Hello friends. Just wanted to write a little personal blog showing off my newly-started collection of Tamagotchi toys.
These are the guys I play with daily right now :) I actually normally don't play with the 6 Digimon, but a friend wanted to get the egg you can only get by connecting to 5 unique Digivicies, so I'm playing with 6 of them to do that for him right now.
The "Original Tamagotchi" toy actually spanned several different releases. It started with the original Japanese release in 1996, founding the classic egg-shaped "Tamagotchi House" device to interact with a virtual pet through an interface of three buttons and an LCD screen. The device was localized for the western world in 1997 with a new version featuring a new character, English-translated menus, and rice bowls changed to bread. It was released in North America and Europe with different packaging in both regions. These original releases with the original cast of characters are generally referred to as "P1."
Then in Japan a second wave of the original toy was produced featuring "newly discovered species," replacing the old 11 characters with 11 new ones. It also replaced the old "character game" minigame with the new "number game" minigame. There were actually two variations on this version -- a "series 1" and "series 2" which featured slightly different casts of characters, for a total of 13 different characters between the two versions. Later, this was brought to the North American audience as a second wave of the toy, featuring another new character and localization changes such as rice balls being changed to hamburgers. This second wave of the toy with the second cast of characters is generally referred to as "P2."
Tamagotchi continued to grow and release new versions, with the newest versions being in color, allowing you to care for multiple pets at once, connect to smartphone apps, and interact with other players. In 2017, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the rich toy line, Bandai released a replica version of the P1 in Japan. It uses a new battery and, contrary to its marketing, new programming that change the way the pet responds to care in the device. In 2018, a worldwide release of replicas of P1 and P2 both were released.
So in all, there are 8 different versions of the toy as far as the actual programming goes, and more versions if you count different packaging for different regions. And within each wave of toys there are a variety of "shells" -- the colored plastic that holds the toy, making for a ton of variations to collect. There's even a one-of-a-kind shell that was made for the winner of a contest, so it's the only one that exists in the world! There are other unique shells, too, like gold and silver Tamas that were given to Bandai stockholders in a special event.
My goal for now is to collect the 8 different programming variations, then work on collecting some of the later versions of the toy and various packaging and shell designs for the original set. So far I have five of the eight! Over halfway there!
My current collection are these five:
There's a North American P2 I have my eye on on ebay, but I need to save up a good chunk of change to be able to afford it (around $60). Otherwise, getting the Japanese P1 replica and the P2 series 1 shouldn't be too hard, probably around $20 each. The main problem is actually being able to tell which one is a P2 series 1 versus a P2 series 2.
Currently, I have a "project" running to try to deduce exactly how to get each character in the game. Because of the way the toy is built and its lack of popularity with tech nerds, no one has dumped a ROM of the games yet, and guides for the game are pretty slim.
