the tale of tamagotchi: the never-ending rabbit hole.

this video was sponsored by Bayou stay tuned to learn how to get great deals on your favorite Tamagotchi [Music] as a kid I was obsessed with the concept of virtual pets all of my favorite things in the world had some sort of virtual pet element to it some of them I've talked about on this channel before like Webkinz and idog but also the Chow Garden from Sonic Adventure the puffles from Club Penguin even Animal Crossing is sort of virtual pet adjacent so Tamagotchi was on my radar of course it was I remember reading tons of stuff about it on the internet and just obsessing over every detail the Japanese creature focused design greatly appealed to me because of my pre-existing affection for Pokemon I've always liked little electronic gadgets and toys and Tamagotchi hooked me with its social aspect I love the idea of being able to bond with my peers that also had Tamagotchi in the same way that I enjoyed trading Pokemon cards basically Tamagotchi felt like it was made for me and I really really wanted it so in January 2007 on my eighth birthday I was given a Tamagotchi connection version 3 with the green with frogs shell I was so excited to receive my very first Tamagotchi that I opened it up right there and started playing with it like in the middle of the birthday party in my childhood years this would be the only Tamagotchi I ever had my parents probably didn't want to get me another one because they hated the beeping noise I didn't know you could disable I only ever had one and that made my adult fixation on Tamagotchi all the more powerful since there were like a million of them I didn't know about and this video is the culmination of my childhood Obsession of Tamagotchi coming back to haunt me I'm going to talk about every single Tamagotchi that was ever produced in release order from 1996 up until 2022. so welcome back to KK clue it's gonna be a long one folk so strap in let's begin by time traveling back to November 1996 where this whole thing all started with the Tamagotchi generation one it serves as the foundation that all the future models would build off of and that Foundation consists of low resolution black and white screen with three buttons underneath it on a nearly two inch tall plastic egg with a keychain this is the Tamagotchi standard if you take good care of your Tamagotchi it will eventually evolve into different forms and that's generally the long-term motivation for taking care of a Tamagotchi it's you know it's out of curiosity to see what it can evolve into the Tamagotchi generation one is super simple it isn't very intrusive but because it's so basic the TDM will eventually start to set in about four months after the first generation came the second and it is almost identical to the first it features a different game as well as a new background the Gen 1 has a checkerboard pattern while Gen 2 has a ripple pattern now because the first two generations of Tamagotchi are so similar they get lumped together as the Tamagotchi Originals one of the best things about the Tamagotchi Originals is that they are some of the most accessible tamas out there and that's because they started making reproductions of them in 2018 that are still being made now you can just go on Amazon and buy one for like 20 bucks and you have the freedom to pick whatever shell appeals to your preferred aesthetic stylings okay so wouldn't it be absolutely sick if they made oh I don't know a Godzilla Tamagotchi that would be cool well they didn't do that but they did make a Tamagotchi out of Mothra the giant moth that Godzilla fights sometimes the reason they did Mothra instead of Godzilla is because this Tamagotchi was made to promote the new Mothra movie that was coming out at the time but don't lose hope because you have a chance for your Mantra Tamagotchi to evolve into Godzilla so yeah Godzilla Tamagotchi confirmed before I can talk about the next one I have to give a bit more context the final stage of atamagotchi's life cycle much like ours is death I've already established that the main gameplay Loop quote unquote is to keep your Tama happy and healthy but failing to do so results in your tamagotchi's untimely demise if any of you out there have owned a Tamagotchi you're almost certainly familiar with the death screen it is extremely iconic and it's such a perfect summary of the mortality of these toys and so they took that idea and they ran with it in August 1997 there was a new Tamagotchi released called the angel gotch you start off with a dead Tamagotchi and you take care of their ghostly Spirit that's like the equivalent of booting up a game of Super Mario Brothers and then just being greeted with a game over screen now here's something that I thought was interesting the box for the Tamagotchi Angel claims that it has a touch screen it does not that is just factually untrue what they're trying to say is that it has a motion sensor that can detect vibrations when you tap it with your finger it isn't very exciting they didn't get much out of that feature as far as I know the only time that sensor is ever used is when you feed your angel occasionally a bat will start flying around and you have to tap the device to get it to go away but the sensor is on the back it actually doesn't work as well if you tap the screen why did they Market it like it has a touch screen when that is objectively not what a touch screen is aside from the differences in lore the motion sensor and some minor differences the angel glatch is pretty similar to the Tamagotchi Originals nothing too groundbreaking okay so similarly to how the Mothra Tamagotchi existed to promote a movie they did another promotional Tama for peaking man which is a science fiction movie about extracting DNA from a caveman fossil and bringing him back to life so it's like a caveman in modern times type movie it's not rated very well on IMDb so to promote that movie in November 1997 they made a caveman themed Tamagotchi they called it the Gen jinch genjinch this Tamagotchi is incredibly realistic you go from a puddle of DNA to a monkey to a man and then directly to skeleton now the funniest thing about the genjinch is that it's one of very few Tamagotchi that can de-evolve this is a Tamagotchi where a human can return to Monkey that's all I'm saying okay moving on in December 1997 we have osuchi and mesuji which is like a boy Tamagotchi and a girl Tamagotchi they were sold as two separate units and once both tamas were adults they could link together and get married and have a baby the idea was that a couple could both have one and take care of them simultaneously and that super cute osuchi and masuchi also had a Game Boy version with a weird cartridge because the cartridge has a replaceable battery and a built-in beeper so even when the Game Boy was off the cartridge could beep like a Tamagotchi to let you know when it needs attention it has a physical switch on the cartridge so you can disable the sounds if you need to I imported it from Japan so that I could record it beeping because there was no footage of that on YouTube but I think coincidentally my cartridge's beeper doesn't seem to work or if it does work I couldn't figure out how to make it do the thing it's supposed to do so I don't know I already replaced the batteries like the game plays fine and it saves data but it just doesn't want to beep so I don't know moving on in February 1998 they introduced the Tamagotchi Garden where you raise a bug creature this Tama has a really interesting sense of scale like they go out of their way to illustrate to you how tiny the creature