Battery Glitches, Glitch Items and Unused Content

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hwd45

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Hey look, it's hwd45 again. I wonder what weird topic he's starting this time?

I think I'll have to start this with a bit of a disclaimer - I do not know the full extent of the procedure I'm showing off. As such, I cannot guarantee that this will not cause permanent damage to your device, though I do think it's likely that permanent damage is not something that can be attained via these glitches. Regardless, if you do choose to experiment with these glitches, be aware that at the very least you will likely lose your save data. I'm performing these glitches on a pre-owned device that I bought purely for experimental purposes.

A few years back someone uploaded a video simply titled "Tamagotchi Glitches" showing some utterly bizarre behaviour that I've never seen from a Tamagotchi before. Another user uploaded a similar video using a Spanish V2.

According to the first video, the following process was used in obtaining these glitches:

To everyone who was wondering...

you can do this glitch by...

1: debug tama, easy enough to do but not nessecary, though i REALLY reccomend it!!
2: reset in debug or not and either go to shop or "download" screen
3: press middle button, tama will go beep, as you dont have enough money to buy.
4: when it beeps, slide out the battery and slide it back in quick,
5: if it works, the tama will mess up and do things like this.

---THIS WORKS BEST ON DOWNLOAD AND SHOP SCREENS!!---
I was not entirely sure what this meant at first, but it turns out that the "slide the battery in and out" is the most important part - the rest seems to be entirely irrelevant.

From my own personal experiments it seems like it's harder to get exciting things to happen on screens with a low refresh rate - screens which aren't constantly updating - but pretty much any screen can be used to interesting results. Screens like the idle screen and the health menu have low refresh rates and the battery can actually be taken out for several seconds before the screen fades and it shuts down, whereas the shop screens and the transition to and from the clock screen have an incredibly high refresh rate and the device runs out of battery almost immediately when the battery is removed on these screens.

Some screens seem to include more of a danger factor - attempting these glitches on the shopkeeper screen oddly seems to fully reset my device most of the time.

What's so exciting about these glitches? Well, what appealed most about them to me was their ability to present the player with content you wouldn't see under normal conditions. Unused items? Unused games? Some utterly bizarre pseudo-characters that emerge from the device using the wrong sprite offset for your character? It's all here.

Let's go over some of the exciting things seen in the videos, as well as some of the glitches I've been able to personally replicate.

The Character -> Item Glitch

f5a35ee3c8363a42959695b7b8adf6e1.png


One of the glitches I've not managed to reproduce is a glitch which replaces each sprite of your character's animation with an item. Since most of the items shown are V1 items (and hence items with a low item ID value) it stands to reason that the item that's shown seems to represent the ID value of the sprite that's shown. Here's a table:










Sprite


Item


ID




Idle 1


BALL


0




Idle 2


PENCIL


1




Happy


WIG


2




Mouth closed


SUNGLASSES


3




Mouth open


TOOLS


4




Eyes closed


SKATEBOARD


5




Back turned


WEIGHTS


6




No


RACQUETS


7




Angry


CAPE


8




Sad


BOW


9




Running 1


BOOTS


11




Running 2


CAP


12




Fallen over


BOW TIE


13




Sitting mouth closed


WINGS


14




Sitting mouth open


HAIR GEL


15




Close-up close 1


SUNDAE


22




Close-up close 2


MILK


23




Favourite food


ENERGY DRINK


52




Close-up mid


Poo


??




Tooth brushing (1?/2?)


Present Ice Cream


??





I'd like to continue gathering information on these sprites so I can work towards a more complete list of item IDs and sprite IDs.

The Character -> Egg Glitch

3c7d49ec7900512e18437510ab343f93.png


Similar to above - the sprites used for the character are now egg sprites. There's only four egg sprites, though, so after a certain point Petitchi sprites are used instead, but all offset by four. These can be used in conjunction with the item glitch above to figure out item IDs, since we know the difference between the ID of the sprite that is supposed to be shown and the ID of the sprite that is actually shown is four. Here's a table:










Sprite


Egg / Petitchi Sprite


ID




Idle 1


Egg 1


0




Idle 2


Egg 2


1




Happy


Egg hatch M


2




Mouth closed


Egg hatch F


3




Mouth open


Idle 1


4




Eyes closed


Idle 2


5




No


Mouth closed


7




Angry


Mouth open


8





The Egg -> Violetchi Glitch

One glitch I've successfully performed that wasn't shown in the video was a similar glitch to the above, but instead of a character changing to an egg, the egg changed to have a character's sprite. That's about it, haha.

