Official NES Tag Data for Animal Crossing's NES/FDS ROMs

Posted Aug 25, 2023

By Hunter R. 5 min read

Explanation

Animal Crossing has a built-in NES emulator that is capable of loading .nes, .bin, and .qd ROMs. These ROMs are customized to have a complex system of tagging metadata. Specific ASCII NES tags are required to be present for Animal Crossing’s emulator to load any game. There are a whopping 24 valid tags that can be included, and Cuyler has a detailed post on all of them here.

This page details the official tags used by Nintendo in all 19 of their default ROMs included in Animal Crossing. These are presented in the order they are stored on the disk.

Clu Clu Land

01_nes_cluclu3.bin.szs:

Tag	Length	Value	Offset
GID	2 bytes	–	–
GNM	11 bytes	CLU CLU LAND	–
GNO	1 byte	0x00	–
HSC	6 bytes	0x00000000 (initial)	0x8020

Balloon Fight

02_usa_balloon.nes.szs:

Tag	Length	Value	Offset
GID	2 bytes	–	–
GNM	11 bytes	BALLOON FIGHT	–
GNO	1 byte	0x01	–
OFS	2 bytes	0x0000	–
HSC	7 bytes	0x0000000100	0x0629
HSC	7 bytes	0x0000000100	0x062e
HSC	7 bytes	0x0000050200	0x0633

Donkey Kong

03_nes_donkey1_3.bin.szs:

Tag	Length	Value	Offset
GID	2 bytes	–	–
GNM	11 bytes	DONKEY KONG	–
GNO	1 byte	0x02	–
OFS	2 bytes	0x0000	–
HSC	4 bytes	0x0000 (initial)	0x0507
HSC	4 bytes	0x0000 (initial)	0x0509

Donkey Kong Jr. Math

04_usa_jr_math.nes.szs:

Tag	Length	Value	Offset
GID	2 bytes	–	–
GNM	13 bytes	DONKY JR MATH	–
GNO	1 byte	0x03	–
OFS	2 bytes	0x0000	–
HSC	4 bytes	0x0000 (initial)	0x04d7
HSC	4 bytes	0x0000 (initial)	0x04d9
HSC	4 bytes	0x0000 (initial)	0x04db
HSC	4 bytes	0x0000 (initial)	0x04dd
HSC	4 bytes	0x0000 (initial)	0x04df
HSC	4 bytes	0x0000 (initial)	0x04e1
HSC	4 bytes	0x0000 (initial)	0x04e3
HSC	4 bytes	0x0000 (initial)	0x04e5
HSC	4 bytes	0x0000 (initial)	0x04e7

Pinball

05_pinball_1.nes.szs:

Tag	Length	Value	Offset
GID	2 bytes	–	–
GNM	7 bytes	PINBALL	–
GNO	1 byte	0x04	–
OFS	2 bytes	0x0000	–
HSC	7 bytes	0x000000 (initial)	0x010e
HSC	7 bytes	0x000000 (initial)	0x0113

Tennis

06_nes_tennis3.bin.szs:

Tag	Length	Value
GID	2 bytes	–
GNM	6 bytes	TENNIS
GNO	1 byte	0x05

Golf

07_usa_golf.nes.szs:

Tag	Length	Value	Offset
GID	2 bytes	–	–
GNM	4 bytes	GOLF	–
GNO	1 byte	0x06	–
OFS	2 bytes	0x0000	–
HSC	3 bytes	0x40* (initial)	0x000e

*0x40 corresponds to a high score of 64 strokes (-8 from par 72)

Punch-Out!!

08_punch_wh.nes.szs:

Tag	Length	Value	Offset
GID	2 bytes	–	–
GNM	10 bytes	PUNCH-OUT!	–
GNO	1 byte	0x07	–
OFS	2 bytes	0x0000	–
HSC	12 bytes	0x27272727272727272727 (initial)	0x0110

Baseball

09_usa_baseball_1.nes.szs:

This game has bugged tag data.

Tag	Length	Value
GID	2 bytes	–
GNM	6 bytes	BASEBA
LLG*	78 bytes	N/A; bugged data from bad declaration
ONG*	32 bytes	N/A; bugged data from bad declaration

*not officially recognized tags, but are marked as such in the ROM

Clu Clu Land D

Clu Clu Land D is an important title because it is the only ROM in the game that is actually a Famicom Disk System game rather than a standard NES game. This means it has the file extension .qd rather than .nes and makes the emulator call a custom BIOS specifically to load this one game.