you're raising is when you leave it alone for about 10 seconds it switches to a screensaver sort of view where you can see a wide shot of your tiny Tama represented by a DOT between 2 two trees the Tamagotchi Garden also introduced the concept of predators yortama can feel threatened by a Stompy human foot or a frog's big long tongue and you have to intervene so that the Predator will go away and your Tama will remain alive the Predator Vs prey element feels like such a natural fit for Tamagotchi I think it's a great idea and they actually did end up exploring it further a month after the Tamagotchi Garden they released the Tamagotchi ocean in which you raise a sea creature and if you're lucky it'll evolve into a mermaid this unit has the motion sensor feature that the Tamagotchi angel had so occasionally a polar bear will try to eat your Tama because polar bears eat fish and you have to tap on the device to make it go away Tamagotchi is really flexing the potential that the virtual pet concept has at this point but they're not Beyond doing weird promotional tamas either in April 1998 they released the tamachi which is a limited edition Tama based on a Japanese actor named tamau Nakamura you raise your Tama to be a movie star and if you're successful you have a chance of raising the Tama actually become tamau this one is really funny to me it's really funny because this is the perfect example of a growth chart that is just so cracked and busted you can go from an alien blob to the Sun to a nose and eventually end up as a human woman in May 1998 they released a counterpart to the Tamagotchi Angel called the Tamagotchi devil later renamed to the Tamagotchi monster it's essentially the same as a Tamagotchi Angel except your Tama is a naughty little prankster they'll throw a pie at you or beep when nothing is wrong it won't let you clean up poop sometimes it'll fall asleep in the middle of the day I love this idea just making a stupidly chaotic Tamagotchi in August 1998 we have another promotional Tamagotchi based on the anime and manga series Doraemon Doraemon is one of the most ubiquitous media franchises in Japan like it's kind of like Garfield where like everyone knows Garfield here in the states even if you don't read Comics like everyone just likes Garfield I have heard of Doraemon before like I've seen Merchant dice of it but I've never actually consumed any of the content so I watched some episodes of the show for this video in short the premise is you have this 10 year old kid and his future descendants send this sci-fi robot cat back in time to give him and his family a better life every episode follows the same pattern the kid has a problem Doraemon creates some sort of Gadget to solve said problem but the kid gets greedy and then it goes badly and then the kid learns a lesson it's essentially Fairly Odd Parents but from the 70s and not terrible anyway so yeah they made a Doraemon Tamagotchi Doraemon had a lot of handheld LCD games that released prior to this so a derive on Tamagotchi just made sense the unit has a functional Bell on the bottom of it which I thought was funny like imagine going to school and it's in your pocket and it's going like hey is that a doraemonji in your pocket at the beginning of this segment I barely knew what Doraemon was and now I'm at the end of it and I'm a genuine fan of Doraemon so this Tamagotchi made me watch an anime and I ended up liking it that's the power that Tamagotchi has over me in September 1998 they released the yasashi tamagachi which was intended to be a little bit easier for kids instead of navigating through a list of icons and then selecting the one that you want each icon is an individual button that you can press so you have a dedicated food button a dedicated toilet button Etc it didn't sell very well and it's one of the rarest Tamagotchi to ever exist are any of you familiar with the legendary character of Western mythology called Santa Claus in November 1998 Tamagotchi did the Santa and they called it the Santa yup that's right they called it the Santa Claus yup yup uh so you start off with a guy and your goal is to get him to be more like Santa until he eventually becomes Santa it actually introduces a new meter called Santa niss represented by four Christmas bells now rather than evolving like a standard Tamagotchi would you give Santa different items that you get from games to transform him so he starts out wearing pretty much nothing and then you give him yarn so he can make a hat you give him cloths so he can have his iconic clothes uh and then finally you give him a chisel and then he will have his sleigh I guess the implication is that he chisels the sleigh out of wood I don't know instead of Rudolph Santa's companion is red nose Chi nope no Rudolph here bucko we only got red nose Chi but yeah overall the Santa Claus is very cool I love this one I would get one for myself if it weren't for the ridiculous prices that this thing goes for oh my God it looks like the only way I'm gonna be able to get one is if I write Santa a letter okay so at this point we've talked about every Mainline Tamagotchi product from the Vintage generation but of course outside of Mainline there were the accessory products as well with the design philosophy entirely consisting of an office worker looking at the items on their desk and making a Tamagotchi out of it the Tamagotchi calculator the Tamagotchi clock Tamagotchi phone Tamagotchi pedometer these are all real um but yeah that was it for the Vintage generation there were so many cool ideas being thrown around but all that variety was quickly followed by a long period of burnout in 1999 Tamagotchi went on Hiatus there was just no new Tamagotchi stuff coming out and it wouldn't be until March 2004 that the franchise would be brought back with a reboot in the form of Tamagotchi connection now what made Tamagotchi connection action unique is that they added infrared so you could point two units at each other they could communicate and the Thomas inside can like play games with each other or trade items or if they're both adults they can become partners and have a baby it's a fascinating idea but it's not the first time they explored it if you remember earlier I was talking about osuchi and masuchi those can link and have a baby but it was through a physical linking Port you had to like dock them together whereas Tamagotchi connection uses Wireless infrared when I was a kid the infrared connection aspect sold me on the concept of Tamagotchi it was just such a cool idea and I'm sure I wasn't the only one that thought so Tamagotchi connection would prove to be very lucrative it was the Grand comeback for the Tamagotchi brand after nothing but radio silence since 1999 and it brought back what would have been just another dead trend from the 90s to being a household name again in Japan they did an extra marketing push when the Tamagotchi connection was new where they would put a giant Tamagotchi as a kiosk item in certain stores and restaurants it was called the DECA tamagachi it had a huge heart-shaped infrared port on the top and when you connected it with your own Tamagotchi you might give you unique items and money they did a whole bunch of decades in different stores and to promote different Tamagotchi through the years but sadly they're all defunct now you know it was a promotional item it's not even going to keep it on display forever in November 2004 they released the ketai kaitsu Tamagotchi plus known simply as the K plus which was a follow-up to the Tamagotchi connection with a few minor differences the most interesting of which being