Battery Glitches, Glitch Items and Unused Content

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While the battery was still inserted, the speaker kept making a constant faint "crackling" noise and the black bars were on the screen even after I took the batteries out, and even when I put batteries back in nothing happened and the black bars were still on the screen. At this point I was scared that I burned the screen or something but after leaving the batteries in for about 10 seconds the tamagotchi's lines faded slowly and it eventually turned on.
I’ve had this happen to me a few times prior; it’s not a glitch or anything, it’s just a way the device reacts to you messing about with the battery area. This also can happen if you put the battery in facing the wrong way, like I did with my Usatama. But, it’s not a glitch.

I tried this a couple of other times but aside from the black bars and weird noise nothing else happened. Also, I tried it about 3 times on the shopkeeper screen but it didn't reset. KidRetro64's comment gave me some inspiration and when I have some free time I might try it on the same V3 on the connect screen, while it connects with a V3 and with a V4. If I find anything interesting, I'll comment here again with all the details.
Like @hwd45 said to me, it takes patience. A lot, actually. I’m doing experiments on my V2, although I also have a V1 and V3. So, I’m not sure if it’s different on the amount of glitches, but I’d expect that you would find more ‘Easter eggs’ for say on the V3. ( This is because of there being the TamaTown features, but call me out if I’m wrong! ) 

But good luck; I’d love to see how your tests are going! :D

 
Update: I tried this experiment with the same V3 (however, this time with a regular CR2032 battery) and some interesting stuff happened.

But first, I have to get out of the way that "tilting" the battery while it was on the "CONNECT" screen did absolutely nothing. If you did it too fast, nothing would happen because the screen had a low refresh rate. Even if you did it at just the right time, it would say "FAIL" on the other one because AFAIK, IR data is transferred at an insanely high speed, so even tilting the battery within 0.5 seconds would cause a lot of data to be missing, which would make the other device display the "FAIL" screen.

Now, the interesting stuff:

One time, the screen turned off and it played the happy sound (the sound your Tamagotchi makes after winning a game or gaining points.)

Another time, it displayed some pixel squares on the screen in the usual glitch pattern but also displayed the "HOW MUCH?" screen you get shown when you want to donate to the Gotchi King and below it, the screen showed 1000 points. 

That's basically all the interesting stuff that happened. I doubt I'll be doing this experiment again, because I don't want to brick one of my Tamagotchis.

(I also took this opportunity to ROM test it, and its ROM version is A3 3. Nothing special or new, but I thought it would be interesting to include.)

 
Update #2: I wasn't expecting this to happen, but the Tamagotchi gods seemed to want me to try this experiment again, because the CR2025 battery I had on my V4 caused the screen to blank out one day. However, when I took off the cover and slightly adjusted the battery, it turned back on, so I assumed it was just the battery that stopped making contact.

However, the same thing happened the next day but when I pushed any button it would make a long beep even though the screen was blank, so it seemed like the battery was still making contact. I panicked and put in a CR2032 battery as soon as possible, because I've heard that the V4 is very glitchy and I think mine is one of the first shell designs released which means that there's even more glitches. It seemed like everything was normal at first until I got to the name screen, and the name was turned into some weird characters and the letter Q. I have an Oyajitchi (the secret character you get when marrying Ojitchi and Otokitchi) and wanted to keep him for a while, but I think I'll marry him off the next time the matchmaker comes, just so I can get rid of that glitchy name. It hurts a little bit because I waited a long time for both my Tamagotchis to become oldies just so I could get him, but oh well. At least I learned my lesson: Never use any other type of battery in a Tamagotchi other than CR2032. There weren't any more glitches after that, however. I think I'll have to ROM-Test that V4 just to make sure that the ROM isn't corrupted.

Also, I don't know how, but I forgot to mention something about the V3 that I did my last experiment on: The "character -> item" glitch actually worked, but instead of turning it into item sprites, it turned it to a glitchy pixel pattern that changed every time the Tamagotchi moved on the idle screen. That's actually one of the main reasons I decided to reset it and ROM-Test it.

 
However, the same thing happened the next day but when I pushed any button it would make a long beep even though the screen was blank, so it seemed like the battery was still making contact. I panicked and put in a CR2032 battery as soon as possible, because I've heard that the V4 is very glitchy and I think mine is one of the first shell designs released which means that there's even more glitches.
This happened to my V2 a few weeks back, although I was using a Duracel CR2032. It made the long beeping noise continuously for what I'd like to say a minute, while there were the infamous 2 black lines across the screen (according to my Dad who was doing all of this). We took the battery back out, popped it back in to see a nice little egg on the screen. I don't think you shouldn't use any other battery compatible with the device besides a CR2032, I think its just because its recommended and known to be used the most.

