Bandai Original Digimon Digivice Virtual Pet Monster – Blue

Seems everywhere I look that has these things listed describes them as “The original Digital Monster Virtual Pet” or something along those lines. But this is very misleading. This is not the same Digmon v-pet you grew up with in 1997… actually, it’s much better, and I don’t know why they leaned so hard into the nostalgia angle that they decided not to advertise this.

First of all, if you’re like me and you don’t know anybody who wants to have one of these things, you can still battle your Digimon, there is a new feature that allows you to battle AI opponents. Selecting “Start” will pit you against the weakest Digimon. Selecting “Next” after defeating the last Digimon will pit you against a slightly stronger foe, and it will scale up and up about 100 times before looping back around.

Next, you can actually raise two digimon at once!! Once your first Digimon reaches it’s third stage, you can press the C button to scroll to the right, and choose another egg. This gives you the option of doing tag team battles against AI, it gives you an additional training mini-game that benefits both digimon if done successfully. And two compatible Digimon at the Mega stage can do a “jogress”, into a new Digimon. Speaking of choosing eggs, this brings me to the best part about this pet…

You can choose more than one kind of egg!! In the original V-pets, there were five different waves of these devices, and each wave had one egg that would always hatch the same digimon baby. That baby could evolve into a number of different digimon, but there were still a a number of digimon locked onto those other devices… well, in this release, everyone is here. All five eggs in one device. You do start with a wave 1 Botamon egg, but you can choose between the five after it evolves twice. What’s more, you can unlock more bonus eggs that weren’t on any devices before as you continue to play. Some older Digimon even have new forms. This doesn’t mean there are no exclusives however, but they’re of little consequence. But you may want to look up “Digital Monster Ver. 20th version exclusives” if you’re dying to know.

This device will also save your progress. Once those batteries dry up, you won’t lose your Digimon. And this is especially nice because this device has a little log that keeps track of all the digimon you’ve raised, so you could work towards a goal of raising one of each Digimon.

This device will connect to other Digimon devices to battle, and send little “Copymon” helpers over. It will connect to more than just other devices like it, but some of the more updated devices from Japan if you are looking to expand your collection or you have a friend who collects more expensive foreign Digimon V-pets.

The last new feature I’ll mention is the ability to put your Digimon to sleep for up to three hours outside of their usual sleep time. This is useful if you’re going to be a little busy. I would have much preferred a pause function like those foreign V-pets to be honest, when I get busy, it’s usually for more than three hours. And they wake up at 7PM sharp… with their bed times being any time between 8 and midnight depending on their form. There is a little bit of a cheat to get around this though. There’s a tiny reset button that you can use a pin point object to press. Doing so brings up the option to “Load” or “Reset”, if you leave it on this screen, time is frozen for your digimon. Once you are ready to play with your digimon again, select “Load” and set the time. Do not press reset, or you will lose your save data. ( Caution, your digimon will not age, and it will take longer for your digimon to evolve when you do this )

My biggest complaint with these things besides the inability to pause is that these things poop a lot more frequently than the original 90’s V-pets. Especially when you’re raising two of them on one device. It might seem like a silly annoyance but if four piles of poop appear on the screen, your digimon gets sick. Getting sick 20 times results in the death of your Digimon, and it can be a real issue for someone who over-sleeps and has two digimon.

I’m a guy in my 30’s who was at just the right age when virtual pets were at the peak of their popularity, I’m so happy to see such a wonderful revival of them in the west. And at a very reasonable price, unlike the extortionate prices you’d pay for one of the Japanese releases that may feature more robust battle systems, but have far less Digimon to choose from. There’s also a pretty nice community of fans around these things that i’ve discovered after buying one of these, and I’ve been unable to resist expanding my collection, and I’ve even checked out the old Digimon cartoon series again. It’s been great. If you’re sold on this, I recommend checking out Digi Tama Hatchery for lots of helpful information on what these devices can do, learn all the terminology, and find out how to get your favorite Digimon. Just remember, this is a “Digital Monster Version 20th”!, and never pay over $20 for one of these.

Oh, and I do not recommend this for a child with a history of attention issues. It will be distracting when they should not focus on it, and it is likely to be neglected when something more interesting comes along. But if you’ve got a more disciplined child… or if you’re an adult who’s young at heart like me and want a virtual pet, I don’t think you can do better than this. Not even if you shell out for the expensive Japanese Digimon.