that it could interact with a cell phone so when the K plus came out they released a tie-in mobile game I mean mobile game has like a flip phone game smartphones didn't exist yet you can connect your Tamagotchi to the flip phone using infrared and then like play games on the phone and then the money and whatever items you earned would be transferred back to the Tamagotchi really really cool idea about seven months later they released another version of the K plus called the K plus Akai which just means K plus red with more content and featuring a red LCD and that red LCD is so sick like as far as I know they never touched that idea again of like you know tinting the LCD a different color that's a huge shame because it looks totally dope in February 2005 they made a licensed Tamagotchi for a Japanese comedy show called I have never heard of this so I looked it up and I watched some episodes it reminds me a lot of a show like Saturday Night Live it's a variety show focused on Comedy they'll do all kinds of skits with different costumes and sets All That Jazz it's not my style personally but it was popular enough at the time that it got some tie-in video games for the Wii and Nintendo DS and apparently not one but two tie-in Tamagotchi called the haneruchi and the hanaruchi 2 and all the characters on these units are based on skits from the show I would expect nothing less in May 2005 they released the Tamagotchi mini which paid homage to the original Tama from 1996 but smaller and aimed to be more of a fashion accessory than anything it's actually the smallest Tama ever made the screen resolution is half of that of the original Tamagotchi so yeah it's not meant to capture the full Tamagotchi experience it's just kind of meant to look cool in July 2005 Tamagotchi connection version 2 dropped it introduces a shop where you can use in-game currency to buy items and the ability for more games to be unlocked as your Tama gets older it also introduces treats which is a third food item alongside meal and snack that's about it as far as major differences go remember earlier when I talked about the DECA Tamagotchi you know the really big one that was in stores and stuff and how it was released alongside the original Tamagotchi connection well they did another one to promote the connection V2 but this time you could take it home with you it's called the home Deca Tamagotchi and basically it's just like a really big Tamagotchi that you can have at home but the actual game is played a bit differently you play as this little homie right here and your goal is to upgrade your house with money that you earn by playing games and only once your house is upgraded enough can you adopt a pet that you raise like a Tamagotchi it's pretty cool to see like a direct representation of the player in Tamagotchi like usually it's just the pet and that's it but the home Deca has like a protagonist which is fascinating in November 2005 they released the chojinse and Tamagotchi plus known as the end Tama for short the whole gimmick of this one is that they tried to make it realistic in a way you have like a point system where you can raise different personality traits consisting of intelligence style and kindness and which one you focus on will send your Tama down a different predetermined path for what they will grow into you send your Tama through preschool and then school and then you graduate and you have to send off for a job interview which can be rejected and you have to try again yeah realistic Tamagotchi no kidding this is also one of the only instances where Bandai had to address complaints that the entama was too difficult so it received a re-release called the cyoi change to make the game easier so so this Tamagotchi was so difficult that they basically nerfed it with a re-release the Tamagotchi was too powerful in February 2006 they released the Tamagotchi connection version 3 which introduced the ability to connect to the tie-in website tamatown.com when you played games on the website you could earn passcodes that you'd enter into the device to earn items in it's similar to what they did with the K plus which had like the tie-in phone game but this time it was for the flash game instead in 2013 the Tama Town servers were shut down and the tamatown.com domain was dropped at some point after that fans picked it up and they turned it into a fan site in 2019. the original Tama Town game has been mostly preserved and remains playable thanks to the dedicated Tamagotchi fan base also the V3 removed the treat option they added in the version two I don't know why they did that maybe they felt it was redundant but then why do they add the first boys I don't know whatever but the treat is gone now in April 2006 they released an accessory for the end Tama called the shoyariguri enjoy tamagochika so I do have to take a quick detour to show you guys the Tamagotchi fandom wiki page for this Tama now this website is an amazing resource and it has a ton of extremely helpful information but we are gonna have to do a little bit of a Japanese lesson to explain why I just lost my mind laughing at this page as of right now the title has a bit of an error um the title is referenced as the yakikuri enjoy um uh okay so Yaki is like a general phrase for having cooked something whether that be Teriyaki or yakisoba Etc and kuri means chestnuts so as it is right now this Tamagotchi is titled let's enjoy some really good roasted chestnuts in the Tamagotchi household so stupid so they actually did get the hiragana correct uh if you look right here it does say Yari Guri right there Yari Guri that's what it's supposed to be and in that context means let's make a living and enjoy doing it I just think it's super funny that one single syllable one single letter difference can completely change a sentence in Japanese anyway as for what the kakebo actually is I described it as an accessory earlier because it isn't actually a Tamagotchi in itself it has a heart-shaped infrared port on the top like on the Tamagotchi decas and when you connect to it with an entama it has a bank that you can put money into that actually earns interest over time which I thought was cool and it also has like a whole bunch of shops and things you can get items from Tamagotchis have a maximum amount of money they can hold it it's not impossible for your Tama to like cap out at 9999 gold and at that point it starts to make sense to get something like a kakebo where you can just drop your money into a bank and keep earning oh and I forgot to mention that this is the first Tamagotchi thing that actually has a touch screen a real touch screen with a little stylus and everything and it lives in the little antenna nub I love it it's great in July 2006 they made a re-release of the entama called the urajin say Enjoy Tamagotchi plus commonly known by fans as the UNA Tama now the whole gimmick of the uratama is that it features a subspecial have blue outlines and have entirely opposite characteristics to their non-ura counterparts kuchipachi is a lazy Tamagotchi but Ura kuchipachi is a lot more lively and also Blue by the way earlier when I was talking about the K plus I mentioned that they never did different colors for the LCD screens after the Akai version that's technically not true because the urotama has a bit brighter of a tint to the LCD so that it looks more blue and one of the major features is that the LCD is blue but the reason I'm not as satisfied with it is because the black LCDs like the default ones they already look kind of blue to me like the uretama's blue tint just kind of makes it look like a standard