Unused sprites?

8ac1a83eeb4b15677a70d8b420e4eaea.png
  
e5b52afd389e083ef33550e0ad15c98b.png
  
6c02d902487a740bae922663f14e013f.png


A few images of the V2 show content which is either never seen under normal conditions or only seen later on the V3. Could they have swapped the shells half way through the video? Perhaps. But it's certainly interesting and worth investigating. And I really have no idea what that "TRY?" menu might do, but I have been able to glitch into random menus using these glitches a few times, so it's possible that this could reveal some hidden functionality or something.

The Rebirth Glitch

aeb8b2789fabb565208f128c6ed57aa6.png


This was a glitch I definitely wasn't expecting. Sometimes, messing with the battery will cause your Tamagotchi to revert back to an egg - this isn't quite the same as a full restart since it doesn't ask you to re-enter the time and date, but bizarrely, it seems to totally randomise the time and date, even to the extent of changing the clock to impossible dates like the 64th of April. The name of your character is also sometimes preserved, but it's usually randomised - this can even mean some of the characters changing to hiragana, like what was seen in the video.

bc2e33ad89ed687c0b32c3affe19f875.png


Several times I've also encountered glitch characters which will eventually change back to a hiragana character if you scroll far enough, and doing so seems to also change the character to the right of it, too. Very weird.

Sometimes, after hatching, another glitch will have taken hold too:

The Ball Glitch

It's somewhat infamous at this point, but the ball glitch is a glitch which absolutely floods your item and food lists with balls. Occasionally other items end up in there too, but balls are the common denominator. This can go way beyond the 32 item limit and even go over 100, causing the number in the corner of the screen to behave strangely.

What happens if you eat one of the non-food items?

XY0j3T7.gif


I wasn't really expecting this to happen, but weirdly, the animation for the standard meal that babies and children eat on the V1 (versions 0.0 - 2.4; or in other words, all the non-American devices) is shown instead. This item isn't seen anywhere else on the V2!

My shop also filled with balls. Speaking of the shop,

Glitch Items

JyS8muv.png


I'm not sure how I pulled it off but I managed to get all the shop items to change to glitch items. And they *stayed* that way, even after changing the battery. I tried buying a couple to see what they did but I couldn't use them as my character was still a baby. The sprites consisted of segments of text taken from the names of other items.

Here are the items, and some interesting data to go with them:











No.


Sprite


Price


Notes




1


AB


800p


Matches price of item ID 3, sprite resembles CRAB (ID ??)




2


K


1000p


Matches price of item ID 2, sprite resembles MILK (ID 23)




3


AIT


110p


Matches price of item ID 1, sprite resembles PARFAIT (ID 22)




4


ET


200p


Matches price of item ID 0, sprite resembles OMELET (ID 21)





One interesting side-effect of these sprites being based on the names of other items is that in later variants of the V2 the item names changed and so some of these sprites would change, too.

I sent one of the items over to another V2 but curiously it just arrived as one of the standard gift ice creams. I've no idea why. So far the items have been otherwise unusable but it's possible that they'll be usable once my character reaches adulthood.

There's definitely some sort of pattern in the data for each of the glitch items. Not only do the item prices match four consecutive items, but the names for each of the items seem to be the same glitchy mess, but shifted along by three pixels to the left for each consecutive item. Three of the small text fragments in the icons seem to match three items known to have consecutive ID numbers, too (as seen above, OMELET, PARFAIT and MILK have consecutive IDs). It stands to reason that CRAB might have an ID of 24 - the only other item ending in "AB" is KEBAB (which was called BBQ on later devices) but this one already has a known ID of 33.

