tamagotchi keitai cellphone connection?

[SailorGotchi]

hi everyone,
as we know, some tama collectors still run the keitai tamagotchi in 2022. however, what has interested me the most about it was the cellphone connection feature, which seems to be basically the only functionality of this tama that isn't used nowadays.
if you didn't know, the keitai tama had a feature where you could connect it to compatible cellphones (this option was even a main selling point for it, since the "keitai" in its name means "cellphone" in japanese). now, as interested as i am in researching about this functionality, i haven't come across a single video or blog post online about how this worked or what it did. the most i've found is a picture (attached below) of one of these tamas connecting to a tamagotchi-themed flip phone using a code system, similar to the password system of the western connection tamas.


obviously, since there's so little information online about this connectivity feature, it's really hard to research anything about it.
my question is: does anyone have any photos/videos/information of this feature, or, by any chance, a compatible cellphone and the tama? i'm sure that you'll make a great contribution to the tamagotchi community by providing any information you know

 

[bunbun]

this is an interesting point, i'd be curious to find out how this functions as well. on a side note, i miss the flip phone era of keitai culture..

 

[SailorGotchi]

on a side note, i miss the flip phone era of keitai culture..

me too! aside from the aesthetic, keitais also had more features than their western flip-phone counterparts... there was even a waterproof keitai with fingerprint reading back in the mid 2000s!

 

[bunbun]

me too! aside from the aesthetic, keitais also had more features than their western flip-phone counterparts... there was even a waterproof keitai with fingerprint reading back in the mid 2000s!

oh yes, there were many features ahead of their time introduced to the mobile phone market in japan. it's a shame it was completely overlooked by the rest of the world. that's why the phenomenon is compared to the galapagos island syndrome now.

 

[Syddie]

Hey there! I'm sorry if any of this information is redundant or un-needed, but I had a look around online to see if I could find anything. - I wasn't very successful either, but thought I'd share a couple of the things I was able to just in case.

From the Tamagotchi wiki:

With the release of the Keitai, a game program became available for cell phones. The Keitai could generate an access code (ten numbers, two rows, five numbers per row) that can be used to login to the cell phone game. There, the user's Tamagotchi may play games to earn money, find a mate, buy items, travel, and visit parents. The cell phone game would then generate a logout code. While it could not be accessed outside of Japan, this later became the backbone for the main capabilities of Tamatown.com.

I tried searching on Youtube for the Japanese title of the gaming, thinking it might come up with more results that might show it that way - but I didn't have much luck; I found a lot of videos about the tama, but none of the keitai connection in action.

One thing I was about to find were a few uploads of the manuals, I found a video of it during that google search, and additional copies of it online in it's own search.

A full upload of the manual (though in Japanese!) can be found in
Video format:
or scan/image format: https://www.tamatalk.com/pixelmood/keitai_instructions.htm or https://www.dropbox.com/s/z0hvur70nlfc5tq/Keitai_Manual.pdf?dl=0
I don't speak Japanese, so the manual wasn't very helpful to me except to scan through to see if I could find any clear image instructions, but I figured I'd link it incase you might find it helpful.

With that, I was able to find an English guide for the Keitai ( https://www.tamatalk.com/pixelmood/keitai_instruction.htm ) I'm unsure if it covers the manual in whole, but that could likely be easy to work out.
I at first thought that I'd found more information about what games the cellphone connection would give you, via that instruction page, only to realise that it was referring to connecting two tamas. (my bad on that one lolll)

What I did find on there that might be helpful was this:

A Japanese diagram which (seems to be) describing the different connection options for the Keitai Tama. - I think that a translation of that bullet list underneath the cellphone could have more information? Or the Japanese manual.
Typing that bullet list (or the manual) into google translate may even give some more answers, but I don't personally have the energy to do it as of now.