Tamagotchi but it's running out of batteries I would be more impressed if they were like this time the lcd's purple or this one's green right that would be lit I think that would be really cool in November 2006 they released the Tamagotchi school now immediately you'll notice it has a d-pad and two buttons it is a spin-off toy so it's allowed to stray from the three button Tamagotchi standard in the Tamagotchi school instead of raising a Tamagotchi you play as the teacher and you're educating the Thomas you can teach your students language mathematics science and you do so by playing mini games related to those subjects the interesting thing about the Tamagotchi school is that there's no lose condition but there's also no win condition either when you decide to pay attention to it your students learning points go up you gradually get more popular and more students will join your class but that's your only goal to max out your numbers when you neglect it the numbers go down but ultimately I don't think the numbers do anything like you're not reaching towards a finale like you are with any other Tamagotchi which would be raising the Tama to be old enough so that they can get back to their home planet but yeah anyway the Tamagotchi school is a pretty neat spin-off I just wish that it had an end game in January 2007 they released the Tamagotchi connection version 4. it mostly carries over features from the end Tama such as the mail feature as well as your tama's ability to go to school or get a job now the V4 is particularly Infamous for having lots of glitches food not appearing in the food menu random letters in your tamagotchi's name suddenly changing or having the unit just randomly shut off sometimes so that's kind of funny at the end of January 2007 they released the equation which is essentially the Tamagotchi for the adult audience you get two Tama units in the Box one being the male unit and the other being the female unit likely a callback to osuchi and mesuchi the expectation is that the user will connect the two units often to build their relationship and to see the funny animations that play out these animations are the main appeal of the unit as opposed to focusing specifically on care and because this is aimed more at adults that don't have all the time in the world I think that was a good move in March 2007 they released a licensed Tamagotchi called the odenkun tamagochi it's a tie-in with a cartoon called The Adventures of odenkun of course I'd never heard of this so I watched some episodes for those that don't know Odin is a traditional Japanese food it's like a hot pot dish with fish cakes and eggs and sausage and vegetables all floating in a delicious Dashi and in this cartoon the ingredients that would go in an Odin are the characters it's really just a show about nothing it's just classic fluffy kids show stuff they're food so they sometimes get eaten haha the show is really nothing to write home about so I don't feel too bad that the Tamagotchi completely overshadows the actual show it's based on if you search odenkun on YouTube it's just the Tamagotchi that's all you're gonna get as for the Tamagotchi itself it's pretty much exactly the same as the k-plus but with different Graphics to represent the show but it does have unique games which is always a nice addition in April 2007 they released the Tamagotchi School of Club activities also known as the tamafude for short basically it's a home Deca Tamagotchi made specifically to be a companion unit for the Tamagotchi school as the club activities title implies you manage the students extracurricular activities namely soccer cooking and gardening and of course in classic Deca fashion it can connect with the Tamagotchi school and you can send students back and forth between them for maximum education in July 2007 they released the Tamagotchi connection version 4.5 it is is the same as the Tamagotchi connection V4 but with different jobs and games it also includes Ura tamagachi from the ototama that's it that's the whole thing as if Tamagotchi connections releases weren't incremental enough that they made a v 4.5 my theory is that they released the V 4.5 specifically to fix bugs in the V4 but that didn't even work the V 4.5 is still glitchy what in July 2007 they released the Tamagotchi restaurant which is one of the most unique Tamagotchi things ever it's this enormous clamshell toy restaurant with figurines that go on the bottom and on top there's a screen for the game when you place a figurine on the sensor in the middle they will cook and each character makes different kinds of food I had no idea Tamagotchi ever did a toys to life concept but it fits super well while cooking the Tamagotchi will call out the ingredients you need and you have to press the corresponding food buttons on the bottom overall your job is to keep your supplies up so you can serve customers earn money and upgrade your restaurant it looks so fun it looks so I want to try it someday it looks so fun this feels like the peak in creativity for the Tamagotchi brand and unfortunately that's because it is from this point forward Tamagotchi starts to become a lot more homogenous they take less risks they usually settle into two main groups without indulging it in as many spin-offs in November 2007 they released the Tamagotchi connection version 5 where you can raise a whole family of Tamagotchi in one unit hence why why it's also referred to as the family Chi your goal is to interact with the Tamagotchi family to increase their bond with each other you also have a television that you and your tamas can watch there's a shopping channel and a dating Channel and a travel channel I just thought the idea of Tamagotchi watching television was kind of funny aside from some unique games that's pretty much it and then in March 2008 they did another incremental update called the Tamagotchi connection version 5.5 celebrity you can raise characters from the Tamagotchi royal family and they can become a celebrity there's also more games than the V5 all right you can tell I'm getting a little burnt out with the Tamagotchi connection line I I just don't think it's that interesting I'm sorry like I don't even think the Tamagotchi connection line is bad it's just boring in comparison to everything else so I struggle to find things to say about it okay thankfully we have another major Innovation so just for reference it's November 2008 almost a year and a half into the life of the iPhone and Tamagotchi finally made the leap to color with the Tamagotchi plus color it has a beautiful properly backlit high resolution LCD screen and that enabled them to do some things that they couldn't do before there's full sentence character dialogue for the first time ever you can completely customize your house different wallpapers Furniture you name it there are so many different locations you can visit all with Gorgeous detail they also did some licensed versions of the Tamagotchi plus color there was a custom shell version to promote the Japanese band Exile and an enhanced version to promote a Japanese quiz show called quiz hexagon 2. I don't know I just thought that was interesting aside from the fact that obviously it's in color it's a pretty normal Tamagotchi but it would create a new standard for color tabaguchi that a lot of the future ones have referenced back to and then literally a week after the Tamagotchi plus color they returned to monochrome to release the final Tamagotchi connection version 6 music star I know I threw a little bit of shade towards the Tamagotchi connection line earlier in this video but I have to give