Micalun and Devitan

ScreenMonochrome
Shell colorswhite, black, translucent blue, translucent pink
ManufacturerBandai
Pet typeFortune teller
ProgrammingCustom
Release year1998

“Angel and Devil.” This pet is designed to give you a personalized fortune each day. Both Devitan and Micalun reside in the same toy, and Micalun will deliver good fortunes, while Devitan will deliver bad ones. You’ll begin the game by inputting a variety of info about yourself such as age, weight, blood type, etc., and presumably this info is used to generate your fortunes.

Occasionally the characters will fight each other and accrue “bandages” at the end of the fight. Collecting three of these will result in one of the characters leaving, but you can apparently clear them by using the slot machine function, which is part of the fortune menu.

Here’s a rundown of this toy from Hue’s Tank on Neocities:
https://digilotl.neocities.org/micadevi

Videos

Magical Witches

ScreenMonochrome
Shell colorsGreen, orange, pink, blue
ManufacturerBandai
Pet typeBasic
ProgrammingCustom
Release year1998

Probably the rarest of pets, these weren’t released in the US and there just aren’t many of them around. When they do show up, they tend to go for very, very high prices. There are four of these pets in total; a green one for Air, orange for Earth, pink for Fire, and blue for Water. Each holds a witch that represents that particular elements and has some limits on what it can do. Care is very much like the Tamagotchis, with feeding and cleaning and many of the stats screens looking the same. There are no games that I can tell–instead, there are a number of functions that let you create magical spells and curses based on different ingredients you can find.

Menu Functions

  1. Stats – This shows the pet’s hunger and happiness, as well as its magic level and “MP” or Magical Points (I’m guessing)
  2. Feed – There are three choices: meal, snack, and medicine
  3. Cauldron – Can combine the items in your inventory to make curses and cures
  4. Inventory
  5. Clean – When you clean the screen of their poop, it goes into their inventory to be used as an ingredient
  6. Lights
  7. Travel – The witch will beep when they want to go “witching.” They’ll leave and come back 10-15 min later with an item that is then added to Inventory
  8. Attention – Unselectable

Links

Videos

Himitsu No Cocotama Band

ScreenColor, back-lit
Shell colorsPink, blue, purple, mint
ManufacturerBandai
Pet typePedometer
ProgrammingCustom
Release yearUnknown

This one is a pedometer pet. Based on an anime about a girl who loves her favorite pencil so much that it gives birth to a “cocotama”. I don’t get it either, but the creatures look like the hamsters from HamHamtaro (now there would be a great idea for a virtual pet! Why haven’t they done that?) The case comes with a clip that you can put on your belt or backpack.

It’s only in Japanese, unfortunately, and does feature a lot of text. You’ll get to chose which pet you’d like to raise when you start it up (Luckytama or Melory), and then afterwards you can name them. There’s a menu with nine icons. Here are their functions from top left to bottom right:

  1. House – has different rooms for you to visit. These will unlock as you go along
  2. Steps
  3. Games – Six total, but only one will be unlocked by default. This is the Piano game, which acts like Simon Says.
  4. Settings

Top left button shows date/time. On the main screen, the pet’s level shows in a heart in upper left-hand corner, while the number on the right is the number of steps you’ve taken.

Instructions

Videos

Links

Guide on Gotchi-garden

Heart Cure Watch

ScreenColor
Shell colorsPink
ManufacturerBandai
Pet typeCollector
ProgrammingCustom
Release year2022

Amazon JP link

Based on the cooking anime “Delicious Party Pretty Cure”, this one comes in a watch format and is made by Bandai. It is centered around raising a young cat girl and leveling her up by collecting different “recipepies,” which are little food fairies that represent different dishes. There are additional figures of these fairies that can be bought separately and have QR codes on the bottom that will unlock more food. A few fans have uploaded images of these since they are difficult to find for sale, so you may be able to find them around. The pet has three meters: Evolution, happiness, and hunger. There’s only one game, but there are a number of shops and locations you can visit to buy ingredients and prepared food, and there’s also a babysitter character that you can use if you need to take a break.

Videos

There are a couple of videos on Youtube that go over the screens and functions for this pet below:

GeGeGe no Kitaro Eyeball Pet

ScreenMonochrome
Shell colorsWhite
ManufacturerBandai
Pet typeBasic
ProgrammingCustom
Release year2007

Yes, it’s an eyeball, which is awesome. This pet is from the manga series GeGeGe no Kitaro and represents the Yokai Medama-Oyaji, which makes a little more sense, not that you’d need it to make sense in order to take care of an eyeball. It does a lot less than most virtual pets, and doesn’t seem to have any buttons on it. Instead, you interact with the pet by tapping on the case.

User DecepticonCrown ran one of these on the TamaTalk forums, and has posted a play log here: https://www.tamatalk.com/threads/gegege-no-kitaro-v-pet-log-comments-ok.201023/

Instructions

Japanese

English

Doraemon Pochi-cacha

ScreenColor
Shell colorsMulticolor
ManufacturerBandai
Pet typeCollector
ProgrammingCustom
Release yearUnknown

This is a newer Doraemon pet, also by Bandai. There’s no corresponding Dorami pet, and this one is in color. The face is designed something like a toddler toy, and in lieu of buttons, has large colorful mechanisms that are used to control the pet: A large yellow dial on the left, a red bubble button on the top, a red wheel on the right, a touch-sensitive slider on the bottom left, and a large orange button on the bottom right. This one is less centered on care and more on collectibles, though there are a a few things you will need to do to take care of Doraemon. Overall, it seems like a pretty easy and non-demanding pet, and I really like the unique control scheme it has, but unfortunately it is only available in Japanese.