EDIT as of 4/23/2021: Amazon, what are you even doing??? You may notice a new option to buy these in the “Digimon X” style. I don’t know why Digimon X is grouped with the Digimon version 20th, they’re very different products. You only get one egg, and cannot raise more than two digimon simultaneously ( you can, however, store your current digimon in a “back up” to raise a new digimon, allowing you to have up to three digimon on the device ) And you can actually “pause” your Digimon. It’s fairly more nuanced than the Digimon 20th, there’s pros and cons, the cons are mostly the lack of multiple eggs, but Digimon X have huge evolution trees. And depending on the color of your device, you may get different digimon. The White and Blue, and Black and Red aren’t completely the same for example. Once again, check out Digitama Hatchery for more information, it’s the best resource for v-pet fans on the web, and evolution charts typically list which digimon are available on which color device.

I remember getting my first Digivice (the mud brown one) from Woolworths way back in 1997 (still have it in a box somewhere) but I had forgotten all about them until I was looking for some MSG model parts on Toy Haven Online and found these…. And then bought three of them…. I’m thirty eight. Sad I know but a real hit of nostalgia that I just couldn’t resist. They haven’t changed at all, the builds the same, even the sound effects are the same! Well pleased these were re-released. Grab’em while you can! Welcome to 90s nerdvana!

Controles:
1. Los botones son A, B y C de arriba a abajo. A para cambiar entre opciones, B para seleccionar y C para salir de menús o cancelar operaciones.
2.Únicamente es diferente al poner la hora, en ese momento A cambia las horas, B los minutos y C confirma la hora.
3.Para quitar el sonido, no debe haber ningún menú seleccionado (al oprimir C y ver que no haya ninguna opción realzada en negro) y se deben oprimir A y C al mismo tiempo. Es lo mismo para activar el sonido de nuevo.
4.Para elegir atender a uno de los digimon o a ambos, Se alternan pantallas con el botón de C teniendo la opción de solo tener a uno de ellos en pantalla o a ambos al mismo tiempo para cambiar entre las funciones de cuidado en pareja o de un solo digimon específico.

Mejoras y cambios:
1. Más digimon para tener y evoluciones a descubrir.
2. El tiempo de evolución es menor.
3. Hay algunas fusiones de Digimon si tienes a los indicados y cumples lo requerido (5 peleas, energía DP repleta).
4. El V-Pet se pone en modo suspendido (la pantalla se apaga) para ahorrar energía.
5. Puedes criar a dos digimon a la vez. Lo de criar dos digimon (opcional) se activa una vez que el primero evolucione a su estado rookie activando el huevo con los botones A+B y eligiendo el huevo deseado.
6. Puedes tener peleas singulares o en pareja y hay un modo coliseo en el que las peleas van aumentando de dificultad.
6. Se desbloquean más huevos cumpliendo ciertos requerimientos.
7. Puedes poner al digimon a tomar una siesta si no puedes cuidarlo en el momento (dura 3 horas y el tiempo para lograr la siguiente evolución no avanza).

Opinión: Esta versión es muy fiel a la versión original de los 90s, pero con varias mejoras que lo hacen más entretenido y duradero. Muy recomendable para fans de Digimon, juguetes retro y mascotas virtuales. Espero que la gente le de oportunidad y le den el cariño y aprecio que este producto merece para que veamos más versiones en el futuro. Hay que tener en mente que este juguete está diseñado para combinar con la vida cotidiana y solo dedicarle breves momentos del día para hacerlo más disfrutable. También, hay que tener en cuenta que el precio es relativamente barato para ser un V-Pet, ya que estos se elevan en precio bastante y son difíciles de encontrar . No va a haber una mejor oferta y seguramente serán raros de encontrar en el futuro, así como más costosos.

Very nostalgic. This is the 20th anniversary edition that was released in Japan about 2 years ago. There are about 115 Digimon to collect. Other features include raising two digimon at once, tag battles, copying digimon, and a little field guide to see which digimon you’ve obtained already. For $20, this is easily worth it, especially if you’re a fan in 1997 like I was.

*I’ve noticed weird things with Amazon’s reviews lately where the descriptions seem to be for other products. This review is supposed to be for the new Digimon virtual pet, if you find this review under anything other than a Digimon 20th anniversary version, then there’s been some kind of product switcharoo with the listing.

**Amazon has recently grouped the Digimon X versions in with the 20th anniversary editions instead of giving them their own product page. They look virtually identical, with the exception of the colors and a big X painted on the new models. The X version differences are significant and you should check them out before buying.