them credit because they truly did end it off with a bang they packed this Tamagotchi with features and got the absolute most out of the music star theme you raise your tamagotchi's talents by playing music games you get a band together you go out and play concerts and sell your CDs and you can even win different awards for your music you can collect and wear different costumes which is super cute it was nice to see them put so much effort in for a send-off to the Tamagotchi connection line like this one is a fan favorite and I can totally understand why it deserves to be so this Begins the era where there are really long gaps of time between releases a full year after the Tamagotchi connection V6 in November 2009 they released the tamagot she ID so Tamagotchi has gotten a lot of use out of the infrared concept up until now first they used infrared so Thomas could communicate with each other and then they used it so Thomas could communicate with a tie-in mobile phone game this time with the Tamagotchi ID it could use its infrared to download content from the internet you would have to visit a dedicated website using an infrared capable mobile phone which would then transfer the data to your Tama in August 2010 they released the Tama Town tamago they were turned to Black and White for this one but this is no average black and white Tamagotchi screen for the first time it's actually four-tone grayscale similar to the original game boy now that might not seem like a big deal but it makes a huge difference in the amount of detail this screen can display it makes it viable for them to like have a background that you can easily differentiate from the Tama itself but the downside is that the screen is generally lacking in the contrast Department compared to the earlier models the main gimmick of the tamago is it has this port on the top that you can slide little figurines onto now the character figurines have exclusive games and they all also unlock an exclusive store item so essentially this is paid DLC I have so many new inbox Tama Town figurines that I got for two dollars each at a nerd store and they've been sitting around unopened for the past maybe five years that I've had them having the option to expand your tamagotchi's functionality with figurines is pretty cool in theory but in retrospect it hurts the longevity of the toy because all of the content isn't self-contained the tamago has two games on it and that is it you're gonna get bored of this thing real quick if you don't start buying the stupid figurines to go with it in October 2010 they released the Tamagotchi Nano which is a reimagining of the Tamagotchi mini from 2005. it's a little bigger than the mini but it features a larger screen now they didn't consider this to be as much of the virtual pet experience on its own but rather as an accessory to the Tamagotchi ID the reason it's a tie-in with the ID is because the Nano has ID characters in it it mostly exists for the gimmick of getting to see what the new in color Tama characters would look like with the classic black and white Tamagotchi presentation it is very small and egg-shaped and the screen is recessed very deep into the unit it has a hyper simplified gameplay style and is generally less needy than Mainline Tamagotchi in November 2010 they released a Deca Tamagotchi but for the Tamagotchi ID it's called the more ID Tamagotchi home station plus I mean it's not quite as big as the decades usually are this one's only maybe like twice the size instead of the four times the size of the deck I usually would be but it still serves the same purpose that deck I would of being like a communication Hub accessory with the heart-shaped infrared port and everything but this time it's for the new generation of color Tamagotchi wow and when you have the home station you can like make your own downloadable items and send them to your ID pretty neat thing in March 2011 they released the Tamagotchi IDL which is of course the successor to the ID and they made some pretty big changes with this one they introduced Tama pits so your Tamagotchi can adopt a pet they also added a very robust Gardening System where you can buy seeds from the in-game store or download custom seeds from the internet and they'll grow into something silly they also overhauled the accessories your tamagot she can wear before now your Tama could only really wear hats but now they can wear full-on clothing and the idea of having your Tama plate dress up is really cute like come on but there are some issues with it uh firstly your Tamagotchi must be an adult to wear clothes um so you know if your time has a baby or a child no clothes is for you and secondly they didn't want to put in the effort of animating every single piece of clothing to match your tamagotchi's body so they just made one frame of animation for the clothing and heavily stripped down the amount of animations your Tama could do while wearing them without clothing your Tama can do silly animations and funny expressions and close-ups but with clothing they're just standing there always facing forward maybe their arms will move sometimes but that's all you really get so do your Tamagotchi a favor and don't make them wear clothes because yeah it strips away their personality in November 2012 they released the Tamagotchi beast that's spelled like Tamagotchi P apostrophe s so for English speakers it's pronounced like Peace So Tamagotchi peace okay so you know how the Tama go had little figurines that you could slide into the top the Tamagotchi piece had a similar thing but instead of a figurine they're in the form of little charms that you plug in above the screen these charms are called tamadeco piece which is short for Tamagotchi decoration piercings when you plugged one in they could unlock new characters items clothing Etc the Tamagotchi piece may not have been a particularly standout Tamagotchi in its original form but the Ingenuity and determination of the hacking Community has transformed it into one of the most beloved tamas even in modern day the piece was only ever released in Japan so of course it's all in Japanese but thanks to the efforts of fans it can be modded to be fully translated into English if that's not a perfect example of how dedicated the Tamagotchi fan base is I don't know what is in December 2013 they released the Tamagotchi friends now for this one they brought back the four-tone grayscale screen like the one the tamago has and also another pretty big change they got rid of the infrared port and replaced it with NFC or near field communication for reference it's the same technology that amiibo uses where you touch the thing out of the thing you know you guys know what amiibo is with the Tamagotchi friends they communicate with each other by bumping back to back so you could like write a message to your friend and then bump Thomas with them and then the message shows up on their unit it's a really cute idea it also brought back that whole thing the Tamagotchi connection line had where you could type a code into a tie-in browser game and play that it also had an app called Tamagotchi friends guccify where you can make a little Avatar and send it to your Tamagotchi friends unit and you could make your little icon that you made appear on clothes and stuff in September 2014 they released the Tamagotchi for you so with the Tamagotchi friends they introduced NFC and the ability for two units to communicate with each other by bumping but NFC has a lot of potential and they expanded on the idea with the for you so when this thing was new all around Japan you had little touch spots in