Mega Bootleg Log

[OneSummerDream]

Everything was going fine this morning. It looked like my puppy had grown into an adult, or at least teenager.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B2R1dGtF0rA/

That is, until I accidentally dropped the device. Fortunately the device was undamaged, but it froze on the clock screen and I was forced to reset.

Optimistically speaking, this just means I’ll have a sooner opportunity to try and get a different breed (assuming this has multiple growth patterns). For this, I’ve been keeping the meters around the center, not full like last time. Also, I’m only feeding it kibble. Today, there wasn’t be a whole lot to talk about besides the initial incident, since it was all basic care (or lack thereof) for this first day.

@Penguin-keeper It sure is. I usually have pretty back luck which makes running most 90’s oddpets a pain, especially the ones where you can’t use snacks for happiness. I’ve never ran any other one that does this, so it was a pleasant surprise.

 

[ꌃꍏꌩꂦꍟꈤ_꓄ꍏꂵꍏꁅꂦ꓄ꉓꃅ]

Nice

 

[OneSummerDream]

 

The puppy is now on the second day of its “toddler” stage, and will turn into a teenager tomorrow. I’m not sure how many growth stages there are thanks to the freak mishap last time, but I’m hoping at least 4. In addition to that, two more fakes are now up and running: the Pen/“Game machine” and the JD V3. 

I ended up picking the E.T.-looking character for the 49-in-1.

On the JD V3 I’m trying to see what happens when minimal care is given. I wanted to see if growth was actually based on care or not. It looks like that is the case, and for the teen stage I got the same character I did the first time, which means that I had raised the worse character possible. That’s quite the accomplishment, as I usually at least get the second-best character on vpets.

Before I end today’s entry, I’d like to ask a question: Do you guys think the Pet Vet really is a clone/knockoff? I’m not familiar enough with Nanos, MGA pets, and the like to say so myself. The last thing I want is to include something irrelevant to this log’s theme. 

 

[Eggiweg]

I don't know if the Pet Vet can be considered a clone, but I enjoy seeing it in your logs.

 

[OneSummerDream]

The Pet Vet has been an adult (maybe only teen) for almost 2 days now. I still don’t know how the growth stages work on this thing yet, but we’ll find out. I had to stop running the “Game machine” Gyaoppi clone because it kept resetting itself. It’s a shame that one is broken now, because it has been my favorite retro-style modern multipet. I have some ideas on how to at least temporarily fix it, but in the meantime it’s game over for that one.

One thing worth noting is that the health meter depletion on the Pet Vet is starting to change. Not only does it feel like it’s getting faster overall, but happiness drains twice as fast as the other bars. Oh, and about the JD... It’s still the same character as before. I’m guessing that its growth is based off of how long it’s healthy rather than how old it is like on a real Tamagotchi, if that makes any sense. 

@Eggiweg Thanks! I probably should have just done some research beforehand, but I’m happy the Pet Vet’s inclusion isn’t too annoying lol. 

 

[OneSummerDream]

Okay, I did some research and it turns out the Pet Vet is a clone of MGA programming, not Nano. It’s almost the exact same, except the sprites on the scale menu are replaced with text. Here’s a video that shows MGA’s version:





According to the box, this was released by Randtoy. I think this is another case like Scholastic’s V-Pets where both companies got the rights to use the same software made by someone else, which would explain why two different toy companies would release something so similar. Either that or Randtoy just copied MGA, but I doubt they’d do that when there were more popular vpets to clone.

The instructions are almost exactly the same as that of the Nano Puppy, but with minor differences. It’s not exactly 1:1 with the actual gameplay, but here it is for anyone interested:

As for today’s update- nothing really happened. I had to grind the minigame a bit, but that was it. It turns out I was wrong (yet again), and what happened yesterday was that I filled the other meters but forgot to play the minigame. I’m convinced this is the adult stage, so I’ll run it for a few more days. If it still doesn’t change, I’ll move on and either re-run one of the Color fakes or take another break until a new bootleg comes out.

 

[Penguin-keeper]

Okay, I did some research and it turns out the Pet Vet is a clone of MGA programming, not Nano. It’s almost the exact same, except the sprites on the scale menu are replaced with text.

That explains why the mechanics that you mentioned reminded me of the MGA Penguin.