 
This happened to my V2 a few weeks back, although I was using a Duracel CR2032.
Hmm, it seems interesting that it also happened with a CR2032 battery, my first assumption was that the battery discharged below the voltage level that the Tamagotchi expected because it had less capacity (CR2025) but apparently it can happen with any type of battery, maybe because of other factors like temperature causing the voltage to drop suddenly.  

I don't think you shouldn't use any other battery compatible with the device besides a CR2032, I think its just because its recommended and known to be used the most.
You’re probably right, however I am just gonna use regular CR2032 batteries from now on, just to be safe.

 
I have an on and what I do with it when it runs out, is I push the reset button then continue. Most of the time it's just a glitch, and I just move along.

Srry if I'm a little off topic I didn't read the rest

 
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Srry if I'm a little off topic I didn't read the rest
It might be a good idea to do that before responding, so that you know what you're replying to. ;)

Incidentally, you don't need to post multiple messages in a row, so I've merged your posts here, accordingly. For 24 hours after you post, an Edit button is available on your message so that you can amend content or add something that you forgot.

 
Ah yes! After much time looking finally finding some others who like doing this! I am the creator of the video and Ive recently made a part 2 :)

I have noticed almost everything you guys have while doing these glitches! I have never had the "all items in shop are glitched out text" happen before! 

-The rarest one IMO has been the one where the character turned into the items, i have only had that happen ONCE and luckily had my camera to capture it! (I had it happen a second time but had the annoying battery X screen come up and nae nae me)

I have been doing lots of glitches lately and have a few videos on the way for a part 3! Just had one happen where my adult tama glitched into the teen with a baby loll (have a video of it) 

also would like to add that I use battery often but actually am using a variable power supply unit to save batteries lol. (I will make a hot to video soon if you all want :) )

Excited to talk to you all about this! I have facebook and such as well




 
Ah yes! After much time looking finally finding some others who like doing this! I am the creator of the video and Ive recently made a part 2 :)

[Snipped]
Here's some of the most exciting things I noticed within the video :)  

Unusual Shop Items - V2

  • 5:29 - An unknown item using a V1 food sprite (for egg sushi)


    It's unclear if this is a glitch item or a totally unused but fully programmed one



Glitch Items - V2

  • 14:38 - "123456" Glitch Item
  • 15:24 - Glitch Rice Item using unused sprite from the V1
  • 17:09 - "456789" Glitch Item
  • 18:05 - "123456" Glitch Item

Glitch Food - V2

  • 17:52 - "456789" Glitch Food

Food in the Items Menu - V2

  • 9:45 - ENERGY DRINK
  • 10:05 - MUFFIN
  • 10:21 - CHERRY 
  • 16:00 - CUPCAKE

Other - V2

  • 4:50 - Egg sprite glitch
  • 5:49 - Some unusual food sprite glitches which may be of interest
  • 6:52 - Unused Marutchi sprite leftover from the V1
  • 7:08 - A glitch causes all of the sounds to slow down
  • 10:50 - More interesting sprite glitches
  • 13:29 - Very interesting glitched out shop including an unused V1 food sprite

Unusual Shop Items - V3

  • 20:06 - SUSHI as a shop item, even though it's normally only available as a permanent food
  • 31:48 - CONE as a shop item, even though it's normally only available as a permanent food

Glitch Items - V3

  • 1:55 - "GEL" (HAIR GEL)


    Turns character into a baby (that acts like an adult?) and deletes items

[*]22:33 - "86 0123456"

[*]23:33 - "GEL" (HAIR GEL)


  • Turns character into a baby and deletes items again, but this time also shows an unused ball bouncing animation carried over from the V2!

[*]26:43 - "AGE"? (SAUSAGE?)

[*]26:58 - "G CK" (BLDG BLCK) appears in the shop - this one is also one of the glitch souvenirs



Glitch Food - V3

  • 3:23 - "86 0123456"


    Glitch animation with CHERRY sprites



Food in the Items Menu - V3

  • 20:39 - SODA


    It works the same as the SODA item on the V2! Presumably this is leftover data from the V2.