I was a big fan of the original Digimon virtual pet. I was very annoyed when year after year, Japan kept getting new versions of them that were never released in the USA. While stateside got a good part of the Digivice toys that were based on the shows, most of them just seemed to be games rather than a true pet. The closest exception being the Digivice iC 10X which as far as I could tell was locked into one evolution path, despite having similar options to raise, feed, and train the monster.

To my surprise, Bandai released this out of the blue stateside. It is not a simple reproduction of the original, but rather an all new device, a translated and tweaked version of the 20th anniversary edition released in other regions back in 2017, or so the wikis say. As a result, many things are changed and tweaked. If you wanted a pure reproduction of the original, that is not what this is.

The most immediate differences I’ve spotted in this model are things like: A four letter name entry (Careful, cant be changed without resetting the device). The digimon evolve much faster. It used to take me three days to get from second stage baby to rookie, then seven to ultimate, but in one day I had a rookie tier Augomon. I kinda miss this, but it means you’ll be battling with other kids and grown men enthusiasts inside a day. This was probably changed so kids didn’t have to wait three days to get fighting, like waiting for the snow to melt to use your bike you got for Christmas. The training mode where you tried to shoot attacks past your mirror opponent’s blocks is no longer here(it has been slightly repurposed), but rather you just mash A button to fill a bar while he smashes a wall. The biggest change however is that you get to raise TWO monsters on the same digivice, more on that shortly. And finally, a dead battery doesn’t make you lose your progress. While I have yet to test this, the digivice’s memory is apparently not reset when the battery goes completely dead.

The device also gets a battle mode that gives your monster on board opponents to fight without having a second digivice or a friend to fight, although I don’t know if it affects your evolution paths the same way as fighting another digivice does. There does not seem to be a way that I can find to make your two on-board monsters fight eachother, save for as sparring partners.

Once you have your first egg hatched and to rookie stage, you can choose from one of several eggs to hatch your second digimon (From digimon pets 1-5, and some locked evolution path extra characters if I understand right). From there, pressing C swaps you between three screens, one showing one or the other digimon currently on the machine, and a middle view showing both. When showing one digimon you get the usual feeding, training and stats screens. When you select the screen that shows both digimon, everything you do feeds, heals, trains etc both of them, while swapping to a particular one feeds/trains/etc only that one. The original training mode in fact comes into play when both digimon are shown, where the two spar with eachother, which is admittedly a better place for that minigame. The three screen system is very intuitive. Having the two Digimon is supposed to facilitate evolutions from the show that required two digimon to fuse. Even if you can’t figure out how to get them to evolve into a path where a fusion actually happens, its still an enormously cool feature, almost like having two separate digimon pets at once.

Additionally, the screen goes blank after a few seconds to preserve battery life (Which gave me a scare since blank screens meant a dead battery on the original). I’m not sure how much of the life is saved by doing so, but I imagine that’s most of where the battery power goes into. This could stretch the even a cheap factory installed battery to last MUCH longer. Unfortunately the device comes only with a “testing battery”, which got me about a month on another CR2O32 powered digivice toys which had no screen saver. Tomagotchis and Digimon originally got about a month out of life out of their “testing” LR44 batteries, and a good branded replacement got me close to two YEARS of operation with the sound muted most of the time. I suppose most kid’s attention spans only lasted that long anyway, but for me that didn’t even last long enough for my first digimon to die. Here in the USA the batteries used to cost a good 10 bucks to replace from radioshack, CR2O32’s are a bit more common but still pricey. Considering how much this costs MSRP, and 20 years of technological advancements, I don’t feel like I should give Bandai any slack for sticking us with a pricey battery replacement soon after purchase. That is where this loses a star. That and it comes with some of the same chintzy feeling rubber buttons that you can’t quite tell if your pressing right sometimes, dust trap screen that’s nearly impossible to clean, etc, but that is the cost of making this as authentic to the original’s shell as possible.

Still, I love the machine and am very grateful Bandai released a new model stateside after all these years. The new features freshen it up a good bit too. I hope this is not a one off though and maybe we can expect the states to get a few more of these in the years to come, with some of the advancements like hard plastic buttons and dust resistant screen.

UPDATE: I happened to notice a purple Digimon on sale, and had to look, and found that my review was one of the best rated! I’ve taken the time to edit the review a bit for mistakes and readability, and ad some more details.