I think this is another case like Scholastic’s V-Pets where both companies got the rights to use the same software made by someone else, which would explain why two different toy companies would release something so similar.

I reckon that you're right about this, as it seems to have been the case for other MGA pets, too. My MGA Penguin is from a different company and was renamed to Penguin Time, but as far as I know it's otherwise identical.

And on that note, I have to ask, does the Pet Vet also have the very cruel discipline feature that seems to be common to all of the MGA pets, where you have to fill a bar by repeatedly disciplining it until it's full every day rather than by responding to misbehaviour over time?

I’m convinced this is the adult stage, so I’ll run it for a few more days.

Since it's an MGA pet, it should be the adult stage, yes - they only seem to have three stages per growth-path, if memory serves. They're also very quick to run - if I'm remembering it right, their complete lifespan is only about a week or so.

 

[OneSummerDream]

The Pet Vet actually ended up turning into an adult a few days ago, making 4 stages. 

I have no idea what dog breed it’s supposed to resemble, and it has some of the weirdest sprites I’ve seen on a vpet. Get a look at this eating sprite:

Woah

Unfortunately, it died this morning.

My guess is that it went poo while it was sleeping, and I didn’t clean it in time which resulted in it getting sick and then dying. That’s one thing I find annoying about this game. Then again, I don’t know for sure if that’s the reason. It couldn’t be the bars being empty as I always had them at least a third full, but maybe that wasn’t enough.

On second thought, I’m not sure if Pet Vet counts as a clone or not, so I won’t log it in this thread anymore. It makes me want to start a normal log sometime.

@Penguin-keeper Yes, it does have that type of discipline bar. I had no idea how it worked until a few hours into my first run. How filling discipline works + the animation for it is sort of shocking, honestly. 

 

[Eggiweg]

That's a cute tail sprite!  I would love to continue seeing the Pet Vet in this log or another of your logs ^^.

 

[Penguin-keeper]

I have no idea what dog breed it’s supposed to resemble, and it has some of the weirdest sprites I’ve seen on a vpet.

The curly tail and pointy ears make me think of a Shiba Inu.

Unfortunately, it died this morning.

My guess is that it went poo while it was sleeping, and I didn’t clean it in time which resulted in it getting sick and then dying.

It might just be because the lifespan on the MGA pets is nine days, too. Unless something was changed on the Pet Vet, it looks like you got the "good ending", though - the "bad" ones don't have a goodbye message, in my experience with the MGA Penguin.

@Penguin-keeper Yes, it does have that type of discipline bar. I had no idea how it worked until a few hours into my first run. How filling discipline works + the animation for it is sort of shocking, honestly. 

It really is.

For anyone who hasn't seen this particularly dubious feature of the MGA pets and doesn't know what we're talking about, I reacted with shock to it in my own log here back when I first saw it. It's really cruel.

 

[fuzzyeye]

Aww poor thing

The Pet Vet actually ended up turning into an adult a few days ago, making 4 stages. 

I have no idea what dog breed it’s supposed to resemble, and it has some of the weirdest sprites I’ve seen on a vpet. Get a look at this eating sprite:

Woah

Unfortunately, it died this morning.

My guess is that it went poo while it was sleeping, and I didn’t clean it in time which resulted in it getting sick and then dying. That’s one thing I find annoying about this game. Then again, I don’t know for sure if that’s the reason. It couldn’t be the bars being empty as I always had them at least a third full, but maybe that wasn’t enough.

On second thought, I’m not sure if Pet Vet counts as a clone or not, so I won’t log it in this thread anymore. It makes me want to start a normal log sometime.

@Penguin-keeper Yes, it does have that type of discipline bar. I had no idea how it worked until a few hours into my first run. How filling discipline works + the animation for it is sort of shocking, honestly. 

aw poor puppy

Sorry that your puppy died

 

[Joc]

Some of these characters are also from the Scholastic V-Pets, which is no surprise as it plays similarly. Here's another version of the Scholastic pet I found a while, btw:

Wow, I already figured bootlegs were legal because of school-related concerns regarding the real things, but I didn't know that officially school-related organisations actually distributed them themselves. Thanks for affirming my paranoia.

This forum has an old thread about it, which shows it was distributed around 2007.