If it exists, a Japan-based tamagotchi wiki entry, or a ja.wikipedia.org entry about the particular Tama might have more information. (You can use google translate to translate pages automatically from many browsers I believe, or look it up and have google translate translate a page on its own)


TLDR; The Tamagotchi wiki has some info about the features of connecting ( https://tamagotchi.fandom.com/wiki/Keitai_Kaitsuu_Tamagotchi_Plus#Cell_Phone_Communication ). I was also unable to find any videos of it in action, or on the connection process. The Japanese manual may have more information on these features.

( video of Japanese manual:
image scans of Japanese manual: https://www.tamatalk.com/pixelmood/keitai_instructions.htm or https://www.dropbox.com/s/z0hvur70nlfc5tq/Keitai_Manual.pdf?dl=0 )

Apologies again if any of this information is redundant or unwanted !! and I will have a look again if I can find anything (though ofcourse it's unlikely), as I just didn't want to do too much searching today. -Either way, I look forward to it if any more information gets found,, this seems really cool.

 

[SailorGotchi]

Hey there! I'm sorry if any of this information is redundant or un-needed, but I had a look around online to see if I could find anything. - I wasn't very successful either, but thought I'd share a couple of the things I was able to just in case.

From the Tamagotchi wiki:


I tried searching on Youtube for the Japanese title of the gaming, thinking it might come up with more results that might show it that way - but I didn't have much luck; I found a lot of videos about the tama, but none of the keitai connection in action.

One thing I was about to find were a few uploads of the manuals, I found a video of it during that google search, and additional copies of it online in it's own search.

A full upload of the manual (though in Japanese!) can be found in
Video format:
or scan/image format: https://www.tamatalk.com/pixelmood/keitai_instructions.htm or https://www.dropbox.com/s/z0hvur70nlfc5tq/Keitai_Manual.pdf?dl=0
I don't speak Japanese, so the manual wasn't very helpful to me except to scan through to see if I could find any clear image instructions, but I figured I'd link it incase you might find it helpful.

With that, I was able to find an English guide for the Keitai ( https://www.tamatalk.com/pixelmood/keitai_instruction.htm ) I'm unsure if it covers the manual in whole, but that could likely be easy to work out.
I at first thought that I'd found more information about what games the cellphone connection would give you, via that instruction page, only to realise that it was referring to connecting two tamas. (my bad on that one lolll)

What I did find on there that might be helpful was this:

A Japanese diagram which (seems to be) describing the different connection options for the Keitai Tama. - I think that a translation of that bullet list underneath the cellphone could have more information? Or the Japanese manual.
Typing that bullet list (or the manual) into google translate may even give some more answers, but I don't personally have the energy to do it as of now.

If it exists, a Japan-based tamagotchi wiki entry, or a ja.wikipedia.org entry about the particular Tama might have more information. (You can use google translate to translate pages automatically from many browsers I believe, or look it up and have google translate translate a page on its own)


TLDR; The Tamagotchi wiki has some info about the features of connecting ( https://tamagotchi.fandom.com/wiki/Keitai_Kaitsuu_Tamagotchi_Plus#Cell_Phone_Communication ). I was also unable to find any videos of it in action, or on the connection process. The Japanese manual may have more information on these features.

( video of Japanese manual:
image scans of Japanese manual: https://www.tamatalk.com/pixelmood/keitai_instructions.htm or https://www.dropbox.com/s/z0hvur70nlfc5tq/Keitai_Manual.pdf?dl=0 )

Apologies again if any of this information is redundant or unwanted !! and I will have a look again if I can find anything (though ofcourse it's unlikely), as I just didn't want to do too much searching today. -Either way, I look forward to it if any more information gets found,, this seems really cool.

