Save data structure (Generation II): Difference between revisions

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The save data structure for Generation II is stored in the cartridge's battery-backed RAM chip (SRAM), or as a ".sav" file by most emulators. The structure consists of 32 kiB of data, though not every byte is used. Emulators may append additional data for the purposes of maintaining real-time clock operations.

Two regions of the save data have their integrity validated via checksums. These regions contain all of the information that directly pertains to the player and their Pokémon. Additional information pertinent to the save file is also present in the other regions of the data.

Data types

Unless otherwise noted, integer values occupy the specified number of bytes, and are big-endian and either unsigned or two's complement.

Text data is stored in a proprietary encoding.

Item lists

Item lists in the save data follow a specific format.

Lists have entries of 2 bytes each as well as a capacity. The total size of the list data in bytes, is ${\displaystyle capacity\times 2+2}$.

For example, the player's pocket inventory can hold 20 item entries, so the size of the list is ${\displaystyle 20\times 2+2=42}$ bytes.

Count

The number of item entries actually being represented in the list. Note that count and capacity are separate.

Entries

The exact data for each item entry in the list.

Terminator

The byte following the last item entry, according to Count, must always be a terminator, which is byte value 0xFF.

This spare byte is present at the end of the list data to handle the list being filled to capacity.

Entry format

The Entry record has the following format:

Count

The amount of that particular item. This value must be between 1 and 99 inclusive.

Index

The item's index.

Pokémon lists

Lists of Pokémon in the save data follow a particular format.

Lists have entries of varying sizes, and a capacity. The total size of the list data in bytes is ${\displaystyle (capacity\times (size+23)+2)}$ in a save file from an English game, and ${\displaystyle (capacity\times (size+13)+2)}$ in a save file from a Japanese game.

For example, the player's Pokémon team contains 6 entries and each entry is 48 bytes in size, so the size of that list is ${\displaystyle 6\times (48+23)+2=428}$ bytes in an English save file, and ${\displaystyle 6\times (48+13)+2=368}$ bytes in a Japanese one.

Count

The number of Pokémon entries actually being represented in the list. Note that the count and the count and the capacity are not the same thing—a Pokémon list may have a capacity of, say, 30 Pokémon but only use a few of those slots. The count tells how many are actually used.

Species

A list of species indexes, one for each Pokémon in the list. This is used by the team menu as well as the PC management interface.

The byte following the last species entry, according to Count, must always be a terminator, which is the byte 0xFF. This means the species section is one byte longer than just the index numbers would make it.

If an entry in this field is set to 0xFD, then the corresponding Pokémon is in an Egg.

Pokémon

The exact data for each Pokémon entry in the list. For the format, please refer to: Pokémon data structure (Generation II)

• For party Pokémon, the entry size is the full 48 bytes as documented in that article.
• For PC Pokémon, only the first 32 bytes are used, meaning everything after Level is not included. Instead, those values are regenerated upon withdrawing a Pokémon from the PC. This is the basis of the Box trick.

OT names

Text strings representing the names of the original Trainers for each Pokémon entry. Each name can contain up to 10 characters in a save file from an English game, and up to 5 characters in a save file from Japanese one. Following the 10 or 5 bytes, there is always one 0xFF byte, for a total of 11 or 6 bytes per name.

Names

Text strings representing the names for each Pokémon entry. Each name can contain up to 10 characters in a save file from an English game, and up to 5 characters in a save file from Japanese one. Following the 10 or 5 bytes, there is always one 0xFF byte, for a total of 11 or 6 bytes per name.

A name is considered a "nickname" if it does not perfectly match the default name for a Pokémon. The default name follows these rules:

• The first however many characters must match the species name exactly. This is typically all-uppercase.
• The remainder of the string must be all terminator characters, aka 0x50.

Therefore, if a Pokémon with a 9- or 10-letter species name, such as Charmander, is given a nickname that matches the species name, the nickname will not be retained should that Pokémon evolve.

File structure

Known data within the save file can be found at the following offsets within the data, such that offset 0 is the first byte of an emulator ".sav" file.

Although all data appears twice in the save file, only the primary copy is documented below. For more information, see the Checksums section.

English and Japanese save files are quite a bit different, mostly due to Japanese Generation II games having 9 boxes in the PC of 30 Pokémon each, while the English games have 14 boxes of 20 each. The save format also differs between game versions, as Crystal has more features than Gold and Silver.

Player Trainer ID

Represents the Trainer ID number in two bytes, which can range from 0 to 65535. In Crystal, the boy player character will always have an even number ID, while the girl's ID will always be odd.

Player name

Represents text strings that can be from 1 to 7 characters in length, although the save structure allocates 11 bytes for the name.

The first 8 bytes contain the name with any leftover equal to 0x50.

Since the name can be 7 bytes at most, the eighth byte will always be 0x50.

The remaining 3 bytes are all 0x00.

Rival name

Represents text strings that can be from 1 to 7 characters in length, although the save structure allocates 11 bytes for the name.

The first 8 bytes contain the name with any leftover equal to 0x50.

Since the name can be 7 bytes at most, the eighth byte will always be 0x50.

The remaining 9th, 10th, and 11th bytes are equal to 0x86, 0x91, 0x84 respectively.

Daylight savings

Specifies whether daylight savings time (DST) is in effect.

The highest bit of this field is set to indicate DST is in effect.

The lower 7 bits of this field have unknown significance.

Time played

Specifies how much time has elapsed during gameplay.

This value is actually 4 1-byte values representing, in this order: the hours, minutes, seconds and "frames" that have elapsed. A frame is 1/60th of a second.