Any listings with this programming or shell on eBay?

 

[Penguin-keeper]

Wow, I already figured bootlegs were legal because of school-related concerns regarding the real things, but I didn't know that officially school-related organisations actually distributed them themselves. Thanks for affirming my paranoia.

Just curious, since educators' concerns are about how devices like this are a distraction in class, how is a bootleg exempt from those concerns? Additionally, what power do educators hold over international copyright law that allows for it to be circumvented by companies with zero relation to educational institutions in any country? Moreover, this isn't even a bootleg - there's nothing about it that's trying to fool anybody. This conspiracy theory really doesn't hold up.

Also, Scholastic isn't officially related to any schools - they're a global publishing business that aims their offerings at schoolkids and their parents. That's why they carried this not-even-a-bootleg virtual pet in the first place.

 

[Joc]

Just curious, since educators' concerns are about how devices like this are a distraction in class, how is a bootleg exempt from those concerns?

Because these bootlegs aren't fun for more than a few weeks. From my experience, that death screen in the picture is the only mechanic guaranteed to work properly.

Additionally, what power do educators hold over international copyright law that allows for it to be circumvented by companies with zero relation to educational institutions in any country?

They don't, but the people who do won't put effort in protecting what does not benefit adult society.

Moreover, this isn't even a bootleg - there's nothing about it that's trying to fool anybody.

The thread mentions it has Maskutchi and Memetchi. I suppose the case/shell is pretty distinct though.

Also, Scholastic isn't officially related to any schools - they're a global publishing business that aims their offerings at schoolkids and their parents. That's why they carried this not-even-a-bootleg virtual pet in the first place.

Schools run off these books... But I suppose "official" isn't the right word.

 

[Penguin-keeper]

Because these bootlegs aren't fun for more than a few weeks. From my experience, that death screen in the picture is the only mechanic guaranteed to work properly.

But they're still a distraction in classrooms, which is the only concern of educators (and, as one of the posts in the linked thread said, "Copies don't sell as much as a real thing though."). This conspiracy does hinge on an ongoing 24-years-and-counting conspiracy amongst the mysterious adult world to take down Bandai and the Tamagotchi, rather than personal opinions about the death screens on competing virtual pet products, correct?

They don't, but the people who do won't put effort in protecting what does not benefit adult society.

So, how come the similarly-decried "fad" that was Pokemon, which had even more items banned from schools due to them being a distraction and a well-documented cause of playground and classroom fights and violence towards teachers, and which was the subject of far more criticism from educators and other community figures than Tamagotchi ever was, became the world's biggest media-franchise, which it remains to this day?

Likewise, why is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (or, as it was dubbed in the UK at the time due to the 1980s UK and Europe ban on ninjas, "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles" ) still huge more than 30 years later?

Superman? Batman? Rock & Roll? The Simpsons? Rap? Boy-bands? Video games? Loom bands? Fidget-spinners? Video games again? We're talking just some of the major educator/community concerns of the 1930s to the present-day, here.

All still around, all doing just fine, and none of these much bigger cultural phenomena were the subject of anything like this alleged quarter-century-long conspiracy to take down the Tamagotchi, and only the Tamagotchi. Why was the Tamagotchi selectively singled out for a worldwide adult-run conspiracy, when the nurturing toy wasn't ever anywhere near as big of a concern to parents, educators, and their communities as any of these other things, which all stood accused of corrupting the youth or even encouraging violence and cruelty in their respective times?

With loom bands there were even documented cases of physical injuries that were caused by the bands cutting off circulation, and at least one case of a blinding that occurred due to a band striking a child's eye when a sibling lost their grip whilst using them to make a bracelet, but I haven't heard of any adult-run conspiracy against those - apparently kids injuring wrists and hands, and being blinded, was ok by these conspirators, even though these are things that will affect future employment opportunities for the victims. I guess that they were too focussed on combatting Bandai by selectively allowing school-teachers to relax international copyright laws because one type of beeping thing is a distraction in their classrooms but another type of beeping thing isn't?

The thread mentions it has Maskutchi and Memetchi.

