ROM Versions

TamaTalk

Help Support TamaTalk:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Status
Not open for further replies.
Do you have any instructions for ROM testing the tamasuku?
Press and hold the two circular buttons, and while they're held down, press the reset button. Release the circular buttons after releasing the reset button. This should take you to the test mode.

Once you're there I'm not sure which buttons you have to use to navigate past the screen test to get to the version screen, so you might have to play around with the buttons a bit.

 
It worked! Green tamasuku - Ver. 21.2

tamasuku_tab.jpg


I posted some pictures of the rom test for interest.

tvt7gDA.png


  1. Black screen
  2. Press arrows in an anti-clockwise position
  3. Checkered screen
  4. Square
  5. Rom number
  6. Rom test
  7. Sound test
 
A couple pages back I posted a link to a document I've been working on where I'd listed all the known Tamagotchi firmware versions. Previously, the document had basically just copied the version list post I made, but since this turned out looking like a bit of a mess, I've completely remade this part of the document to make everything much nicer to look at.

This list is a bit too big to put into a single Tamatalk post now (without making the page really long!) but it now also includes all the known gaps where extra information is needed.

You can find it here. Any feedback would be appreciated!

 
It's been a while since I gave an update, and I don't really have all that much to add. It seems like there's not really that many versions left to document, so I'm pretty chuffed that we've managed to make it this far and discover this much. ROM versions are an interesting piece of history worth preserving!

But... there has been something on my mind lately regarding some of the really unusual devices I've encountered in my time researching. Every unusual device I've encountered has revealed something new about Tamagotchi's history. Let's briefly talk about a couple of these unusual Tamagotchis.

So a few months ago, a user in the Tamagotchi Collectors Discord received two wave 1 US V1s. We were expecting at least one of the devices to use ROM Version 4.0, but they instead used 4.1 and 4.2. As I recall, this was the first time a wave 1 shell had been observed to use 4.2.

Closer analysis of the 4.1 revealed something else unusual - the hardware was akin to that of a European device instead of an American one. The sound effects, the jumpers on the board, the screen - none of it matched what would be expected of a US device.

Later on it was noted that the paint job on the device was also slightly different to other US devices - the logo was the wrong size and placed slightly differently. This wasn't the first time we'd seen this though - if you've ever compared one of the Spanish language devices to the English ones, you might have noticed the exact same differences in the logo printing.

We still don't fully know why the V1 in question features these differences, but the similarities to the Spanish devices are undeniable - they also use similar hardware to the European devices. It's possible that this V1 was an early South American device, before the implementation of the Spanish language version, but who knows. At the very least, it's an indication that each region had its own unique and interesting history of Tamagotchi releases. Speaking of which...

A while back I mentioned that one particularly rare ROM version for the V4 had been found - A4.7 E. This has so far only been observed once, and its manufacture date was a particularly late 31st March 2008, over a year after the initial release of the V4.

This is not the only unusually late date that has been observed. Some V1s released in Europe and Australia were manufactured in late 2004 to early 2005, resulting in a relatively rare ROM version, 2.4; some European V2 shells weren't released until early 2006; and we've also found a V3 with a manufacture date of 20th August 2007, an extremely late date for a V3.

While I'm not sure that all of these devices have anything particular in common, it has been observed that the extremely late V3 and V4 were actually released in Greece and featured Greek packaging. I'm used to thinking of Europe as being one whole collective when it comes to Tamagotchi releases, but apparently some regions received new versions much later than other regions. Not only that, but evidently, there were some ROM versions which seemed to only make themselves public through these unusual releases.

The V3 had a standard A3 3 ROM, but that hasn't deterred me from hoping that other Greek devices are found in the future (some of the super late ones might have been released in other countries too, I'm not sure - Greece is just a common denominator right now). Could there be a V1 VER 2.5? A V2 VER A.7? Perhaps a late V4.5 or V5? If I do manage to encounter another extremely late release, I'll make sure to find out.

The fact that after all this time we're still encountering new things to learn about Tamagotchis is fascinating to me, and I think that's one of the biggest appeals of this sort of research - you never know what else you have to learn.

 
It's been a little while since my last update since, as I mentioned before, there aren't too many versions left to find. I've been trying to seek out owners of Dekatamas and Stations willing to ROM test their device. The rarity of these devices does not make this a particularly easy task, especially since there's a few store devices out there which, as far as I know, don't seem to have made it out into the wild.

The versions I have to add:
Dekatama Game Centre - VER 9.0
Tamagotchi Meets Kantō (関東) Station - VER 32

Other Deka / Station versions that we will probably have access to at some point:
Dekatama Plus (the V1 Deka, though this seems to be 1.0 according to the V1 patent document)
Dekatama Shopping Centre (Keitai Deka)
Jukutama (Tamasuku Deka)

Dekas and Stations that will probably be harder to get:
Dekatama Royal Market
Dekatama Gotchi King Market
Otokitchi No Omiai Famitama
iD Spot
iDL Spot
iDL Station
P's Station
M!x Spot
M!x Station
Sanrio M!x Spot

As always any help with obtaining any of these version numbers would be appreciated but... yeah these aren't the easiest Tamagotchis to come by  :D

 
Wow, I would love to help in some way! For the Deka's, I have a DekaTama King of Games and a blue Keitai DekaTama. Do either of these need to be tested? If so, how would I go about ROM testing a Dekatama? 

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Wow, I would love to help in some way! For the Deka's, I have a DekaTama King of Games and a blue Keitai DekaTama. Do either of these need to be tested? If so, how would I go about ROM testing a Dekatama? 
The Dekas that I'm interested in are the store Dekas as opposed to the home Dekas, so we've already tested these. It can't hurt to test them again though? In which case you'd need to press B+C+Reset.

 
https://

Here are the tests for my TamaDekas! I'm unsure if these help at all, but it's worth a shot. :)  

Edit:

Got a few more ROM versions! Thanks again to the two people from the Tamagotchi Discord group who helped supply me with this information:

Oden-Kun: 0.2
Akai: 12.0
V5 (US): 32.1
one of those V3-looking Deka Tamagotchis: 11.1
one of those V4-looking Deka Tamagotchis: 1.0

Yeah, I don't know all that much about Deka Tamagotchis; I don't even know what these ones are called, lmao. But this was really cool to find out!
It seems I have repeats, darn! But as for names, the V3 looking one is "KEITAI KAITSU! Tamagotchi Plus Home Deka", and the V4 looking one is "TamaDeka King of Games/Game King". 

 
Last edited by a moderator:
https://

Here are the tests for my TamaDekas! I'm unsure if these help at all, but it's worth a shot. :)  

Edit:

It seems I have repeats, darn! But as for names, the V3 looking one is "KEITAI KAITSU! Tamagotchi Plus Home Deka", and the V4 looking one is "TamaDeka King of Games/Game King". 
Yeah, I'm quite aware of the names now - it's been over a year since that post ;)

 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top