This actually aligns with some other known information about the V2 - the food items that are given by Deka characters. Here are the IDs of the Deka characters:









ID


Character




23


Omuratchi




24


Capsuletchi




25


Tamagotchi




26


Tsutatchi




27


Burgertchi




28


Denpatchi




29


Maikutchi





And here are the food items given by each, as well as the ID of that item:











Char ID


Character


Item


Item ID




23


Omuratchi


OMELET


21




SUNDAE


22




24


Capsuletchi


MILK


23




CRAB


24?




25


Tamagotchi


FRIED EGGS


??




BANANAS


26




26


Tsutatchi


CHERRIES


27




PEANUT


??




27


Burgertchi


BURGER


29




FRIES


30





This can be used as further proof of several item's ID numbers - FRIED EGGS goes in slot 25 and PEANUT in 28. Denpatchi and Maikutchi's items can probably be used to determine more item IDs too, but I'm not sure what items they send to the V2. If you're wondering why the Deka characters give such a strange array of items, it's because the items they give on the V1 actually make some sort of sense, but the IDs used by these items were overwritten by different items on the V2.

Anyway, that's enough of that small tangent. This is all I've got for now, but I'll continue to update as I find more interesting glitches! It's fascinating that using glitches like these can give us such an insight into how Tamagotchis work, and I've still got my fingers crossed that I'll eventually obtain a more interesting unused item via these methods.

 
Ooh, this is great! It's like cartridge-tilting or "frying" on old consoles, isn't it? :D
It seems to be, yeah! It's definitely not the first time I've encountered battery-related glitches either, as I'm sure my devices have acted unusually after switching batteries before (I remember my Music Star actually dying as a result of one of these glitches - I swear, I didn't kill it!)

One thing I forgot to mention in the post was that Tamagotchis actually accept several different battery sizes (CR2016 and CR2025 on top of the intended CR2032 - the only difference is the battery width), and so I've even been experimenting with different battery sizes in case they're slightly easier to "tilt", as it were. In the past I've encountered some very unusual behaviour from devices using the incorrect battery sizes, so initially I thought that was how the glitches in the videos were performed. But as it turns out, the battery doesn't need to be fully in for the device to stay on, it just needs to be able to make contact with the circuit. When I'm messing around with the battery I'm usually constantly holding it against the Tamagotchi and trying not to let it slip - the video briefly demonstrates what I mean at around 4:24. If the battery had to be all the way in for it to function, I doubt these glitches would be attainable, due to how long it would take to remove and replace the battery - the trick is to tilt the battery quickly (but not too quickly).

 
This is all very interesting! Pretty cool, too. I'd try it for myself except that I'm far too partial to my Tamas to attempt something so risky :)

 
Well done! If you will do Tamagotchi Friends, I have one!

My friend had to change her tamagotchis battery, so she used cheap Zinc ones; instead of her usual Alkaline. Then, when she went to play a game, her points were in the 7 digits! And she could spend all of it, it wasn’t just like it said it. So if it helps, your welcome! :D  

 
Well done! If you will do Tamagotchi Friends, I have one!

My friend had to change her tamagotchis battery, so she used cheap Zinc ones; instead of her usual Alkaline. Then, when she went to play a game, her points were in the 7 digits! And she could spend all of it, it wasn’t just like it said it. So if it helps, your welcome! :D  
I doubt I'll experiment with the Friends. The battery type is entirely different so it doesn't really lend itself to the same effects that the CR batteries do - I'd think it'd be much harder to fiddle with the batteries in the same way you can on earlier models. The Friends ROM has been dumped anyway so I doubt there'd be much in the way of new content to find using these glitches.

I'll instead be focusing on the V2 and maybe a little bit on the V1, too, if I can get it to do anything fun. The V1 had a bunch of cut features which, if they still exist in any form on the device, would make for some seriously interesting findings.

