Dwarfmun's Digipets

[dwarfmun]

Welcome to my Tama log!

I love virtual pets and the science behind human relationships with artificial life. But mostly, I just love cute kitschy things! This log will keep track of my tama collection, my active tamas, and my tama wishlist.

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My Collection (=active)

Boris the 20th Anniversary Mini

❤Eve the Pixel Pet

❤Nana Moon Maxi (coming soon!)

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My Wishlist

Tamagotchi Meets Fantasy

Gudetama Tamagotchi

Angelgotchi

Littlest Pet Shop Digipet

Pixel Chix Cottage

Mothra Tamagotchi

Pocket Pikachu

 

[dwarfmun]

20th Anniversary Mini Progress

This is my mini! He's been running for about 2 weeks now. I'm not sure how long the batteries on these guys last, but luckily I have some spare batteries from my busted bunny ROM.

Since this was my first Tamagotchi, I had no idea that the low level of care required wasn't normal. I thought the trope of accidentally killing your Tamagotchi was just cus people sucked at taking care of them |D It hangs from my belt loop all day, so I can check on it at work.

It hatched into a little round babe after a minute of being activated, and rolled around adorably like a dough ball. After a couple of days, it evolved into Maskutchi, which quickly became one of my absolute favorite characters. I love his long weird legs!

About a week went by, and he evolved into what I presume to be Oyajitchi, pictured above. I'm pretty happy with my first run! Based on his evolution tree, I think I did a good job!

I'm really hoping to get Kuchipatchi next time. I think I read that after about a week of being in their last stage, minis die of old age. I plan to keep this guy running for as long as possible! It's a really fun low-commitment pet. Especially considering you can turn off the sound, thank god.

 

[dwarfmun]

My mini passed away from old age a few days ago. :< I restarted it and got a new egg, and it evolved into another Maskutchi. Not complaining!

But then, last night, I went to see Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark in theatres and... completely neglected it. |D It fell asleep with 3 poops on the screen, and was sick when I checked on it this morning. Whoops!! In my defense the movie was really good and I was busy fangirling about it.

 

[dwarfmun]

Some updates!

I somehow managed to get the exact same evolutionary path on my mini as last time. =w=;; I'll have to look up a guide. I'd like to unlock everyone eventually.

In far more exciting news, my Nana Moon Maxi came in the mail today!!! I'm at work right now so I can't try it out yet >:C Expect lots of updates about that tonight, though!

 

[dwarfmun]

Pixel Pet Repair

If you saw my post about my generic tama in the help thread, you'll know I recently tried to remove its speaker, and that it stopped working after I did so. Well, it turns out that didn't actually kill it! In fact, I did succeed in muting it. c: After fiddling with it some more, I found that it was only poorly fitted.

Now, I've never been much of a do-it-yourselfer with my tech, but I figured I had nothing to lose with this guy. I found that the battery compartment fitted the batteries very loosely, and that the prongs in the battery cover that completed the circuit were too flexible, causing the circuit to break if the tama was shaken or pressure was applied to the battery cover. I first tried to pad the battery compartment with fabric, as was suggested to someone else having the same problem, but I couldn't find anything that didn't keep the prongs on the battery cover from getting through to the batteries. I then tried taping the batteries in place, which worked until the battery cover was disturbed and the prongs were bent.

Still determined, I decided to try hooking up the batteries directly with a small piece of the copper cord that the speaker had been attached with. I didn't have electrical tape, so Scotch would have to do. Maybe this is elementary for experienced techies, but I was completely flabbergasted when it worked! I definitely expected it to explode |D The only problem now was that without the prongs to hold the batteries down, they weren't touching the circuitboard behind them. Taping them back down didn't seem to work this time. So riding on my previous success with the cords, I decided to try connecting the batteries to the circuitboards with cords, too. Except that I had run out of wire from the speakers - I had to cut some from a busted pair of earbuds.

