Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Tamagotchi Connection V4

The Tamagotchi Connection V4 was released in 2007. It was based on the Japanese EnTama, but had some unique features of its own.

The status screen now has an area for displaying the skill points your pet has earned. These affect what character your Tamagotchi will grow into.

You can receive mail, which replaced the light icon. There are three types of mail you can get.

You can get fortunes, which give you one to three stars in three different areas: Gotchi Points, Love, and Skills. Three stars is a good fortune, and will give positive results in that category. Your Tamagotchi can earn more Gotchi Points or skill points after games, or become friendly with the Tamagotchis it connects with more quickly.

The next type of mail you can receive are letters. It shows a little animation based on what you got in the letter, if you got presents or points from the king, got a random gift, or were visited by a thief who steals your points.

The last kind of mail you can get is probably the most important. This last category is for when your Tamagotchi reaches important milestones, which allow it to go to preschool, school, and finally to work. It will get this mail when it reaches certain ages.

There are five different non-work mini-games you can play.

The first is Jumping Rope. A jump rope starts out above your Tamagotchi, and slowly moves down. You have to press a button to help your Tamagotchi jump over it. It gets faster and faster the longer it goes, and getting hit by the rope ends the game early.

The next game is Mimic. A partner shows up next to your Tamagotchi, and freezes with a certain expression on its face. Your Tamagotchi will scroll through a few different expressions, and you have to press a button to stop it on the same expression as your partner. It takes two correct matches to move onto the next round, and getting two wrong in a single round will end it early.

Shape is the next game. Shapes come down from the top on the left and right sides of the screen. You're given a shape at the middle of the bottom of the screen. You can change this shape by pressing the middle button. Pressing the left or right versions will fire copies of this shape to the left and right falling shapes respectively. Match the shapes to make them disappear. Don't let the falling shapes reach the bottom!

The next game is Dance. It sort of reminds me of the long jump game from the V2. There are three unfilled circles at the top of the screen. When they fill up with black, you need to quickly press the corresponding buttons in order to help your character perform the correct dance moves.

The final game is Flag. It's the same as the one from the V3. Flags will appear at the top of the screen and you have to press the corresponding buttons on the toy. Sometimes flags will appear on different sides or fake flags will pop up, so you really have to be paying attention to play this one.

The big feature that got added in with this one was the ability to send your Tamagotchi to school and for it to get jobs. Under the connection menu is the option 'Work.' Select this to send your Tamagotchi to preschool, school, or to work once accepted.

When it goes to preschool, your Tamagotchi will try to sing a song with its teacher. Sometimes it gets it right, and sometimes it gets it wrong. I haven't really been able to tell if this has any effect of its skill points or not.

When it first gets accepted to school, you can use the left button to scroll between three different teachers. Each one provides a different skill point. You play a mini-game with this one to earn some skill points, but its pretty simple. A skill point is hidden in a present box, which is then shuffled around with two others. It moves slowly, and is pretty easy to keep track of.

The place your Tamagotchi can go to with this option is its job. Before it can go to work, it has to be accepted at a job. You'll eventually receive an important letter once your adult character is old enough. You'll be brought to TamaTown where you'll be able to scroll between several different job locations. There are 15 in total, but not all of them will show up at one time.

When you see a place you like the looks of, press the middle button to select it. Three judges will appear. If they all give your Tamagotchi an O, it'll get the job. If any of them give it an X, you'll have
to choose a different job. Having higher skill points gives you a higher chance of getting a job. If you aren't able to get a job with this round, you'll be sent another letter giving you a chance soon. This gives you a chance to build up your skill points before trying again.

Each job has a mini-game. The more times you play it in a day, the more Gotchi Points you'll recieve in your paycheck when you go to work the next day. Some jobs always seem to payout more than others, though.

If your Tamagotchi lives long enough, it'll sometimes get more job offers, meaning it can have multiple jobs in its lifetime

If your Tamagotchi becomes an oldie, the king will come and give it a cane. Rather than going to work, they'll walk past the different locations until they get to where they last worked. They'll stop and look at it a little sadly. Looks like they've had to retire.

This Tamagotchi could connect with TamaTown when the site was still active. TamaTown even got an overhaul at the time to include things like the school and preschool and job locations. It was pretty cool to get to see that at the time.

This was a pretty fun Tamagotchi. It's a little hard to build up skill points without playing a lot of games with it, so it's not one I'd suggest if you don't have a lot of time to play with it.