The thread mentions that, though the first mention comes from a post that also uses the description "It starts out looking like a Tamagotchi Babytchi; It's worth noting that "looking like" is usually used as a synonym for "similar to". A later post, which claims that real Tamagotchi characters were copied provides no proof and is no more descriptive than the post that uses "looking like", but it does provide a frothy amount of exclamation-marks in its stead.

It also bears mentioning that, because of the TamaTalk era that it's from, the thread also features generous amounts of such well-considered criticisms as "It's soooo copying!", "i hate schoolastic!!!!", "LOLZ", "Real Tamaz are wayy bata!!", "The fake tamagotchi ,copy is such a big huge fat... DUMB THING THAT I'M MAD AT!!! IT MAKES ME SICK!!! D:<", with only a couple of reasonable posts mixed in (of particular note, the ones by @Gejitchi and @Rainbow_flower, as well as @binary's sensible rule about the likely quality of books with included premiums), and very few people understanding that it's not a fake; This doesn't exactly inspire the greatest confidence in what little information is provided about the product.

I suppose the case/shell is pretty distinct though.

It is! It also very clearly says "MY PET" on it - there's nothing on it or about it that would make anyone think that it's a Tamagotchi or even a Bandai product. It certainly wouldn't trick anyone, as one post in that old thread suggested.

Those calling it a "fake Tamagotchi" in that thread are just as guilty of genericising the noun as anyone who mistakenly uses "Tamagotchi" as a term to mean any kind of virtual pet, incidentally. Deliberately misusing the word to damage the brand is part of the conspiracy to take down the Tamagotchi, if my memory of other threads where it's been mentioned serves me correctly - clearly those posts are involved in trying to discredit Bandai and trick the world into forgetting what a real Tamagotchi is, so wouldn't that make your newly-added likes on those old posts an actively-contributing part of the conspiracy too, now?

Schools run off these books... But I suppose "official" isn't the right word.

Not even close, on either count, I'm afraid. According to Scholastic here, schools can earn tiny commissions that are basically analogous to supermarket loyalty-card points by offering Scholastic book club sales leaflets and running Scholastic Book Fair events, and those tiny reward amounts can be saved and put towards buying more children's books for their school - they don't even get a discount on the books, nor can the commissions be used to purchase study materials.

It's just a way of stretching their budget to procure more reading materials, and their company is no more associated with running a school than the British supermarket Tesco was when they were running their "Computers for Schools" voucher schemes back in the 1990s (in those, people saved up tokens from said supermarket, which were worth less than 1p each, and then contributed them to their local school en-masse, and when the schools had enough they could then exchange them for new computing equipment at a reduced cost; Tesco had no say in running their schools as a result of this).

There really is no conspiracy here - as Occam's Razor tells us, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one, and the single-point "Teachers don't want distractions in their classrooms." is a far simpler explanation than the "There is an international conspiracy and collusion by adult society to encourage bootleg Tamagotchis so as to make people forget about the real ones and teachers would rather have bootlegs in their classrooms for that reason and that's why a company that sells products to schoolkids was offering a virtual pet during a 2000s comeback of the virtual pet toy-category."

 

[Joc]

This has nothing to do with OneSummerDream's log anymore, maybe the thread should be split...

But they're still a distraction in classrooms, which is the only concern of educators (and, as one of the posts in the linked thread said, "Copies don't sell as much as a real thing though."). This conspiracy does hinge on an ongoing 24-years-and-counting conspiracy amongst the mysterious adult world to take down Bandai and the Tamagotchi, rather than personal opinions about the death screens on competing virtual pet products, correct?

A bootleg is only a classroom distraction for a brief time before it disappears into the junk drawer forever because it isn't fun. Individual copies don't sell anywhere near as much as a real thing, but all copies combined probably sold more in many countries.

The death screen comment was just a joke about the quality of bootlegs. Nothing happens on the death screen, so at least you can't mess that up.

So, how come the similarly-decried "fad" that was Pokemon, which had even more items banned from schools due to them being a distraction and a well-documented cause of playground and classroom fights and violence towards teachers, and which was the subject of far more criticism from educators and other community figures than Tamagotchi ever was, became the world's biggest media-franchise, which it remains to this day?

Likewise, why is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (or, as it was dubbed in the UK at the time due to the 1980s UK and Europe ban on ninjas, "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles"  ) still huge more than 30 years later?