 
I'll instead be focusing on the V2 and maybe a little bit on the V1, too, if I can get it to do anything fun. The V1 had a bunch of cut features which, if they still exist in any form on the device, would make for some seriously interesting findings.
I love when people find cut features still hidden in games, but I didn't think there would be any to find on Tamagotchis! The unused sprites from the V2 remind me of the Pokemon Gold and Silver demo leaks. There were lots of Pokemon and general concepts that were cut, but they showed up in later generations. Similar to how the V2 had things that didn't show up until the V3 came out. Definitely keep us up to date on what you find. ^_^

 
I love when people find cut features still hidden in games, but I didn't think there would be any to find on Tamagotchis! The unused sprites from the V2 remind me of the Pokemon Gold and Silver demo leaks. There were lots of Pokemon and general concepts that were cut, but they showed up in later generations. Similar to how the V2 had things that didn't show up until the V3 came out. Definitely keep us up to date on what you find. ^_^
I've gone over a few pieces of unused content on my ROM Versions thread, it's actually a fairly common feature of Tamagotchis! And a really fascinating feature, too. Strangely enough the Music Star also has a bunch of unused ticket items like the V2, though these tickets can be obtained using passwords (if you get lucky and happen to type in a working one!). They don't really do that much sadly, but I figure they were planned to have a use on the cancelled World Tour Edition.

 
I've gone over a few pieces of unused content on my ROM Versions thread, it's actually a fairly common feature of Tamagotchis! And a really fascinating feature, too. Strangely enough the Music Star also has a bunch of unused ticket items like the V2, though these tickets can be obtained using passwords (if you get lucky and happen to type in a working one!). They don't really do that much sadly, but I figure they were planned to have a use on the cancelled World Tour Edition.
I was actually fairly curious about the Music Star because it's one of the "glitchier" versions, so it's interesting that you were able to find some unused items. Was the World Tour Edition going to be like a V6.5? I didn't know they were planning on making more Music Stars (and I wish they had because now they're hard to find  :p ).

 
I was actually fairly curious about the Music Star because it's one of the "glitchier" versions, so it's interesting that you were able to find some unused items. Was the World Tour Edition going to be like a V6.5? I didn't know they were planning on making more Music Stars (and I wish they had because now they're hard to find  :p ).
Nobody really knows what was planned for the WTE but by the sounds of it it was going to be like a 6.5. All we ever heard about it was a press release confirming its existence, but later on in the year emails to Bandai customer support confirmed they never made production. It's a shame, I really enjoyed the Music Star and would've loved to have seen more Music Star versions.

Actually speaking of battery glitches and the Music Star, I do remember one time my Music Star absolutely flipped out when I changed the batteries. Amongst a series of other unusual effects, one of the most bizarre things that happened was that one of the trophies in my trophies list was replaced by the "happy birthday" sprite until I obtained that trophy again.

 
This is really interesting! If I had the Tamas, and a little less overprotection over my babies :(  I would totally try this out!!

 
A few months back, in my password experimentation topic, user Eggiweg noted that whilst using an unfinished version of my password generator they'd managed to obtain "glitch souvenirs" - item IDs 114 - 127 would give the player a "souvenir" of sorts that looked like a small section of text taken from somewhere else. The souvenir is only briefly seen and doesn't appear in the souvenirs list, but is an interesting example of "glitch items" on the V3 nonetheless:











ID


SOUVENIR


ID


ITEM




114


Untested


0


BALL




115


CIL


1


PENCIL




116


Untested


2


WIG




117


Untested


3


SUNGLASSES




118


Untested


4


RC CAR




119


N


5


(Unknown)




120


HTS I


6


WEIGHTS




121


OY


7


RC TOY




122


AR2


8


(Unknown)




123


W


9


BOW




124


TS


10


DARTS




125


G CK


11


BLDG BLOCK




126


P


12


CAP




127


TIE


13


BOW TIE





The items listed above are all the glitch souvenirs I've recorded so far. I don't currently have a V3 running so I've basically just had to go off what others using the password generator have found. In the left two columns you'll the the item ID of the souvenir in question and how that souvenir appears to look on-screen. On the right I've listed the first 14 items by their ID number. Clearly, there's a correspondence here like some of the items we saw on the V2. From this, we can conclude that RC CAR2 is probably item ID 8 and item ID 5 is probably PEN.