10_cluclu_1.qd.szs:

Tag	Length	Value
GID	3 bytes	–
GNM	14 bytes	CLU CLU LAND D
GNO	1 byte	0x09
OFS	2 bytes	0x0000
QDS	5 bytes	0x00a1700050

Donkey Kong 3

11_usa_donkey3.nes.szs:

Tag	Length	Value	Offset
GID	2 bytes	–	–
GNM	13 bytes	DONKEY KONG 3	–
GNO	1 byte	0x0a	–
OFS	2 bytes	0x0000	–
HSC	4 bytes	0x0000 (initial)	0x008c
HSC	4 bytes	0x0000 (initial)	0x008e

Donkey Kong Jr.

12_donkeyjr_1.nes.szs:

Tag	Length	Value	Offset
GID	2 bytes	–	–
GNM	14 bytes	DONKEY KONG JR	–
GNO	1 byte	0x0b	–
OFS	2 bytes	0x0000	–
HSC	4 bytes	0x0000 (initial)	0x05d6
HSC	4 bytes	0x0000 (initial)	0x05d8

Soccer

13_soccer.nes.szs:

Tag	Length	Value
GID	2 bytes	–
GNM	6 bytes	SOCCER
GNO	1 byte	0x0d

Excitebike

Excitebike has a whopping twenty-two HSC tags for all the default record times in each track.

14_exbike.nes.szs:

Tag	Length	Value	Offset
GID	2 bytes	–	–
GNM	10 bytes	EXCITEBIKE	–
GNO	1 byte	0x0c	–
OFS	2 bytes	0x0000	–
HSC	5 bytes	0x011000 (initial)	0x8580
HSC	5 bytes	0x011000 (initial)	0x8583
HSC	5 bytes	0x011000 (initial)	0x8586
HSC	5 bytes	0x010c00 (initial)	0x8589
HSC	5 bytes	0x010600 (initial)	0x858c
HSC	5 bytes	0x011800 (initial)	0x8590
HSC	5 bytes	0x011600 (initial)	0x8593
HSC	5 bytes	0x010a00 (initial)	0x8596
HSC	5 bytes	0x011400 (initial)	0x8599
HSC	5 bytes	0x010600 (initial)	0x859c
HSC	5 bytes	0x0a0000 (initial)	0x85a0
HSC	5 bytes	0x011000 (initial)	0x85a3
HSC	5 bytes	0x011000 (initial)	0x85a6
HSC	5 bytes	0x011000 (initial)	0x85a9
HSC	5 bytes	0x010c00 (initial)	0x85ac
HSC	5 bytes	0x010600 (initial)	0x85af
HSC	5 bytes	0x011800 (initial)	0x85b3
HSC	5 bytes	0x011600 (initial)	0x85b6
HSC	5 bytes	0x010a00 (initial)	0x85b9
HSC	5 bytes	0x011400 (initial)	0x85bc
HSC	5 bytes	0x010600 (initial)	0x85bf
HSC	5 bytes	0x0a0000 (initial)	0x85c3

Wario’s Woods

15_usa_wario.nes.szs:

Tag	Length	Value
GID	2 bytes	–
GNM	13 bytes	WARIO’s WOODS
GNO	1 byte	0x0e
OFS	2 bytes	0x0000
BBR	4 bytes	0x1b000004
BBR	4 bytes	0x1b100034
BBR	4 bytes	0x1b500010
BBR	4 bytes	0x1b670003
BBR	4 bytes	0x1b700002
BBR	4 bytes	0x1b740002
OFS	2 bytes	0x0000
BBR	4 bytes	0x1b6d0002

Ice Climber

16_usa_icecl.nes.szs:

Tag	Length	Value	Offset
GID	2 bytes	–	–
GNM	11 bytes	ICE CLIMBER	–
GNO	1 byte	0x0f	–
OFS	2 bytes	0x0000	–
HSC	5 bytes	0x000000 (initial)	0x87ed

Mario Bros.

17_nes_mario1_2.bin.szs:

Tag	Length	Value	Offset
GID	2 bytes	–	–
GNM	11 bytes	MARIO BROS.	–
GNO	1 byte	0x10	–
OFS	2 bytes	0x0000	–
HSC	5 bytes	0x000000 (initial)	0x0091

Super Mario Bros.

18_smario_0.nes.szs:

Tag	Length	Value	Offset
GID	2 bytes	–	–
GNM	16 bytes	SUPER MARIO BROS	–
GNO	1 byte	0x11	–
OFS	2 bytes	0x0000	–
HSC	8 bytes	0x000000000000 (initial)	0x87d7
HSC	3 bytes	0x00 (initial)	0x07fc
HSC	3 bytes	0x00 (initial)	0x87fd

The Legend of Zelda

19_usa_zelda1_1.nes.szs:

Tag	Length	Value
GID	2 bytes	–
GNM	16 bytes	LEGEND OF ZELDA1
GNO	1 byte	0x12
OFS	2 bytes	0x0000
BBR	4 bytes	0x0002051c
SPE	1 byte	0x01

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