For whatever reason, that didn't seem to work at all. It wouldn't even turn on at that point. So as it stands, my poor Pixel Pet is still nonfunctional. It's such a poor design that I'm not sure I'll get it working without completely mutilating it. But it's so fun to play with that I'm going to keep trying!

Has anyone else toyed with the insides of their toy and had success? Can anyone more experienced in tech repair tell me what to try next?

 

[Eggiweg]

Can you pad the battery compartment with foil or something conductive?

 

[dwarfmun]

Can you pad the battery compartment with foil or something conductive?

That's a good idea. I was also thinking of trying springs.

 

[dwarfmun]

Nana Moon Maxi has arrived!!!

It's here!! Two and a half weeks early!

The listing was for a random color, and I got yellow! the one i wanted the least ;w;

The instruction booklet was in Chinese, so I looked up an English translation. What I was not expecting to find... was a painstakingly in-depth guide for taking care of a very difficult pet. Looks like I have my work cut out for me!

^Here it is unpackaged. I kept the super-cute packaging - I'll probably make some charms or barrettes with it later.

It's quite light, but the mold is really nice and it feels hardy. Apparently, this toy is manufactured differently depending on the listing, and the one I got has a cheap sticker on the little winged circle rather than the plastic gemstone I was expecting. I do really like the heart chain on the bottom, and the wings on the top. It also has an infra-red sensor on the top for connecting with other Nana Moons.

When I pulled the tab, a cute little animated intro sequence played, and I put in the date and time. It also had me put in my birthday, which is only in a couple of weeks, so I'm excited to see what happens with that!

Unfortunately, since it's almost midnight here, it went right to sleep. But that gave me a chance to explore the menus: the Nana Moon has hunger, happiness, and hygiene stats, 5 different games, and a shop where supplies can be bought. You can also send your Nana Moon to school during the day, wherein its stats pause and it evidently Learns Things. Depending on its care and its education, it can evolve into over 30 different characters, and even get married and have children, like the Tamagotchi On. There's only two baby characters, a boy and a girl, and I hatched a girl!

What makes the Nana Moon uniquely difficult is that performing any kind of maintenance on your pet costs in-game money. Food, soap, and toilet paper all cost money, and playing games to earn money costs hunger and hygiene, so if you flub the games hard enough, it's possible you won't even make a profit. There are also random events in the game that can screw you over if you're already low on dough.

The aim of the game is to collect the 7 Secret Treasures, which not even the guide I found details thoroughly. If your Nana Moon dies, you have to start all over again.

Here she is snoozing away  I'm SO hyped to play with her tomorrow!!

If you have a Nana Moon Maxi or are interested in trying one, I highly recommend the above guide. I can also now safely recommend the listing I got this toy from, as it came in very good condition and was ridiculously cheap. The pattern on mine seems to be different from the ones on the listing, so the toy I have may not be an official shell. There's also the Nana Moon Mini, which is functionally similar but just has a few less features, from what I gather, and is closer in size to a Giga Pet.

Stay tuned, y'all!

 

[Penguin-keeper]

^Here it is unpackaged.

Oh man, this is a super-cute casing design for a virtual pet. I'll be looking forward to following your log of this one!

I kept the super-cute packaging - I'll probably make some charms or barrettes with it later.

Yay! Someone else who does this! I used the packaging and instructions from the Tamagotchi Original (the Gen 1/Gen 2 re-issues) to make a bunch of keychains, because the artwork was too good to let it go to waste.

It also had me put in my birthday, which is only in a couple of weeks, so I'm excited to see what happens with that!

You don't see that super-often, in virtual pets or in video games (it happened with a bunch of Nintendo DS games, but it seems to be less common, now). I'm curious about this, now, too.