You can see the items I've obtained images of so far below:

gq7WdKA.png


I've left 15 slots here instead of 14 because I've actually not seen item ID 113 tested yet and I'm not sure if it'll be rejected as an unused item ID or if it'll contain yet another glitch souvenir. Ideally I'd like to fill in all the empty slots as part of an effort to document all the absurd glitch-items Tamagotchis have to offer, so any experimentation with and photographs of the glitch souvenirs using the password generator would be helpful  :)

 
A small update - my V2 just evolved into an adult (after some very heavy abuse of the pause button, apparently) and I became able to use the glitch items. What did I find?

To my surprise, the two items I was able to test had entirely different effects. Neither of the effects were very interesting in their own right, but the fact that each glitch item seems to behave differently is itself somewhat fascinating. I guess logging the effects of all the glitch items will have to be part of this project.  :D

The item with the "AB" sprite behaved as though it was playing an item animation, but nothing particularly interesting happened on screen - it just looked like it had stayed on the item screen but any button press would change it back to normal.

"AIT" was slightly less usable - selecting the item caused the device to immediately freeze, without even making the "select" sound. Once again the screen hung on the image of the item.

When I get home from work I'll try and see if sending the items to another device does anything interesting. I'm getting the impression that these items aren't particularly stable (who'd'a thunk it?) so my fingers are crossed for some wacky outcomes.

 
Following on from the previous post, sending the items to another device just seemed to convert them into generic gift items like cakes. Not that exciting.

In other news, I've been finding that the Ball Glitch seems to be one of the bizarrest glitches attainable, with some of the most wide-reaching effects.

The most recent round of Ball Glitch effects I've experienced have revealed some things I hadn't even considered about glitch items. Remember how glitch items have strange effects when used in the items menu? And remember how the Ball Glitch can make food items appear in the items menu and items appear in the food menu?

Well, as it turns out, if your character is an adult you can use the food items that end up in your items menu and they act in similar ways to glitch items.

CRACKER - The Tamagotchi instantly crashed and the screen turned off
TEA - Like AB, the screen continues showing the item as if that screen is the item animation
CREAMY CAKE - A LOT like TEA and AB, but it momentarily hangs and then registers two button presses instead of one, causing it to instantly go onto the clock screen. While it's transferring to the clock screen you can see the "CREAMY CAKE" item screen but for some reason the character sprite is underneath the text too creating a bit of a mess. I'd create an image if I could but it was difficult to get a photo of because of how quickly it happened.

I suppose the inverse of food behaving like glitch items is glitch items behaving as food. As it turns out, by some bizarre coincidence (perhaps it wasn't a coincidence and there's some item data even when you think it's all gone?) the Ball Glitch placed one of our glitch item friends in my treats menu. Specifically, "AIT", which as an item caused the device to crash. What happens when you eat it?

3qv4gYb.gif
 

A LOT HAPPENS, APPARENTLY - It's almost like getting a glimpse into a sprite sheet that the Tamagotchi draws its images from. Except, those sprites in the last frame... they don't look familiar to me. This'll need more investigation.

One more interesting thing I found using this glitch? If your items list is more than 100 long, things get a bit weird. Like many fairly primitive programs, there's no "100s" place in the number - instead, the 10s place just keeps changing to symbols beyond 9. These were the first few characters I noticed in the 10s column after 9:

  • A blank space, as if the number of the item was less than 10,
  • A zero, something you definitely wouldn't normally see in this column,
  • 1,
  • 2,
  • E,
  • h,
  • 5,
  • 9,
  • L,
  • 8,
  • 6,
  • Another blank space.

Notice a pattern in the symbols above? The 6 and the 9 might give it away - the E, h and L aren't actually letters, they're just the digits 3, 4 and 7 rotated by 180 degrees. For some reason that's the case of all the digits in this run of characters.

As always I'll continue to give more updates as more unusual things happen. I feel like, since I'm starting to get items I wouldn't normally be able to, that I'm getting closer to one of those unused items I've been looking for.

 
So here's the interesting thing about the ball glitch: the items I get seem to be more or less the same every time I try it... and furthermore, doing things on the device seems to affect what items are currently present in the treats menu.