thank you so much for the information! don't worry, none of this is redundant: it's interesting to see manuals, guides and diagrams for old tamas this info is always valuable in a hobby that (often) deals with old toys: what you just included in your post can easily become lost media, and you just helped not only to preserve this particular diagram and some more info about the connection process, but also to present it to a new audience of people that may not know that it even exists (like me... i haven't seen a lot of this stuff before)
i'm sure your information will help the tama community find out more about this feature and about the keitai tama in general. again, thanks for taking time out of your day to compile this info! it'd be nice if you found out more about this, but if you can't, don't stress it. and i agree, this feature seems really cool, especially for the time! kind of like the modern meets app, but with flip-phones back in 2000s japan

now, about the info from the tama wiki: since this uses log-in and log-out codes, i can't help but wonder if it somehow connects to an online server like tamatown... hopefully not though, because if it's just a local game without internet access, it can still be used in 2022, and no server shut-downs can stop us from playing it in the future however, even if it IS server-based, i'd assume that all the sprites and game data are still on the device itself, so it wouldn't be very hard to create a fan-made server and revive the game that way. with the prices of data internet back then though, i'd take an educated guess and assume that the game doesn't require internet, just to keep costs low on the consumer's end. (hopefully the bandai of this era is less greedy than nintendo, who made a mobile adaptor for the gameboy that was notorious for its high data usage)
now, since the keitai tama isn't particularly rare, the next challenge is probably to find a list of compatible phones, buy one of them from a japanese auction site and somehow find the game file (if it isn't included in the phone already). i can definitely see this turning into a mission for the tamagotchi community, and i'm surprised this research didn't start sooner, considering that the marketing for the keitai tama touts the phone connecting feature
by the way, i found more photos of the the tamagotchi flip-phone that connected to the keitai tama. it seems pretty rare, so i hope this isn't the only phone that was compatible with this feature.

 

[bunbun]

that phone is so adorable!! can't get over the design

 

[SailorGotchi]

update: i've found a lot more information online by googling "tamagotchi connecting to cellphone" in japanese!

firstly, this article, on the tamatalk domain itself:

Bandai has now tweaked the infra-red port to let you communicate with a cellphone. You can shop using points youfve built up by raising the creature, or send it off on holiday via your phone. I think they'll only work with some Japanese providers so far , where you can download the right application for your phone.

this basically confirms the information on the rest of the articles i've found today except for a slight inconsistency, which i'll get to later. just as i suspected, the app is downloadable for normal cellphones and is likely included in the special tamagotchi one. the article also talked about a tamagotchi game for cellphones which may or may not be related to this, where you can apparently play fortune-telling games with your tamagotchi.

next, another article in english:

This was a version of tamagotchi released only in Japan. It has the special ability of connecting to cell phones. The owner of the cell phone has to download a tamagotchi game onto their cell phone. The Keitai has an aerial used for connecting to the cell phones. When connecting to the cell phone, the tamagotchi goes to the phone and on it can visit its parents, play games, or get married. It can also collect food from each region of Japan through ten-digit passwords generated by the phone.

the aerial part is likely not true since that's never been used as anything more than a piece of plastic to symbolize the connection capabilities, however i think by now you've noticed the inconsistency: some online sources talk about the tamagotchi connecting to the phone using infrared, and others (such as the tamagotchi wiki) mention a log-in/log-out code system. maybe it used different systems for different game modes? the game mode where you can collect food from each region of Japan is very interesting, especially considering the fact that it seems to use a password system similar to the western v3, or the "souvenir collecting" feature of the v5 tamatown. according to this guide, the keitai has different options for connecting to a cell phone:

• Mobile Phone (ケータイ)
  • Postal (ゆうびん)
    • Password (ぱすわーど)
    • Communication (つうしん)
  • Outing (おでかけ)
    • Overseas Travel (かいがいりょこう)
    • Specialty Exchange (めいさんこうかん)

regardless, now let's look at a japanese article published in october 2004, that i found and translated using google translate. this has got to be the most extensive information online regarding this feature, and it answers some of our questions nicely.

With the new product, while maintaining the fun of nurturing play, we have evolved the infrared communication between Tamagotchi, which was popular in "Tamagotchi Plus", and now it can be linked with mobile phones.

this sentence seems to imply that the tamagotchi connected to cellphones using infrared, which basically brings up as many questions as it just answered, since it contributes to the inconsistency between articles. however, i'd trust this source more since it's the local media of the time and not an online article written a decade later.