This timer is not halted when the game is paused, and also counts up on the main menu before selecting to continue a saved game.

Player palette

Specifies the colors of the player character.

From a technical standpoint, the lowest 3 bits of this field are transferred to OAM to select the colors when drawing the player character. This means that there are a total of 8 possible palettes:

• Red, 0x00
• Blue, 0x01
• Green, 0x02
• Brown, 0x03
• Orange, 0x04
• Gray, 0x05
• Dark Green, 0x06
• Dark Red, 0x07

From a practical standpoint, this value is set by the game depending on whether the player character is a boy or a girl:

• For boy characters, this is set to 0x00 (red)
• For girl characters, this is set to 0x01 (blue)

Despite only being able to make boy characters in Gold and Silver, this field is still present and functional.

Johto Badges

The eight badges are stored on eight bits, one bit for each badge; '1' means the badge is acquired, '0' otherwise.

From MSB to LSB, badges are in this order: Zephyr, Insect, Plain, Fog, Storm, Mineral, Glacier, Rising.

TM pocket

The items that the player has in their TM Pocket inventory.

TMs list

Each byte specifies the quantity of the corresponding TM that the player is holding. Should be 0 to 99.

Indexes match item numbers, meaning 0 corresponds with TM01 and 49 corresponds with TM50.

HMs list

Each byte specifies the quantity of the corresponding HM that the player is holding. Should be 0 to 1.

Indexes match item numbers, meaning 0 corresponds with HM01 and 6 corresponds with HM07.

Item pocket item list

The items that the player has in their item pocket inventory.

Stored as an Item list with a capacity of 20.

Key item pocket item list

The items that the player has in their Key Item Pocket inventory.

Stored as an Item list with a capacity of 26.

Ball pocket item list

The items that the player has in their Ball Pocket inventory.

Stored as an Item list with a capacity of 12.

PC item list

The items that the player has stored in the PC.

Stored as an Item list with a capacity of 50.

Current PC Box

Indicates which PC box is currently selected, minus 1. That is to say, box 1 is represented as 0, and box 14 is represented as 13.

The lowest 4 bits of this value are the box index.

PC Box names

The 9 (Japanese game) or 14 (English game) box names. Each name is a string between 1 and 8 characters plus a terminator byte, for a total of 9 bytes each.

Lucky Number Show weekly number

This week's number for the Lucky Number Show. This field is populated the first time each week when the player listens to the Lucky Number Show or visits the Radio Tower to redeem their prize. If that has not yet occurred, this value will contain a previous week's lucky number.

Party Pokémon list

The Pokémon that the player has in their party.

Stored as a Pokémon list with a capacity of 6 and an entry size of 48 bytes.

Pokédex owned, Pokédex seen

The Pokémon registered in the Pokédex as seen or owned are represented by a pair of 32-byte little-endian bit arrays (for a total of 256 bits). Each bit represents whether a particular Pokémon has been seen/owned or not. The first array represents whether the Pokémon has been owned or not, while the second represents whether the Pokémon has been seen or not.

Pokémon are listed in National Pokédex order, with bit 0 corresponding to #001 Bulbasaur, bit 1 corresponding to #002 Ivysaur, and so on, up to bit 250 corresponding to #251 Celebi. Bits 251-255 are unused.

PC Box Pokémon lists

The Pokémon that the player has stored in PC boxes.

Stored as Pokémon lists with a capacity of 20 Pokémon in English save files and 30 in Japanese ones, and an entry size of 32 bytes. After every list is the two bytes FF00.

Normally, Pokémon are deposited and withdrawn from the Current Box list, which is within the checksum-validated region of the save data. When switching boxes, the data from the Current Box is copied to the corresponding PC Box data, then the data from the switched-to PC Box is transferred into the Current Box data.

Player gender

Specifies the gender of the player character:

• For boy characters, this is set to 0x00
• For girl characters, this is set to 0x01

This field is not within the checksum-validated region.

Checksums

Used to validate the integrity of saved data.

Player data in Generation II is stored in the save file twice. The primary copy is located at 0x2009, and a secondary copy is stored elsewhere in the file. Checksums are performed on both copies and stored in the data.

• If only one checksum is correct, then the information from that copy of the data will be used.
• If both values are incorrect, the player will be forced to start a new game.

The checksums are simply the 16-bit sum of all byte values of the corresponding byte regions. Checksums are stored as little-endian.

Gold and Silver

The secondary data copy in Gold and Silver is not contiguous like the primary copy is. Instead, it is split across 5 sections and stored at different locations in the save file. The following table shows which sections of the primary copy are relocated for the secondary copy:

Calculating the checksums, therefore, can be done as follows:

• Sum the bytes from 0x2009 to 0x2D68 and store the result at 0x2D69
• Sum the bytes from 0x0C6B to 0x17EC, 0x3D96 to 0x3F3F and 0x7E39 to 0x7E6C, and store the result at 0x7E6D

Crystal

The secondary data copy in Crystal is a byte-for-byte match of the primary copy. The following table shows which regions of the save file are occupied by each copy:

Calculating the checksums, therefore, can be done as follows:

• Sum the bytes from 0x2009 to 0x2B82 and store the result at 0x2D0D
• Sum the bytes from 0x1209 to 0x1D82 and store the result at 0x1F0D

For Japanese games, the secondary partition is from 0x7209 to 0x7D3A the checksums can be calculated as follows:

• Sum the bytes from 0x2009 to 0x2B3A and store the result at 0x2D0D
• Sum the bytes from 0x7209 to 0x7D3A and store the result at 0x7F0D

This data structure article is part of Project Games, a Bulbapedia project that aims to write comprehensive articles on the Pokémon games.