For the purposes of this post I'll focus on the ball glitch's effects on the treats menu. The ball glitch can effect the items menu too but you can trigger the glitch without affecting this menu.

Let's examine the contents of this menu upon first triggering the glitch. They're not always identical, but one of the most common configurations is as follows:

  • 1-32: Ball
  • 33-36: Random(?) items
  • 37-83: Ball
  • 84: Pencil
  • 85: Usually ball, sometimes another item
  • 86: Usually ball, sometimes another item
  • 87: Ball
  • 88: Glitch item "AIT"
  • 89-90: Ball
  • 91: Can be many different items
  • 92: Usually hair gel, sometimes another item
  • 93: Can be many different items
  • 94: Usually ball, sometimes another item
  • 95: Can be many different items
  • 96: Usually ball, sometimes another item
  • 97 onwards: Tools

Whenever one of the items is eaten it turns into a ball. The fact that these specific items seem to appear so often suggests that this outcome isn't really "random", but rather, it's reading some information stored on the device and displaying that information as items.

The first hint into what some of this data means is by looking at items 33-36. I quickly noticed that these items are always the same as what's in the shop at any given time - hence, eating one of them (and thus turning it into a ball) will cause a ball to appear in the shop! Which is why I kept noticing items in the shop changing into balls whilst eating some of the seemingly random items I'd encountered.

What about if you buy something from the shop? What item appears in the treat list to take its place? Turns out it's a new glitch item, a bit different to what we've seen before:

6mWiUq0.png
n0eag04.gif
 

Unlike the glitch items we had encountered before, this one's sprite is not made from fragments of another item's name. Instead, the sprite is made from garbage data and the name consists partially of graphical data - namely the small-font numerals.

Whilst on the topic of glitch items, let's briefly look at another glitch item I've encountered whilst the ball glitch was active. This one was encountered during a different instance of the glitch so I think the data that was present in the treats list was totally different, and thus I'm not sure what this item corresponds to.

uHmyptX.png
n6jBpIt.gif
 

This one's eating animation once again shows us sprites that are normally only seen on the V1.

Back to the ball glitch now - I had noticed that the items in the 85-96 range would change every now and then. In particular, I noticed they would change every time I connected to another device or pressed the reset button - pressing the reset button these would all turn back into being balls, so we can press the reset button to sort of "reset" the initial conditions in testing the results of connecting to different devices.

It was by resetting these initial conditions that I realised that even unsuccessful connections would have an effect on these items, as though it takes in the IR data, stores it and checks over it to see if it's valid. 91-94 seem to behave very unusually and apparently depend on what device you're connecting to - perhaps it's related to the internal ID of the device, which is used to identify if two connections to characters with the name same name are really from the same device. Resetting the other device seemed to change what items appeared here as a result. The only real thing of note that I can tell from this is that it seems to be the case that #91 + #93 = #92 + #94, and these sums are usually 15 or 0.

95 and 96 are fun - they represent the number of friends in your friends list. For whatever reason, it seems the variables being presented here are 4-bit variables, so the items displayed are (with the exception of the AIT glitch?) all items with IDs 0-15. This means that, to display numbers larger than 15, a second item slot is used as overflow - 95 represents the lower part of the number and 96 the higher part.

Setting one of these to zero by eating it makes part of the friends list disappear, but the actual friend data held on the device still remains. Hence, increasing your friend count again will reset what was stopping it before by recovering all your friends. Though weirdly this seems to be able to overwrite one of the friends in your friends list, as if the variable representing the number of friends is also used to determine which slot to write the information about the next friend into.

By far the most interesting is 86 (and presumably this is a 4-bit variable so 87 may also be part of this variable). If you've read my ROM Versions thread, you may remember when I looked over a V1 patent document detailing many of the different variables handled by the device. One of these variables - specifically one sent during connection - is the "recognition code", a variant of the device's version number. From the small table offered in the document, it seemed like the recognition codes were in fact just the integer part of the device's ROM version. This does still leave the recognition codes of some of the English language devices unclear though, as these ROM versions are not simple numbers. For example, the V2 I was using for these experiments uses ROM version A.3 - how can we assign an integral value to this number if it's not a real number?