If you download the "Tamagotchi Park" app from the mobile-only site, you can enjoy "shopping" using the "Gotchi points" stored in the main body of Tamagotchi, reunite with parents who broke up in the main body of Ketama, and the main body. You can have the Tamagotchi inside go out on your mobile phone.

as we can see, just like the first article, this confirmed my suspicions: the app is indeed downloadable. this part also shows us some of the features, which seem very intriguing, almost like a portable version of tamatown! let's just hope that the app has been archived, since it's probably just a simple executable that's likely been written in J2ME like most mobile games of that era.

The dedicated site will open sequentially from November 23rd. Compatible models are DoCoMo's 504i / is, 505i / is, 506i, FOMA2000 series, 900i series, au BREW 2.0 or higher compatible terminals, and Vodafone's 50K V app compatible models.

now THIS is one of the questions i wanted answered. not only does it show us the date when the site was opened (which means we may be able to still access the game's download page using the wayback machine), but it also contains a comprehensive list of the supported phone models. this means that we can research these phones further, in order to find out if they all include infrared and on which architecture they run so we can find out more about the app. also, now that we know the exact supported models, my plan of purchasing random phones on japanese auction sites and hoping that they have the game installed (or at least having the reassurance that, if the game is found some day, then it'll be able to run on it) may work! maybe this whole endeavor will be a new mission for the tamagotchi community, up there with recovering all of tamatown? i'm very excited to see what comes of this in the future!

 

[atompalace]

Came to TamaTalk partly to find out whether someone’s cracked the keitai codes!!!

Which has been done for the connexion v3 and v4/4.5:
I’ve used it myself and while not 100% foolproof it was so fab to get things once restricted to TamaTown!

It’d be fantastic to have this sort of thing for the keitai I wonder if anyone from Japanese tama communities has tried? I’ve tried deepdiving for tama forums before and didn’t have much luck, though I was focusing on a specific tama and only had page translate to help.

The dream would be to recreate and translate the app by mining the app off a working phone to crack the code, but maybe finding the phone and using trial and error is the best first step, lol

 

[Bentobuff]

Came to TamaTalk partly to find out whether someone’s cracked the keitai codes!!!

Which has been done for the connexion v3 and v4/4.5:
I’ve used it myself and while not 100% foolproof it was so fab to get things once restricted to TamaTown!

It’d be fantastic to have this sort of thing for the keitai I wonder if anyone from Japanese tama communities has tried? I’ve tried deepdiving for tama forums before and didn’t have much luck, though I was focusing on a specific tama and only had page translate to help.

The dream would be to recreate and translate the app by mining the app off a working phone to crack the code, but maybe finding the phone and using trial and error is the best first step, lol

It's not the wireless options, but there IS enwarehouse for connection era Japanese tamas! I think I found it on here years ago, but if it's gone, I might have the .exe file floating around my PC.

Edit: looks like the link is dead. Gonna check my PC now. If I double post sharing a link to EnWarehouse it's because the edit option's time ran out.

 

[atompalace]

It's not the wireless options, but there IS enwarehouse for connection era Japanese tamas! I think I found it on here years ago, but if it's gone, I might have the .exe file floating around my PC.

Edit: looks like the link is dead. Gonna check my PC now. If I double post sharing a link to EnWarehouse it's because the edit option's time ran out.

I’d love to know if you do retrieve the link, please! Have got an entama on the way and would enjoy trying codes


Going back to Keitai: I’ve found a blog post that has a few pictures and descriptions of the Keitai app!
https://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/20041216/toy167.htmSeems to be called たまごっちパーク (Tamagotchi Park) which is also the name of a gameboy game which makes googling it a bit more difficult, lol

AND; it appears that both infrared and code based connections are used! Buying items with codes and visiting parents with infrared, if auto translate hasn’t lost anything. So perhaps at least item codes are able to be brute forced if someone hasn’t already cracked the algorithm.