Superman? Batman? Rock & Roll? The Simpsons? Rap? Boy-bands? Video games? Loom bands? Fidget-spinners? Video games again? We're talking just some of the major educator/community concerns of the 1930s to the present-day, here.

Pokémon became the world's biggest media franchise because The Pokémon Company, Nintendo of America, and Nintendo of Europe are competent companies who kept working through the onslaught, unlike the morons at Bandai America and Bandai Europe who let themselves be bullied out.

But even they took massive hits. When the Nintendo DS got bombarded by widely available flashcards and the DSi failed to combat them, Apple and Google took advantage of the decline in portable game development to allow In App Purchase-based games into their stores, which they previously forbade. Now many children are only allowed by their parents to play IAP-games, which are unfun on purpose (to goad you into the in app purchases).

Music suffers as well. Spotify and YouTube pay artists very little but get away with it because the alternative is piracy.

Bootlegging is less effective against TV series, because most people watch these on TV channels, and if a TV channel makes a fake version of your series you can easily sue them.

All still around, all doing just fine, and none of these much bigger cultural phenomena were the subject of anything like this alleged quarter-century-long conspiracy to take down the Tamagotchi, and only the Tamagotchi. Why was the Tamagotchi selectively singled out for a worldwide adult-run conspiracy, when the nurturing toy wasn't ever anywhere near as big of a concern to parents, educators, and their communities as any of these other things, which all stood accused of corrupting the youth or even encouraging violence and cruelty in their respective times?

Most of the time a product either survives or doesn't. Tamagotchi is an unusual case because it's alive yet has been barely available. If Bandai Japan was just as incompetent as Bandai America and Bandai Europe, this forum would probably not exist. Makes you wonder what dead products from smaller creators we're all missing out on.

There really is no conspiracy here - as Occam's Razor tells us, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one, and the single-point "Teachers don't want distractions in their classrooms." is a far simpler explanation than the "There is an international conspiracy and collusion by adult society to encourage bootleg Tamagotchis so as to make people forget about the real ones and teachers would rather have bootlegs in their classrooms for that reason and that's why a company that sells products to schoolkids was offering a virtual pet during a 2000s comeback of the virtual pet toy-category."

There doesn't need to be a conspiracy. Teachers don't like product ➔ News complains about product ➔ People supposed to be in charge of enforcing copyright neglect their duties.

 

[Penguin-keeper]

This has nothing to do with OneSummerDream's log anymore, maybe the thread should be split...

There's not a lot of point, here - there's not a lot else left to be said, really.

A bootleg is only a classroom distraction for a brief time before it disappears into the junk drawer forever because it isn't fun. Individual copies don't sell anywhere near as much as a real thing, but all copies combined probably sold more in many countries.

The death screen comment was just a joke about the quality of bootlegs. Nothing happens on the death screen, so at least you can't mess that up.

That doesn't matter - it's still a distraction, and that is literally the only issue for teachers. It begins and ends there - genuine or competitor or bootleg or just someone's beeping alarm on their watch or their phone*, it doesn't matter. And they have no reason to go beyond that - they just want to get on with doing their jobs, and attacking international business doesn't fall under their remit.

*Let's not even get started on how distracting those are.

Pokémon became the world's biggest media franchise because The Pokémon Company, Nintendo of America, and Nintendo of Europe are competent companies who kept working through the onslaught, unlike the morons at Bandai America and Bandai Europe who let themselves be bullied out.

Bandai didn't let themselves get bullied out, though - the business prospects for the virtual pet toy category became less rosy in the 1990s because of market oversaturation, so they put their products on hiatus for a few years, as did plenty of other companies who had been making competing products. That's really all that happened.

But even they took massive hits. When the Nintendo DS got bombarded by widely available flashcards and the DSi failed to combat them, Apple and Google took advantage of the decline in portable game development to allow In App Purchase-based games into their stores, which they previously forbade. Now many children are only allowed by their parents to play IAP-games, which are unfun on purpose (to goad you into the in app purchases).

The Pokemon franchise started on the original Game Boy, though, and there were several generations between that and the DS. And the Nintendo DS family was and remains the best-selling video game console of all-time at the time of writing, so it wasn't affected that badly. It was for this reason, and no other, that the 3DS did not catch up to it - it simply couldn't after that sort of performance, and that merely happened to coincide with the acceptance of a general-purpose technology that could also be used to run passable games. Video game piracy happens on all platforms, unfortunately, and it always has - no conspiracy against one particular media franchise there.

