── HallAd.msbf
                ├── PaidTalk.msbf
                ├── PostComment.msbf
                ├── RetnHall.msbf
                ├── StartUp.msbf
                ├── ThemeShop.msbf
                └── Training.msbf

Where X goes the region, and x belongs to the language. Within slotAXX, A is a letter and XX are numbers.

post

This folder stores all Miiverse posts related to customizing the Home Menu with themes and badges. Each SARC file inside here has the following sructure:

root
├── Image.jpg
├── Mii.Etc1_a4
└── post.xml

The post.xml file contains the following data:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<DistributablePost xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <index>x</index>
  <Id><Post ID></Id>
  <Name>Mii name</Name>
  <PathMii>Mii.Etc1_a4</PathMii>
  <PathImage>Image.jpg</PathImage>
</DistributablePost>

The Mii.Etc1_a4 image has a 128x128 resolution.

sharc

This folder stores the PrizeCollection file with the badges and machines available for the belonging week.

The file is named using the starting and ending dates that the collection is active for, in yy/mm/dd format separated with an underscore. For example, a collection active between the dates December 15th, 2022 to December 22nd, 2022 is named `221215_221222.sarc`

talkpic

This folder contains the promotional images shown on the hub inside SARC files. Each SARC file has the following content:

root
└── talkpic
    └── <Name of SARC file>
        └── The images...

xml

This folder has some XML data that controls the parameters of the promotional images. It has the following structure:

xml
└── talkpic
    └── TalkPic.xml

The TalkPic.xml file has the following data:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' standalone='yes'?>
<CenterTalkPicProperty>
    <TalkPicSet>
        <TalkPic Key='<Name of image>' Arc='<Name of SARC file>' Width='512' Height='256' Format='Etc1 or Etc1_a4 or Rgb565' Type='400x240 (Original image resolution?)' Path='path/to/image'/>
    </TalkPicSet>
</CenterTalkPicProperty>

Schedule.xml

This file controls the availability of each of the features inside this structure within the specified dates. It has the following data:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<FileItems xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <Items>
    <FileItem>
      <DateStartText>YYYYmmdd</DateStartText>
      <DateExpireText>YYYYmmdd</DateExpireText>
      <ColorText>#aaaaff</ColorText>
      <Comment />
      <RegexSetName>MessageDir</RegexSetName>
      <Expression>boss/output/message/(?<Region>boss_(JPN|EUR|USA))/(?<Locale>[a-zA-Z]+)/boss/(?<Dir>.+)</Expression>
      <KeyVariable>Boss/</KeyVariable>
      <ValueVariable>boss/$(Dir)/</ValueVariable>
      <OutputVariable>boss/archive_src/$(ArchiveName)/message/$(Region)/$(Locale)/boss/$(Dir)/</OutputVariable>
      <PreviewVariable />
      <CommandVariable>path/to/command_used.bat</CommandVariable>
      <ArgumentsVariable />
      <Key>Boss/</Key>
      <Value>boss/slotAXX/</Value>
      <Output>boss/archive_src/BossYYYYmmdd_YYYYmmdd/message/boss_XXX/XXxx/boss/slotAXX/</Output>
      <Preview />
      <SrcPath>boss/output/message/boss_XXX/XXxx/boss/slotAXX</SrcPath>
      <Command>path/to/command_used.bat</Command>
      <Arguments />
    </FileItem>
  </Items>
  <ItemsCount><Number of items></ItemsCount>
  <BasePath>%CTR_CENTER_ROOT%/</BasePath>
  <XMLPath>boss/archive_src/$(ArchiveName)/Schedule.xml</XMLPath>
  <ArchiveName>Boss$(DateFrom)_$(DateTo)</ArchiveName>
  <DateFrom>YYYY-mm-ddT00:00:00</DateFrom>
  <DateTo>YYYY-mm-ddT00:00:00</DateTo>
</FileItems>

Each FileItem's content varies depending on its RegexSetName. Below are the possible values:

RegexSetName	Key	Value
MessageDir	Boss/	boss/slotAXX/
TalkPicTex	TalkPicTex/	TalkPicTex/
TalkPicXml	TalkPicXml/	TalkPicXml/
PrizeCollection	sharc/pc00.sarc	sharc/YYmmdd_YYmmdd.sarc
Post	post/PostXX.sarc	post/<Post ID>.sarc
BonusStage	BonusStageName	<Stage Name>
DefaultStage	DefaultStageNameXXX	<Stage Name>

The BonusStage and DefaultStage data define the sets (crane instances) available for each day of that week. The bonus catchers are also available as a practice crane.