I also attempted to find out whether there’s a TV ad for the Keitai somewhere, in case it can tell us more, but haven’t found anything yet.

UPDATE: Found a pdf about the app! I can’t translate it on my device but here it is: https://www.bandai.co.jp/releases/images/3/18084.pdf

 

[SA311]

AND; it appears that both infrared and code based connections are used! Buying items with codes and visiting parents with infrared, if auto translate hasn’t lost anything. So perhaps at least item codes are able to be brute forced if someone hasn’t already cracked the algorithm.

There's no algorithm for the codes, they are the same for all devices
You can find them all here https://www.tamatalk.com/threads/keitama-passwords.86303/

 

[Bentobuff]

I’d love to know if you do retrieve the link, please! Have got an entama on the way and would enjoy trying codes


Going back to Keitai: I’ve found a blog post that has a few pictures and descriptions of the Keitai app!
https://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/20041216/toy167.htmSeems to be called たまごっちパーク (Tamagotchi Park) which is also the name of a gameboy game which makes googling it a bit more difficult, lol

AND; it appears that both infrared and code based connections are used! Buying items with codes and visiting parents with infrared, if auto translate hasn’t lost anything. So perhaps at least item codes are able to be brute forced if someone hasn’t already cracked the algorithm.

I also attempted to find out whether there’s a TV ad for the Keitai somewhere, in case it can tell us more, but haven’t found anything yet.

UPDATE: Found a pdf about the app! I can’t translate it on my device but here it is: https://www.bandai.co.jp/releases/images/3/18084.pdf

Found the enwarehouse program! Took a lil hunting, but it's on Tamenagerie now. Just downloaded it- not running an en/ura/tama/suku right now, but it launched fine
http://www.tamenagerie.com/tamasuku.html

 

[TamagotchiLover16]

Found the enwarehouse program! Took a lil hunting, but it's on Tamenagerie now. Just downloaded it- not running an en/ura/tama/suku right now, but it launched fine
http://www.tamenagerie.com/tamasuku.html

Tamengerie has been dead for 6+ years now. Hasn’t been updated since June 2016

 

[atompalace]

There's no algorithm for the codes, they are the same for all devices
You can find them all here https://www.tamatalk.com/threads/keitama-passwords.86303/

Thank you! That’s very useful, and interesting - the Bandai PDF I linked seems to imply that you can use codes or infrared to get items, which made me assume keitai item codes would be encrypted, but seemingly not. I wonder why they’d offer infrared too, though I’m more inclined to believe that it’s only and exclusively used for parents/grandparents since you need a “log in” or “upload” communication for the app to know which characters they are

much like Tamatown for V3 etc needed a code and user. As opposed to items being a “download only” communication.

So my next research question is does Keitai generate “log in” codes like the V3? If not we can probably infer that parent visits were exclusively infrared via the phone app!

Found the enwarehouse program! Took a lil hunting, but it's on Tamenagerie now. Just downloaded it- not running an en/ura/tama/suku right now, but it launched fine
http://www.tamenagerie.com/tamasuku.html

This is great, thank you!
Incidentally I wonder if Entama could connect to the Keitai app (or its own), given the photo SailorGotchi posted here of an Entama with a flip phone. I know it had e-tamago. Maybe it worked on flip phones at the time?

 

[Bentobuff]

Tamengerie has been dead for 6+ years now. Hasn’t been updated since June 2016

Just because the site is dead doesn't mean the link or file doesn't work. The program I talked about does still launch, provided you're on a windows machine (I'm on windows 10, can't vouch for 11). I also still find it a useful resource and have clipped a fair few pages from there when running a tama I don't know all the details on.