public places like restaurants arcades and stores and stuff when you boop your Tamagotchi onto the touch spot you get exclusive items and such I mean I doubt those are accessible anymore because it's been nearly a decade but that's still really cool thankfully a lot of the NFC functionality stuff has been preserved by fans they made a third party app and you could get the exclusive items by NFC tapping with your modern smartphone aside from the NFC tapping feature the main gimmick of the 4u was its focus on customization you had different cases and face plates wrist straps All That Jazz in May 2015 they released a new version of the Tamagotchi friends called The Dream Town digital friend it mostly introduces quality of life improvements like the screen looks a bit better you know stuff like that it also introduces the dream school where you can play different games with your Tama they build certain skills and then those skills help determine what your Tama will grow into at this point in time they were getting a lot of mileage out of these incremental upgrades so in July 2015 they released the Tamagotchi 4u plus which is the same as the for you but the shell design is slightly different and they added some really minor features like two new locations your Tama could visit and two new games for you to play that'll be fifty dollars please for your annual Tamagotchi upgrade okay moving on in July 2016 they released the Tamagotchi mix now the gimmick of this Tama is they introduced the mix feature in which you can create a baby Tamagotchi that is a combination of their parents characteristics and then as that baby becomes an adult and eventually gets married they can have their own distinct Offspring making for theoretically infinite potential for physical traits implementing genetics into Tamagotchi feels like a really great idea on paper but unfortunately the mix concept has its limitations oftentimes certain genetic traits will get stuck so Offspring will randomly keep one trait forever or will end up looking exactly the same as one of their parents so as cool as the idea is the implementation wasn't quite Rock Solid strangely the mix takes a step backwards in terms of connectivity I really thought they were going to move forward with the NFC idea but instead they got rid of NFC entirely in favor of going back to infrared so the mix has infrared the theory here is that infrared can transmit more data faster and more consistently than NFC so although infrared is an older technology it's just more practical for tamas to have if see where the best option they wouldn't have gotten rid of it so it's April 2017. this point in Tamagotchi history marks a major turning point for the brand remember earlier when I talked about the Tamagotchi Nano in April 2017 they brought it back to do a licensed promotional Tama that was exclusive to Tokyo Disneyland which is the pocket usatama which was released alongside the debut of the new Easter mascot of Tokyo Disneyland called usadama who is essentially an egg with arms legs and bunny ears now you would think like okay why is this such a huge Turning Point what's you'll understand it a little bit anyway the usatama it keeps with the accessory vibe that the Tamagotchi Nano does so it's a generally low maintenance Tama in December 2017 they released the guretama tamaguchi which is another licensed Tamagotchi Nano for the Sanrio character gudetama like I said we're in the midst of a turning point for the Tamagotchi brand you're gonna see a lot of licensed Tamagotchi Nanos from this point forward pretty much all of them being functionally identical but with the graphics and shell swapped out as of right now there are only three Mainline Tamagotchi releases left for me to talk about and literally everything else they've released since then are licensed Nanos so because the licensed Nanos are stupefyingly boring I'm just gonna burn through all of them with a lightning round and save the last three Mainline releases for the grand finale okay all right you ready licensed Nano lightning round in January 2019 they released the evx Tamagotchi now I'm not the biggest Pokemon fan in the world but I love Evie and I love all the Eeveelutions so this felt like it was made exactly for me and it quickly became the most expensive Tamagotchi I own in April 2019 they released a follow-up to the Tokyo Disney Easter thing from before but instead of the egg with leg it's a chick with bunny ears in March 2020 they released a Pac-Man license Nano so the obvious path for them to take with this would be for you to raise a little Pac-Man right but they did not do that in fact you raise a regular Tamagotchi and Pac-Man is just a completely separate entity that your Tamagotchi hang out with sometimes I love this one just because the concept is so weird but also because I just love Pac-Man a lot I love Pac-Man in June 2020 they did the evachi which is a licensed Nano for Neon Genesis Evangelion um even butter and jelly and sandwich October 2020 licensed Nano for Demon Slayer it's based on an anime do I know or care nope not even a little December 2020 licensed Nano for Hello Kitty uh it's very cute but it's a similar thing to the Pac-Man Tamagotchi where you don't raise Hello Kitty herself but rather she's just a friend that your Tama hangs out with sometimes another one in December 2020 they released the Jordi X Tamagotchi it's a nano that was only ever released in Korea that features a character that is based on an emoji from a Korean only messaging app called KakaoTalk okay but where's the Sonic the Hedgehog one there's a Godzilla Tamagotchi there's one based on like a Japanese reality show and there's one based on a Korean Emoji but no Sonic the Hedgehog it's so obvious you put Sonic and his friends in there and they can raise ciao I just think it would be kind of nice is all February 2021 they released the X De Lachi it's a nano that features a roster of characters from the video game fate forward link so more anime June 2021 they did the twist at Chi which is a nano based on a mobile game called Twisted Wonderland which was co-developed by the Walt Disney Company and it features characters from the game in it September 2021 they did the bt21 Tamagotchi which features mascot characters for the Korean boy band but just I've never heard of them uh October 2021 they released theme okarchi which is a nano based on a stop-motion anime about a world where vehicles are sentient and also are guinea pigs so it's a show about guinea pig cars okay I I have to watch it you can't just tell me about a show about guinea pig cars and expect me to not watch it November 2021 they released the R2 D2 Tamagotchi it features a character called R2D2 from a 70s anime called Star Wars I've never heard of that I'm not gonna watch it December 2021 they did the common writer Chi so there's this goofy Japanese superhero show that started in the 70s and continues to this very day called comment writer this time I got she was made to promote its 50th Anniversary so here's to another 50 I guess January 2022 they did the juju Sushi based on an anime and manga series called Jujutsu kaisen yeah Juju sukaisen I love anime the only thing worse than being an anime fan is being a Kingdom Hearts fan Oh no you're not gonna believe what happened in March 2022. okay I can't believe this exists it is real it feels was very bizarre to me but Kingdom Hearts is a crossover between Final Fantasy and Disney and then that was crossed over again with Tamagotchi good Lord oh my God just stop please April 2022 Jurassic world Tamagotchi this is a great idea I don't know why they've