You're right that cheaply-made mobile games are just manipulative cash-extraction programs (though such schemes started on dedicated consoles, to the best of my knowledge), but many parents only allowing these is a simple side-effect of the cost of living - these things appear to be "free", and to non-enthusiasts one game is the same as any other, so they don't see the difference between getting a manipulative freebie and paying £30 to £70 for a complete product, nor the difference between a dedicated machine meant for video games versus an all-purpose phone or tablet, thus we have this situation. No conspiracy there, either - it wasn't much different during the era of the Nokia 3110, where some parents would give their kids the built-in Snake game to play, rather than purchasing dedicated gaming equipment.

Music suffers as well. Spotify and YouTube pay artists very little but get away with it because the alternative is piracy.

Artists have other forms of income, though, and tours and merchandise have always had higher profit margins than the music itself, because the record-labels have always given them a raw deal since time immemorial, too. Unfortunately, music-piracy existed long before public internet access did.

Bootlegging is less effective against TV series, because most people watch these on TV channels, and if a TV channel makes a fake version of your series you can easily sue them.

Actually, I haven't seen anyone managing to sue Chinese companies for bootleg shows (yes, these exist, the same as bootleg toys do, amazingly enough - they're very much like people who trace over artwork, and often involve exactly that! ). This, as with bootleg toys, is because of a lack of observing international copyright laws and their associated treaties that a lot of countries are signed up to.

Most of the time a product either survives or doesn't. Tamagotchi is an unusual case because it's alive yet has been barely available. If Bandai Japan was just as incompetent as Bandai America and Bandai Europe, this forum would probably not exist. Makes you wonder what dead products from smaller creators we're all missing out on.

I wonder too, but as I said above, it's nothing to do with incompetence - just simple unfortunate business circumstances that I'm guessing that they weren't prepared for. The Tamagotchi line blew up in an unimaginable way back then because it hit all the right notes, after all. It all ended up a bit like a microcosm of what happened with the Atari 2600...

There doesn't need to be a conspiracy. Teachers don't like product ➔ News complains about product ➔ People supposed to be in charge of enforcing copyright neglect their duties.

What you are describing is a conspiracy, though. And what is described here simply doesn't happen - people wouldn't risk losing their hard-earned business-related jobs because of school-teachers' eternal concerns about toys and fads disrupting classrooms. The news simply makes a big deal about things because that's part of their business-model - sensationalism still sells papers, after all! (Or, clickbait sells subscriptions, in this day and age, I guess. )

We could go back and forth on this all day, though, I'm sure. All that I can suggest to you at this point is to learn more about the adult world, and in particular about the simple basics of business (businesses exist to make and keep customers, competition hinges on this, counterfeits are inevitable for both the originals and the competitors because not all businesses are honest and that's a whole rabbit-hole in and of itself, and if governments have to interfere in businesses it's usually with very good reason and those reasons are very well-publicised and all parties are subject to scrutiny), and also international copyright laws and why and how certain countries who aren't part of international treaties disrupt them, and you'll see how paper-thin such conspiracy-theories are - learning about these things cuts out all of the "middlemen" that make up the conspiracy part, and you may very well find the facts to be much more interesting than the fiction.

I'm one of those rare types who finds following business affairs to be interesting - I have a great time with it and I highly recommend it. You already see right through things like the business-model of free-to-play mobile "games", and you see the raw deal that musicians get from their core business offerings, which puts you ahead of most of the population if we look at the figures that these things pull in (and I'm sure that you also see that corporate social-media presences aren't our friends even though many people act like they are and end up being manipulated by this, and so on, too) - this only scratches the surface, and there's so much more to get your teeth into beyond that. Actually, I recommend this to everyone, because even knowing the barebones basics about this stuff provides benefits in daily life, since we live in an era where we interact with companies on a daily basis, in far-reaching and sometimes manipulative ways that were never possible in previous decades. I started out with learning about the "Blue Ocean" theory and went from there, so if you're interested, that's a good place to start, because it's quite easy to digest, and will teach you about both conventional and unconventional approaches to business from the get-go.