 

[SailorGotchi]

after some more searching, i've found more information, possibly enough to let us find the app file!

starting with the boring things first, i translated this japanese article and the only new information was that this tamagotchi mobile game had 2 modes: a postal mail mode where the tamagotchi would occasionally receive items from the cell phone, and "Odekake" mode which let your tamagotchi go to your mobile phone.

now the fun part: i translated some parts of the PDF that atompalace found, and it mentioned an email address that would send you a download link for the game if you sent it a blank email. i tried this and, as i somewhat expected, i got a mail delivery error because the address was inactive.
however, while searching more about this, i found a link in a forum which was supposed to be the download link for the game: wpp.jp/tamago/

obviously, the 18 year old webpage had gone down. however, putting the link into the internet wayback machine revealed that, luckily for us, there was a cached version of the page from may 2004 which i opened. it just had some plain japanese text, which when translated said something along the lines of "you can only open this page on a mobile phone".

now, i have no idea if this would actually work with cached websites, but if my theory is correct, then entering a user agent (the string of text that tells websites which type of device they're being visited from) from an old japanese phone into a modern browser and opening the page would show us the download. again, i'm not very sure if this would work, as there's a chance that cached pages only save the version relating to the user agent of the caching service(which is usually a desktop one). i might have to try it when i have some more time though, and even if it doesn't work, at least we'll have more clues to finally find the file

 

[atompalace]

So impressed by your sleuthing skills!!! Just to check, I looked at the download link via wayback machine on my actual mobile, but that doesn’t make a difference (too modern!). I wonder if it’s possible to emulate a flip phone via a modern PC somehow? Would have to involve an IR transmitter/receiver and computing knowledge that I don’t have (yet)

 

[Penguin-keeper]

however, while searching more about this, i found a link in a forum which was supposed to be the download link for the game: wpp.jp/tamago/

obviously, the 18 year old webpage had gone down. however, putting the link into the internet wayback machine revealed that, luckily for us, there was a cached version of the page from may 2004 which i opened. it just had some plain japanese text, which when translated said something along the lines of "you can only open this page on a mobile phone".

now, i have no idea if this would actually work with cached websites, but if my theory is correct, then entering a user agent (the string of text that tells websites which type of device they're being visited from) from an old japanese phone into a modern browser and opening the page would show us the download. again, i'm not very sure if this would work, as there's a chance that cached pages only save the version relating to the user agent of the caching service(which is usually a desktop one). i might have to try it when i have some more time though, and even if it doesn't work, at least we'll have more clues to finally find the file

There's another way around this. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine will allow you to view all of the archived files from a given domain if you reformat what's in the address-bar. It's been a long time since I've done this, but if memory serves it's achieved by doing something like replacing the date and any "http://www." parts with asterisks. This should result in a list of all archived files from that location being displayed for you to browse through (it's the easy way to get stuff like images and old Flash files and the like).

If I've misremembered the exact process, I'm sure that the correct one is documented out there somewhere - I just wanted to make sure that you know that there's a far easier way of doing this than spoofing ancient user-agent strings from obscure old hardware.

 

[SailorGotchi]

There's another way around this. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine will allow you to view all of the archived files from a given domain if you reformat what's in the address-bar. It's been a long time since I've done this, but if memory serves it's achieved by doing something like replacing the date and any "http://www." parts with asterisks. This should result in a list of all archived files from that location being displayed for you to browse through (it's the easy way to get stuff like images and old Flash files and the like).

If I've misremembered the exact process, I'm sure that the correct one is documented out there somewhere - I just wanted to make sure that you know that there's a far easier way of doing this than spoofing ancient user-agent strings from obscure old hardware.

Thanks for this method! After using it, I got to this page with 3 URLs archived. Unfortunately though, all the links redirect to the same page: http://wpp.jp/notmodel.html, which tells me in Japanese that I need to visit the site on a mobile phone. However, what I found out from this link was shocking: it had 85 captures on the Wayback Machine, the latest of which being in April 2021! This means that the website was working until last year, which I totally wasn't expecting