Menu functions

  1. Chat: Chat with Doraemon to make him happy and increase your friendship meter. When chatting, he will sometimes give hints about how to get secret items and etc.
  2. Pet: Pet Doraemon to cheer him up and increase your friendship meter
  3. Clean the room when there are dust motes on the screen
  4. Play with gadgets: these are unlocked over time when playing games, and each has a different effect
  5. Outings: use Doraemon’s door to go outside
  6. Games: only 3 are available in the beginning, but you will unlock more as you play. There are 10 total
  7. Gachapon: You can do this once per day. Spin the wheel to get a capsule and unlock new food and gadgets.
  8. Gadgets: There are 10 slots for you to put gadgets.
  9. Secret tools encyclopedia: There are 100 to collect total, and they will be listed here as you get them
  10. Doraemon status: This shows his friendship level and the number of coins you have. There are 7 friendship levels total
  11. Settings: Time/date, brightness, sound, passwords (can unlock extra things by getting them from the official website listed in the instructions), and a few other other functions

Games

  • Outing game: you’ll get a random character, and you avoid bees and collect balloons while flying across the screen. Use the dial to move up and down. You’ll win coins after each game, and playing games helps the friendship meter to fill up faster. Some of the characters you get play differently: one of the boys has two lives instead of four like the others.
  • Left-right game only you’re playing matador with dinosaurs. You’ll use the slider for this one.
  • Asteroids: Use the dial to move up and down, the red wheel for left/right, and press the red button on top to shoot. I’m impressed with this one. A+ for including a classic.
  • Match seasons of pictures shown on the left by choosing the right button on the panel to the right. You can use the yellow dial to navigate. This one is weirdly simply compared to the others.
  • Rhythm game/guitar hero: Press the correct buttons as their icons cross the bar in time to play the song correctly.
  • Spin the red wheel to catch the bamboo horse. Once Doraemon has hold of it, press the orange button repeatedly so he doesn’t fall off. This one is a little hectic.
  • Fishing: choose a spot and press the orange button to throw the bait. When you get a bite, turn the yellow dial to reel it in. Make sure not to let the meter go into the red! If you catch the fish, you’ll win the game
  • Memorizing game: Memorize the characters who appear, and chose their cards on the next screen. Order is apparently not important.
  • Multiplying food: swipe left and right as fast as you can to multiply the food. This one’s animations are pretty funny!
  • Falling bean paste pancake game: Use the red wheel to move across the screen, and the dial to open Doraemon’s mouth. There are also obstacles that will show up on the screen and you can use the other buttons to get rid of them.

Notes

Sometimes after finishing a game, Doraemon will give you a secret tool from his pocket! Use the slider to slide left and right until he shows it to you.

Each game has a series of icons across the top that show how many gadgets you can unlock by playing them. This way, you can check your progress by scrolling through the games menu.

Once you’ve collected everything, a secret door will appear!

Friendship levels don’t drop–once you’ve earned them, they’re there for good.

Some of the gadgets you collect can me used in the games you play (specifically the Outing challenge game)

Once you’ve earned a number of coins, you can use them to exchange items.

Music notes on screen mean he’s happy, sparkles maen you’ve cleaned, hearts mean he’s leveled up.

Sometimes a rat will appear and scare Doraemon. You can get rid of it by using the broom.

Doraemon will feel depressed if you ignore him for too long. You can cheer him up by petting him, chatting with him, or playing games.

Doraemon and Doraemitchi

ScreenMonochrome
Shell colorsCustom (Doraemon
and Doraemi)
ManufacturerBandai
Pet typeBasic
ProgrammingCustom
Release year2006


There were two of these, Doraemon, and Doraemitchi. This is a basic pet in which you raise either Doraemon or Doraemitchi, two robots from the future who come back to help their friends. It lets you raise and care for the pet, and the functions seem to be largely the same regardless of which model you’re using. The main difference is the theming–the girl reacts differently to mice, and has different favorite foods and icons. Unique to this pet, and inspired by the anime, is a “fourth dimensional pocket” from which you can grab and use items to help you with various random events throughout the day. The second page of the guide linked below has a general overview of what they do, but mentions that a few hold secrets that you will find if you play with them. Overall, this one seems pretty cute and has a few differences that help it stand out from other Bandai pets.

Tamasquare has a short guide to this one which I have archived here, because the site is only available via the Wayback Machine:
TamaSquare_-_Doraemon_Translated
TamaSquare_DoraemonTranslated_pg2

Avon Dog Watch

ScreenColor
Shell colorsBlue
ManufacturerAvon
Pet typeBasic
ProgrammingCustom
Release year1998

Yes, even the direct sales make-up company had a virtual pet, in the form of a watch. It was truly a trend, wasn’t it?

There are two versions of this pet: A dinosaur, and a dog. Functions are: feeding, which lets you chose between four different foods: rice, candy, drink, and pineapple; lights function; there are two games: left-right game and slots; medicine; cleaning; stats–uses icons for meters; discipline; and an unselectable attention icon. It starts out as a blob, but I’m not sure what the evolutions look like because I’ve only ever seen it as a baby.

Videos