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.