never indulged the idea of making a dinosaur Tamagotchi until now and all the Sprite work of the dinosaurs is adorable they made them so cute June 2022 Toy Story Tamagotchi they made a Woody and a buzz one now it's so frustrating because these ideas are so weird and fresh that I can't help but love them like Toy Story Tamagotchi that sounds insane so that I buy it and I play with it and then I learn for the hundredth time that licensed Nanos are the most homogeneous vapid Tamagotchi line ever you feed them and there are two games and that is literally the extent of it that's why we're doing this lightning round but I can't deny the appeal of Toy Story Tamagotchi it's like the equivalent of clickbait I have to know what it means August 2022 torabuchi it's a nano based on a free to play internet browser card and the Tama features characters from that September 2022 tiny tan Tamagotchi it's another Tamagotchi based on the Korean boy band oh beats they make music right okay yeah I got it yeah it's based on that and this next one is the final Nano I'm gonna mention in December 2022 they did the Spy X family Tamagotchi based on anime mangos I am so tired but there's a light at the end of the tunnel because now we get to end this video off Strong by talking about the final Main Line Tamagotchi releases in November 2018 they released the Tamagotchi on also called the Tamagotchi meets in Japan now we've talked about a lot of color Thomas up until now but they've all been exclusive to Europe or Japan this is the first one to be released in America and they gave it all of the time and attention it needed I'm gonna come right out and say that I think the Tamagotchi on is the best Tama ever made at least from my perspective it feels like the ultimate culmination of the Tamagotchi concept there's so many places to go so many games to play there's character dialogue entirely in English they even retained all of the mix functionality but they didn't even stop there okay the Tamagotchi on has Bluetooth and you can connect it to the Tamagotchi on app on your smartphone where your Tama can visit an online plaza where you can walk around and see all the other tamas connected to the plaza where you can play games collect money get items or even start a relationship with another Plaza Tama over the Internet and get married the Tamagotchi on feels like fan service like like the good kind of fan service the kind that makes me feel like they really care now the weirdest thing about the Tamagotchi on is it came out in late 2018 and truly that isn't that long ago but in mid-2022 they shut down the app they closed all the servers it's all gone but thankfully the Tamagotchi Community came in clutch once again and they made a re-implementation of the Tamagotchi on app with its own dedicated servers that you can still play for free today it's called mixing meets and if you have a Tamagotchi on and you want to experience what the online functionality was like please download it it's pretty much exactly the same as what I remember the official app being like now because the Tamagotchi on is my favorite it's unfortunately only downhill from here but I have my reasons and of course you will get to hear them in July 2021 they released the Tamagotchi picks now as illustrated by the title the gimmick of this Tamagotchi is that it has a camera and you can take photos with it this is immediately a confusing gimmick for them to focus on because the Tamagotchi picks was released in 2021 kids have smartphones now and those smartphones have amazing cameras they could have just made it so you can send photos from your smartphone to the Pix via Bluetooth but they can't do that because the Tamagotchi pix has no Bluetooth and no infrared for connectivity it uses QR codes because you know it's got a camera on it now initially that felt like a cope from them removing infrared but eventually I did come around before now the only way you could connect to tamas is if you were in the same room so you could use infrared or if you had a Tamagotchi on using the app but here's the thing QR codes are just an image you can send it in a text message or post it on Twitter or a Discord server and if someone has a Tamagotchi picks they can scan it and have a play date with your Tama wherever they are in the world that is an excellent idea now while we're on the topic of gimmicks it has another one that is a bit divisive you might have noticed it right away no buttons it just has little capacitive touch spots on underneath the screen and the idea is you can slide your finger across the three buttons it's kind of cool I understand why they did it but you're sacrificing the consistency of the feedback you would get with a physical button press like I swear half the time I try to press the left button it randomly decides to press the center button instead and apparently the capacitive touch sensor is one of the first things to mess up when the batteries are running low and the battery life is very poor so get used to that may I remind you this came out in 2021 why is this thing running on AAA batteries give it a USB C port and a rechargeable battery why is that so much to ask all of the negatives aside the Tamagotchi pick still has a lot to offer there's a ton of stuff to do items to collect games to play Etc all that good stuff we've come to expect from Modern Tamagotchi there's also the Tamagotchi picks party which is mostly an incremental quality of life upgrade as Bandai are very apt to do better battery life the screen looks better you know all that stuff I've heard equal amounts of people in the community say that the Pix party is an absolutely mandated Tory upgrade while other people just shrug their shoulders like yeah they're basically the same usually the older one is cheaper so I don't know weigh the pros and cons and come to your own conclusion this is the final Tamagotchi I'm going to talk about in this video in November 2021 they released the Tamagotchi smart it is a wearable Tamagotchi in the form of a smart watch it comes with a wrist strap and everything the core concept is great for a toy that you're intended to take with you and routinely interact with throughout the day turning it into a wearable feels like the natural next step and I applaud them for going through with the idea the problem with the concept being so strong is that they don't really make good on their promise it feels like every good design decision they made is paired with a really bad one hey it's got a rechargeable battery oh but wait to charge that battery it uses a micro USB port a connector from 2007. hey they brought back the physical face buttons or should I say physical face button because there is only one and the other two are fake decals that are there for zero reason it it's smaller than the previous generations of Tamagotchi that's cool but it's still comically large to be worn as a watch it looks huge on your wrist like they tried their best to make it smaller but realistically it's still just too big it's got a touch screen cool but there are only four touch zones on each of the corners so yes that does technically make it a touch screen because you can touch the screen but it's more like there are four invisible buttons on the screen that you can press the screen is small enough that you don't really need it to be a dynamic touch input so fair enough but the problem arises with how the touch actually works you can't just touch the screen because that would be too obvious if you just touch a button like you just tap it it will give visual feedback like it knows that you tapped it but the button will not