I'm going to bow out, here, as we have our own takes on the Tamagotchi bootleg situation, and that is what it is. Still, please do keep making high-quality posts - I may not agree with conspiracy-theories, but I always respect and enjoy your contributions, as they're always well-written and interesting to read and they always contribute positively to discussions, and I very much enjoyed this exchange. Thankyou, and please keep it up.

 

[Tama-Hacker]

Hello and welcome to my mega bootleg log, and also first log ever! 
I will be running a bunch of different bootlegs and knockoffs, some of which are obscure. If you have any questions about one, please leave a question and I will reply to it in the next entry.

Where to find fakes: eBay is good for older knockoffs from the 90's, while Aliexpress is great for finding new ones. Taobao also has a lot,  but you might need a middleman depending on where you live. I don't recommend buying any besides M&D ones (QPet, Nana Moon, etc.) because they tend to be really bad otherwise.

First up is the Crystal Warriors 10th Anniversary game. Info links:

English instructions here.

Baidu article here.

 All 130 episodes of Crystal Warriors here.

Pics of the box.

After doing some research it turns out the cartoon was only 8 years old at the time these were released, but apparently in order to coincide with the Pendulum 20th Anniversaries M&D made this rerelease. The instructions also state that there are 4 different versions, similar to the real Pendulum releases, but this is false and they all have Vritramon. (However, the original release of this did have 4 and had more care features, and there's always a possibility of M&D releasing more in the future.) This probably isn’t going to fool anyone, but is it a bad knockoff? Surprisingly, no. I’ve never played a Digimon before and am not that familiar with them, but from what I’ve seen it is kinda similar.
There are 6 different tournaments, and I have 3 more to go. Then, there is a final boss. After that I have to replay through everything again in order to get 200% completion, so nothing will be missed. 
 

Recap of Day 1, Sorry no photos this time: 
I started the Crystal Warrior up, and right off the bat I knew this wasn’t going to be a standard vpet. It’s more of a game that mimics a virtual pet. This was surprising since the Nana Moon minis have all their features entact, but not these. Unfortunately, when M&D pumped these out to cash in on the anniversary Pendulums, they got rid of pet functions. There's still an incentive to check on it, since its power will slowly deplete every few hours. I just put the tab back in when I'm busy since it has a save feature.

After reading the instructions and grinding with the 3 games to buy a crystal, it was time to enter the first tournament. Evolving the monster makes it very OP, rendering the Help feature obsolete since using crystals to evolve is necessary to win. I had no idea what was going on, but it was a swift victory. The second one was harder, since I tried relying on the Help. That ended up backfiring, and I lost during the 4th round. For “Help,” there are 3 other characters to choose from, which are from the 3 other versions. Each swapped warrior replaces Vritramon and evolves into its second form to attack, but can only be used once per tournament. Battles only last a few rounds, even if both are still standing. Whoever has the most HP left wins. Since HP doesn’t replenish between rounds, I was lucky to have even made it that far. When you lose, the warrior’s power/training bar stays the same but you have to try again. There’s a progress page that shows total battles won (regardless if the tourney is lost) and the total completion rate. 
After grinding for more money and rebuying the crystal, it was pretty easy. Rinse and repeat for round 3, and I have 3 more to go.

Now, this is kind of a nitpick, but the spritework on this is kind of mediocre. Some of the characters look poorly drawn. I understand that a lot of detail needs to be added in a small space, but sometimes the results leave me scratching my head.



I mean, I can kind of see how the sprite matches the drawing, but this was my first impression without knowing what it was supposed to be.

This is the same v-pet I have except mine is called "Distal-4 Crystal Fighter". From what I've seen the version I own is newer and has more features than this one. I will try to post some more info on it elsewhere. Great topic by the way!

 

[Tama-Hacker]

Never mind. I have the same kind. I just didn't read the first post too closely.

 

[Tama-Hacker]

I successfully changed the character on the Distal-4! This proves the other characters are (technically) available. All you need to do is disassemble the Distal. Just under the LCD screen you should see several jumper pins with the letters NC nearby. Get a soldering iron and put a glob of solder on one of the unused jumper pins. Different pins equals different characters, so experiment till you find the one you want. That's all you gotta do! Basic soldering skills required