Save Roles

A role names which socket a save came out of, not what medium it is on: a controller pak is a card that lives in a controller, and its role says which controller. The Universal Saves Format carries it in a part’s role field.

A role follows the slug grammar every vocabulary in these specifications shares: lowercase ASCII, single hyphens between runs, at most 64 bytes.

A consumer uses role to name a part to a user and to match it against a socket when restoring. That second job is why a producer takes a name from this registry rather than inventing one: a private name is one nothing else can match, and a consumer meeting a role it does not recognise MUST NOT guess which socket is meant. Round-trip it, show it, do not restore by it.

The list is non-normative and first-come; to add a role, open a PR against the section for its system.

Common

Roles that mean the same thing everywhere, and cover most bundles on their own.

Role	Socket
primary	The only socket, or the principal one. The default: a part with no role means this.
cartridge	The game cartridge’s own save memory, whether battery-backed SRAM, EEPROM or flash.
internal	Save storage built into the console itself, as distinct from anything removable.
sd	A removable SD card.
sysnand	Internal flash holding system-managed save data (Wii, 3DS), as distinct from an SD card.

Numbered sockets

Where a system has several sockets of one kind, the role ends in a number: memcard-1, controller-pak-3. Numbering starts at 1 and follows the console’s own ordering, so player 1’s controller is controller-pak-1 and the first memory card slot is memcard-1. Systems that label their slots with letters are numbered in the same order, so a GameCube’s Slot A is memcard-1 and Slot B is memcard-2; the registry keeps one convention rather than mirroring each console’s silkscreen.

A prefix is registered once and covers every number. A role ending in -<n>, where <n> is a decimal number with no leading zero, names the nth socket of the kind its prefix names, and a consumer that recognises the prefix MAY match on the number without that exact role being listed here. A device with eight card slots writes memcard-8 and is understood.

This is the only place these specifications allow reading structure out of a slug. Everywhere else a name is opaque and compared whole, and an unrecognised prefix stays unrecognised however it ends.

Prefix	Sockets
memcard-	Memory card slots, in the console’s own order.
controller-pak-	N64 Controller Pak slots, one per controller port.
disk-	Sides of a disk that are written separately, in the game’s own order.

Nintendo

Role	System	Socket
cartridge	fds	A Famicom Disk System disk. Each side is written separately; see below.
disk-	fds	Disk sides, in the order the game numbers them. A two-sided disk is disk-1 and disk-2.
controller-pak-	n64	Controller Pak slots, one per controller port.
memcard-	gc	GameCube memory card Slot A and Slot B.
sysnand	wii, 3ds	Internal flash.
sd	wii, 3ds	The SD card.
extdata	3ds	Extra data a title stores outside its own save, as a directory.

Sega

Role	System	Socket
internal	sega-cd, saturn	The console’s built-in backup RAM.
ram-cart	sega-cd, saturn	The Backup RAM Cart, which extends internal storage rather than replacing it. A console can carry saves in both at once.
memcard-	dreamcast	VMU slots, numbered across controllers: controller 1 slot 1 is memcard-1.

NEC

Role	System	Socket
internal	pcengine, pcenginecd	The console’s built-in backup RAM.
ram-cart	pcengine, pcenginecd	The Tennokoe Bank cartridge.

SNK

Role	System	Socket
internal	neogeo	The AES console’s built-in memory.
neogeo-card	neogeo	The Neo Geo memory card, which an arcade cabinet and a home console both take.

Sony

Role	System	Socket
memcard-	psx, ps2	Memory card slots.
internal	psp, ps3, psvita	Built-in storage.

Adding a role

Prefer a Common role if one already fits: a great many systems have exactly one place a save can live, and primary covers all of them. Add a new name only when a system genuinely has a socket the list cannot express, and put it in that system’s section.

A role that turns out to recur across several systems moves to Common. internal and ram-cart both arrived that way, from four systems that each keep saves in built-in storage and in an add-on that extends it.