 

[TamaMum]

I've posted a link to your Nana Moom Maxi instructions in the TamaTalk Reference Section - it will appear in the topic about other Virtual Pet instructions

 

[dwarfmun]

Nana Moon Maxi: Day 1

Oh boy, you guys. I meant to get up at 8 to catch my pet right when it woke up, but instead I slept in until NOON. So when I finally checked it, all its hearts were empty and it was sick. :')

The game starts you off with 500 coins, but I immediately had to spend that on medicine. Even though its hearts were empty, I had no choice but to jump right into the games to earn some money. Luckily, it seems as though the pet doesn't suffer immediate consequences when you play games on empty hearts. I had the best luck with the piggy bank game - it's a little tedious, but it's easy to get a perfect score and earn the max amount of coins. 200 for a perfect game sounds like a lot, but when one hygiene item costs that much, it doesn't go very far.

I sent my pet to school to get learn't at 1 pm today, so according to the guide it should return at 5 pm. I'll be at work then, but I plan to send it right back to school, as you can apparently send it off twice a day.

I also tried out one of the codes on the guide. I thought that the chocolate one would work within 2 weeks of starting up the toy, but it didn't accept the code. It must have just been poor wording.

I'm not going for any particular character for my first run. Mostly I'm just going to try and keep it alive. After it gets back from school tonight, I'm going to play with it some more and let it run while I'm home, so I can see what some of the random encounters look like. Hopefully something will drop by and give me money. :'D

 

[dwarfmun]

Nana Moon Maxi: Day 2

So... either the Nana Moon just isn't a great beginner virtual pet, or it's unreasonably hard. It's evolved into an adult already, a little piggy with wings, which is very cute. But it loses a point of hunger and hygiene every single half-hour. I did a little math, and for every 400 coins you earn, you have to spend 200 on a hygiene item and 30 on food to replenish the hearts it costs, which leaves only 170 IN PROFIT. And that's if you get two perfect games.

I'm not gonna lie, I'm getting a little salty. It's such an adorable pet, but it's so much work, and the sound is so quiet that I've caught barely any random encounters, meaning I can't afford not to grind for coins at every opportunity. I have no idea how you're expected to get the super-expensive treasures.

All that being said, it's very very cute, and I can't get over how adorable and unique the shell is. (On further research, the shell I have is official.) I'm considering getting a second toy; the guide reveals that you can transfer resources from one device to another, and that since you start with a bunch of food and gold, you can just transfer it over to your main one, reset the toy, and transfer again. I feel like it would be a lot more fun if I could just enjoy playing the games, caring for it and watching it grow. I'm already poor in real life, I don't need it simulated for me |D

I guess we'll just have to see how long it lasts before I go nuts

 

[Moosestatue]

I'm not gonna lie, I'm getting a little salty

I FEEL YOU! I received mine a few days ago and it's constantly dying and pooping and everything costs money Q_Q i just take it with me to school to play during lunch breaks otherwise there's no way i can afford items,, other times i just have to let him suffer- i feel really bad but there's nothing else i can do since i'm in the middle of exam week too,, I'm considering taking out the batteries at this point ;_; too much effort to keep alive,,, BUT IT'S SO CUTE AT THE SAME TIME i can't decide on what to do. Love the idea of the game though about the treasures, but unfortunately when the treasures cost like $6500+... considering just running it in the holidays or i wont have time to look after it.

 

[dwarfmun]

Customizing my Mini Tamagotchi

I like to customize my toys from time to time, and recently I was getting really tired of my mini tama's bright fuschia. Here's a little step-by-step of how I turned it into a creeper spawn egg!

First I sanded the plastic to make the acrylic stick better, carefully avoiding the screen. This significantly reduces the number of coats you'll need to apply, and cuts down on drying time.

The collector in you will scream. Just ignore them

Then I could paint the base layer. The best way to achieve a factory plastic texture with acrylic is to paint on lots of thin, streaky layers, letting them dry completely in between. Here's the difference between one coat of paint and 5+ coats:

Next I painted on the details. I decided to fill the cracked egg piece around the screen with black. I drew a grid on the front of the tama with pencil, then filled in a few squares with different shades of green. Once I got them blocked in, I went back over the pencil with more base color and cleaned up the edges of my details.