The ball glitch may have the answer for us. Here are a few ROM versions and their respective effect on item 85 when connecting to the V2:











Ver


ROM Ver


Connect Mode


Item 85




1


0.0


-


ID 0 (Ball)




1


2.1


-


ID 2 (Wig)




1


4.1


-


ID 4 (Tools)




2


A2 H


Ver 1


ID 10 (Darts)




2


A2 H


Ver 2


ID 10 (Darts)




4


A4.5 E


Others


ID 0 (Ball)




4


A4.5 E


Jinsei


ID 10 (Darts)





I can't be certain this is the recognition code - perhaps it's another similar version variable - but it's still very intriguing. Not only are the IDs a perfect match for all three major versions of the V1, but later versions seem to change the item to ID 10 - looking at the version numbers of other devices reveals that there's a gap in version 10 where no known device goes. This version falls somewhere between the Keitai and the Akai implying a 2005 release date - exactly matching the V2. As such, I think it's possible that version 10 was deliberately avoided to reserve the spot for releases outside of Japan. I've not tested the V3 or the V4.5 but I assume they return similar results. I tried a V7 too but this seemed to have no effect on the items - presumably because the IR protocol had changed significantly by this point.

Strangely the V4 seems to behave differently to the V2 when in "Others" mode - the V2 seems to continue transmitting the same version data whereas the V4 seems to attempt to mimic the Plus by setting the value to 0.

Alright, I think that's about as much as I want to cover about the ball glitch for one post. One last interesting glitch:

A user in the Tamagotchi Collectors Discord called Mr Incubator joined me in my experiments using a V4. One of the most interesting glitches involved a spontaneous change to the contents of the meal and snack menus. After the four permanent food items the following items were listed in the following order:










#


Item


ID




5


Choco Bar


112




6


Waffle


111




7


Fried Chicken


110




8


Crepe


109




9


Candy


108




10


Lollipop


107




11


!!


?




12


Yogurt


?




13


Noodles


104




14


Turkey


103




15


Cake


?




16


Cookie


101




17


Chocolate


100




18


Grapes


99




19


Orange


?




20


Scone


?




21


Melon


96




22


Corn


95




23


Royal Costume


?




24


Pasta


93




25


Pineapple


92




26


Pear


91




27


Popcorn


90




28


Cereal


?




29+


Lots of balls


-





All the food items showed one of their partially eaten sprites for some reason.

So there's a very clear pattern here - weirdly, a group of items appeared which appear to perfectly match the order the items appear in the item ID list, albeit backwards.

Assuming the unknowns also fit the pattern, this allows us to fill in a whole bunch of ID list blanks! I'm hoping similar things can be done with the V2.

zJZHKyw.png


Until next time!

 
If it’s ok, I’d quite like to help with your experiments!

I just got a V1, and it will be coming in a few days. It was really cheap, and I’m going to try a few things with it; and I’ll probably be fiddling with the battery as such. Is there anything that you’d need help or assistance with? I’ll try and “recreate” some of the tests you’ve been attempting.. so I can try and compare them. 

Also, a thing that I’ve wanted to try for a while is trying to fiddle with the battery when trying to connect. It sounds odd and to to exiting, but maybe there’s some sorts of hidden animations? Like the items and such.. maybe there’s something else.

 
If it’s ok, I’d quite like to help with your experiments!

I just got a V1, and it will be coming in a few days. It was really cheap, and I’m going to try a few things with it; and I’ll probably be fiddling with the battery as such. Is there anything that you’d need help or assistance with? I’ll try and “recreate” some of the tests you’ve been attempting.. so I can try and compare them. 