be pressed you have to press and hold the screen for about a second for it to work I didn't even last two weeks with the Tamagotchi smart it was way more annoying than it was fun there are a lot lot of positives to be said about the Tamagotchi smart a lot of people in the community really like it and it sucks because I wanted to like it too and I just couldn't do it I don't think the idea is doomed from the start I think they could iterate on this idea to make something really special SmartWatches already exist they're already very thin and they have beautiful screens and most people that wear them don't do anything with them they see text messages they get on their phone at a glance and that's about it people that already wear a smart watch every day are the perfect demographic for oh I don't know let's say a Tamagotchi smart free to play idol game those are popular right now when they do that thing where they whip their wrist around to turn the screen on they can see the time and they can see their little Tamagotchi waddling around with their hunger and happy meters at a glance oh you gotta wait in a line somewhere all right play a mini game on your watch for 30 seconds to raise your tamagotchi's happy meter ah but you want your Tamagotchi to wear a cute outfit that'll be 300 Tama bucks or whatever which equates to like three dollars in real life money or something what if they integrated it with all the brands they're licensed saying I can easily imagine people paying up to ten dollars in real life money to have the Eevee Hello Kitty or Pac-Man on their smart watch all the time I would genuinely buy an Apple Watch if what I'm describing were a thing and I don't think I'm alone in that I understand a Bandai not wanting to double down on a hardware scene that is constantly in flux like smart watches are still a technology that is a work in progress so to speak so I'm gonna think of the Tamagotchi smart as a work in progress as well they introduced the idea of a wearable Tamagotchi to me but now I want them to prove to me that they can do it and they can do it well your move Bandai this one's all on you alright so I've pretty much covered everything Tamagotchi has to offer at this point and I'm sure a lot of you have picked some favorites by now and maybe you're considering acquiring them the really new ones you can get on Amazon but a large percentage of the Tamagotchi I've talked about in this video are old and exclusive to Japan not a lot of them made it over to America so what you're gonna do go on eBay no no no no that's gonna add up real fast people set the prices way too high for Japanese Tamagotchi on eBay and if you want a few of them you have to pay a whole bunch of separate shipping fees so yeah forget all that bye is a service that's going to do all the hard work for you and save you money while doing it you can browse all sorts of different Japanese storefronts on their site for instance mercari Yahoo auctions Japan that's where all the good secondhand stuff is and the prices are good too here's a hot tip if you type Tamagotchi in Japanese on bayi you'll get a lot more listings so you can copy and paste the string in the description slap it into the mercari search and there you go just to make the decision to use Bai even easier they're giving you money to do it if you click the link in the description they're going to give you 2 000 Yen off of your first purchase and that equates to somewhere around 15 bucks if you search for Tamagotchi on mercari a lot of them are listed for less than 2 000 Yen so you're basically getting a free Tamagotchi so long as you pay for shipping but speaking of shipping this is where Bae really starts to distinguish themselves Tamagotchi are cheap and small and if you're already on the hook to pay for a box to be shipped to you across the ocean you might as well get a few of them right so here's what you can do let's say you find some sick deals on like four or five Tamagotchi on Bayou right so you buy them or you win a bid and then all those Tamagotchi will be shipped to bayou's Warehouse once all of them arrive you can go on the site and request package consolidation basically Bai will take your Tamagotchi put them all into one box make sure the contents are protected and then ship it to you that way instead of paying shipping for five different boxes you're just paying for one and it's got five Tamagotchi in it and one of them is free because you clicked my link in the description to get two thousand yen off thanks a ton Bai for sponsoring this video would you believe I've been working on this video for over two years I started working on it at around the same time as the idog video and I picked up and put down the project a hundred times since then the scope kept changing it went through a billion script rewrites it was simultaneously a joy to work on and also an existential nightmare I have never ever ever made a video this large in scope and it's the longest video I've made by far like nearly an hour what to say it was a challenge would be an understatement it truly tested my abilities as a Creator so for give me when I say that I will not be doing another huge video like this anytime soon even though I did all the script writing and voice over and editing and production this video was a community effort whether the Tamagotchi Community realized it or not there is a library of Tamagotchi content made by passionate dedicated creators on the internet this video would not have existed without them tirelessly documenting Tamagotchi in such a detailed organized manner going back decades I show a lot of Clips made by community members in this video and I credited absolutely everyone I possibly could in the top right corner of the screen throughout I want to give a shout out to the Tamagotchi collectors Discord Community for answering all of my silly questions while I was working on the script and for all the love you guys have to give in there discord.gg tmgc and another shout out to Wolf nanaki the creator of the Tamagotchi fandom Wiki I reached out to her personally and she was so kind and willing to donate her time to help with the script this video would not have been possible without her Wiki and the work that she does for it so thank you so much thank you you to you the viewer most people would have left the video as soon as I started talking about body so thanks a ton for hearing me out and of course thank you to everyone that worked alongside me with this project that I may have forgotten you know who you are and I love you very very much financially I am barely scraping by at the moment so a very special Thanks goes out to everyone on patreon I have a Discord server a discord.gg clue you're welcome to join that but yeah that's it um to everyone that likes to fall asleep to YouTube videos like this one um good night I hope you rest well and to wake up tomorrow with lots of energy and I guess I'll see you next time foreign

Channel: kkclue

Views: 636,665

Keywords: evan clue, kkclue, clue media, eclue, clue's house, toys, virtual pet, tamagotchi id, id l, pac-man, hello kitty, toy story, r2-d2, tamagotchi smart, tamagotchi pix, bandai, tama, deka, p's, tamagotchi ps, ocean, devil, monster, garden, tamagotchi, yasashii, santa, tamagotchi connection, entama, uratama, oden-kun, celebrity, tama-go, nano, licensed nano, tamagotchi 4u, 4u, m!x, meets, mixing meets, tamagotchi on

Id: jQHU9m90VLU

Length: 54min 15sec (3255 seconds)

Published: Sat May 13 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/gonja_]

oh cool, some knowledge, hopefully.

[u/tamavie]

That’s such a good video! ✨