Finally, I applied a thick layer of Duraclear glossy varnish to the whole thing, let it dry, and came back with a layer of varnish thinned out with water, for a smooth and shiny finish.

And there we go!! (Don't mind the crappy pictures, my fiance was trying to sleep .w.) I think it looks really cute! The paint job has held up pretty well so far; it suffered a small chip while hanging from my belt loop at work, so I suppose it'll just have to stay home from now on.

 

[Eggiweg]

Wow, that's super cute!  You did a great paint job.  What kind of acrylic paint did you use?

 

[dwarfmun]

Wow, that's super cute!  You did a great paint job.  What kind of acrylic paint did you use?

Thank you!!! It's just generic craft acrylic.

 

[dwarfmun]

I haven't posted here in a long time, but I haven't stopped collecting! I didn't realize how big my family has gotten after just a few years.



I recently quit my job, and also tested positive for COVID today, so stay at home and mess around with vpets it is! I wanna talk about each of my new additions.

I got my Angelgotchi a while back, and she's my pride and joy. Her name is Amity. I was unable to run her for quite a long time because she had a stripped screw that I just couldn't get out on my own, and I didn't think of taking her somewhere to get her fixed until very recently. I popped into a cell phone repair place and the guy fished it out in just a couple minutes! Damn it. As it stands, she just needs 2 new screws, so she's still inactive for now.

I got a couple more bunny ROM shells, because I can't help but love the poor things. I actually do really like the gameplay - it's getting the around the terrible manufacturing that's difficult. As you can see by the stickers, I eventually found one that actually works! Her name is Eve. She's actually active right now, just asleep. I also cut off the reset button so I'd stop accidentally hitting it. Whose idea was it to put the reset button right there?

I picked up the Giga Pets AR at a Cracker Barrel outside Chicago, believe it or not. I'd never seen them in my local stores, so I'm not sure what it was doing there. His name is Elias. I've really taken to the animations and gameplay - I honestly like it the best out of any other pet I've tried so far. The only problem is the thing keeps resetting itself after a couple days, and it doesn't seem to be a battery issue. I've read that this is common for ARs, so if anyone's got advice, please help me out!

I found the T-rex Dino at a Goodwill years ago, and just got around to turning it on. His name is Hershell (or, because of the limited amount of characters allowed in-game, HRSHL). I'm having a lot of fun with it! From what I understand, it's actually running the Godzilla Nano software. It runs quite similarly to a Giga Pet mechanically, but there are a few quirks to the gameplay that I'm struggling to understand, and there doesn't seem to be a guide anywhere, so I'm playing it by ear.

The Cyber Baby I got for fairly cheap on Mercari because it looked interesting, but I don't have much to say about it. I killed it after less than an hour when it refused to let me enter any menus, so I shelved it for now, lol.

The Neopets vpets I haven't tried out yet. At the time I got them, I was working retail and they were too big to carry around with me. I adore the way they look, though, and I'm very proud to own them.

The Gudetama and Hello Kitty minis are very cute. Gameplay-wise there's not much to them, but the art, especially in the Gudetama mini, is really adorable. I haven't managed to get DJ Gudetama yet, but the quest is ongoing. Every time I start up these little guys, I quickly run out of motivation for them, since they're so simple, but I do like having them.

The Gen 1 rerelease is a funny story. I bought him a while back to give away in a raffle at a panel I hosted about Petz last weekend. The panel was kind of a bust, because almost no one showed up - it was the last day of the con and Easter on top of that. I raffled off the tamagotchi, then went to the swap meet that was going on right afterward, and the little goblin TRADED THE TAMAGOTCHI AWAY RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. I bought it right back from the guy they traded it to. How dare you trade away the child I bought especially to raffle off to a lucky winner for a Prey DVD?? I was so disappointed. So now he's mine.

And that's my little family so far! My wishlist has definitely expanded as well. I can't seem to edit the first post in this thread anymore, so I'll just have to update as I go, I spose.