Also, a thing that I’ve wanted to try for a while is trying to fiddle with the battery when trying to connect. It sounds odd and to to exiting, but maybe there’s some sorts of hidden animations? Like the items and such.. maybe there’s something else.
You don't need permission to join in! It'll be interesting to see what you find. A few pointers though:

  • It's going to be difficult to get the hang of and you'll need some patience because most of the time I perform the glitches nothing interesting happens
  • Expect the device to reset a lot
  • Sometimes it'll spontaneously show the low battery symbol too - that's not really a sign that it's really low battery, it seems to just be one of the glitches (in particular, if the battery is fiddled with during the minute before the egg hatches it can often make the low battery symbol show up when the egg starts hatching - pressing the reset button and trying again fixes this)

It'll be interesting to see if it works when connecting - this is one of the screens which uses a lot of power and will probably be a bit tricky to perform the glitches on without resetting or causing the low battery screen to appear, but I imagine the results of the glitches will be worth it.

 
You don't need permission to join in! It'll be interesting to see what you find. A few pointers though:

  • It's going to be difficult to get the hang of and you'll need some patience because most of the time I perform the glitches nothing interesting happens
  • Expect the device to reset a lot
  • Sometimes it'll spontaneously show the low battery symbol too - that's not really a sign that it's really low battery, it seems to just be one of the glitches (in particular, if the battery is fiddled with during the minute before the egg hatches it can often make the low battery symbol show up when the egg starts hatching - pressing the reset button and trying again fixes this)

It'll be interesting to see if it works when connecting - this is one of the screens which uses a lot of power and will probably be a bit tricky to perform the glitches on without resetting or causing the low battery screen to appear, but I imagine the results of the glitches will be worth it.
Thanks, hwd45! I have a few additional things to ask regarding this.. mostly on the “types” of glitches I’ll be performing.

- On a topic you did a while ago, you were focusing on the “ROM TESTS”. Do you think anything will come out of tilting the battery while running the test run? If so... will it be worth it? With something like the ROM test, I think there won’t be much in it. I’ve been processing the idea for a while.. and if I tilt the battery afterwards for say would it make a difference?

- Linking to the paragraph above, does the debug button on the circuit effect this? If I rub the button before and after, Will it make any sort of effect? Or, will the bugs that I’ll recover (if I’m lucky enough to do so!  :D ) be permanently imbedded into the device itself?

 
Thanks, hwd45! I have a few additional things to ask regarding this.. mostly on the “types” of glitches I’ll be performing.

- On a topic you did a while ago, you were focusing on the “ROM TESTS”. Do you think anything will come out of tilting the battery while running the test run? If so... will it be worth it? With something like the ROM test, I think there won’t be much in it. I’ve been processing the idea for a while.. and if I tilt the battery afterwards for say would it make a difference?

- Linking to the paragraph above, does the debug button on the circuit effect this? If I rub the button before and after, Will it make any sort of effect? Or, will the bugs that I’ll recover (if I’m lucky enough to do so!  :D ) be permanently imbedded into the device itself?
I feel like the main thing that would come out of performing the glitches during a ROM test is that it'd probably be more likely to fail the ROM test.

As for debugging, I highly doubt it would have any effect on the glitches. It'll make changing characters easier and it certainly won't begin making permanent changes to the device - "ROM" means "Read-only memory", so it's not likely (or possible?) to be affected at all by the glitches, and debugging won't change this. In fact, the person in the video I posted used debug mode themselves whilst performing the glitches.

 
I tried this a few times on my V3 with a CR2016 battery during the transition to the clock screen, and a sprite of Megatchi looking sideways appeared on the middle of the screen (something I've never seen on a Tamagotchi before, but it might be a sprite that's already used on the tamagotchi because I've only had Megatchi once) and then 2 black horizontal lines about 2/3 columns away from each-other appeared on the screen. While the battery was still inserted, the speaker kept making a constant faint "crackling" noise and the black bars were on the screen even after I took the batteries out, and even when I put batteries back in nothing happened and the black bars were still on the screen. At this point I was scared that I burned the screen or something but after leaving the batteries in for about 10 seconds the tamagotchi's lines faded slowly and it eventually turned on. I tried this a couple of other times but aside from the black bars and weird noise nothing else happened. Also, I tried it about 3 times on the shopkeeper screen but it didn't reset. KidRetro64's comment gave me some inspiration and when I have some free time I might try it on the same V3 on the connect screen, while it connects with a V3 and with a V4. If I find anything interesting, I'll comment here again with all the details.

 

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