[*]21:27 - YOGURT


  • Makes the animations very slow, with the top half of the screen desynced from the bottom half

[*]28:02 - YOGURT

[*]28:21 - CORN



Other - V3

  • 19:58 - This seems to be an unused menu! It looks a bit like the secret item "TRY IT!" screen
  • 25:07 - It attempts to show the teeth brushing sprites for Teletchi (because it thinks Teletchi is an adult), which do not exist, and instead unused Petitchi sprites from the V2 are shown instead!
  • 25:19 - Teletchi uses the WIG item
 
This is an extremely brief update to say that I’ve been getting back into battery glitches again lately, and there’s been some really interesting findings so far. One other user managed to find some really interesting unused functionality using battery glitches, so once a bit more research is done on it I’ll be doing a bit of a write-up about it here.

 
This is an extremely brief update to say that I’ve been getting back into battery glitches again lately, and there’s been some really interesting findings so far. One other user managed to find some really interesting unused functionality using battery glitches, so once a bit more research is done on it I’ll be doing a bit of a write-up about it here.
Following on from this, there's been a few more findings since my last post, and right now I'm testing out a huge swathe of glitch items to show their effects. Turns out I managed to get lucky enough to give myself about 50 or so glitch items, and it's revealed some interesting information. May be a little while before I show these off in a post though.

Thanks for the continued interest of anyone reading this :)

 
Hello  :)

So, one of the discoveries I'm about to talk about is - and I don't think I'm exaggerating here - one of the most bizarre and significant discoveries that I think we've made in years. Not only does it present new features we've never seen before, but it throws a lot of what we already know into question. And, by some sort of cosmic coincidence, just a few weeks later one of the features of the discovery was found elsewhere using a completely independent method.

While the discovery itself was made in the field of battery glitches, it also uncovered some interesting quirks unrelated to glitches, and entirely related to the Tamagotchi hardware.

So, let's talk about a couple of features of the early Connection models you've probably never heard of before: "Hybrid Mode" and the Care Miss Counter.

== Part 1 - A review of Tamagotchi's debug features ==

There are three fairly well-known debugging features on the Connection series devices - debug mode, ROM testing and region changing.

Debug Mode
Perhaps the most well-known debug feature is the aptly named debug mode. American devices - particularly versions 1-3 - have a "JP3 DEBUG" jumper on their boards, allowing the feature to be accessed. It's often said that European devices don't contain the same functionality, but we'll assess this claim shortly.

The feature enables hyperspeed mode and a character select. It also disables the ability to enter the ROM test mode, for some reason.

ROM Testing
The test mode is a feature available on pretty much every Tamagotchi device, and what you can do in the test mode differs from version to version. It's often called the ROM test, but this is really only one part of the test. On the Connection devices, the feature includes the ability to check the screen is working, identify the ROM version number of the device, test the ROM and also check the infrared is working as intended.

Region Changing
A slightly more obscure and frankly somewhat bizarre feature, by shorting either the "JP1" or "JP2" jumpers on a US board, the version of the device will switch to a comparable European version. On later versions this mostly means changing the date format, but for the V1, the changes are more widespread.

Even stranger is that region changing a V1 VER 4.2 turns it into VER 3.0 00001, an unreleased European Deka version.

== Part 2 - What does Region Changing do? ==

The region change feature does pose an interesting question about how Tamagotchis work. In particular, why would two versions be included on the same device? What's the point? What would that even be used for in testing? And why is one of them a Deka version?!

There's two possible explanations for what the region change does - I call them the "Single ROM" and "Double ROM" hypotheses.

The Double ROM Hypothesis
This hypothesis states that there are two separate "ROMs" contained within the Tamagotchi's ROM. That is, there are two separate sets of data, and which one is used depends on whether the region change is enabled or not. The main piece of evidence supporting this is the V1 versions - each of the region changed versions seem so different to the base version (especially the unused Deka version?) which would suggest that it's more than just switching a couple lines of code or a single sprite. But then again, perhaps the V1 does it differently to other devices.

The Single ROM Hypothesis
This hypothesis essentially state that a region changed version is fundamentally the same version as the base version, and that the only thing that changes is that a few lines of code or a few sprites are switched out. You can sort of think about the code and the data being one big pool, and ordinarily only a section of that pool is used - when the region change is enabled, like the other debugging features, it would just change which part of the pool is being used. Logistically, this hypothesis makes the most sense, as they'd only need to produce one ROM version, which would universally be used on all devices - then which version is used would just require a minor hardware change. This would also explain why US boards have the region change feature at all - it may be present on European devices but already enabled by default, e.g. with soldering.

This latter hypothesis also has some interesting consequences. Could Spanish-language versions also contain additional ROM versions? Might there be other ROM versions that aren't available to us via modifying the hardware that our devices have? Could every European device contain an unused US version which never gets seen as a result of the hardware? Would that mean that versions for which only the European counterpart has been observed also contain information on unseen US versions?

== Part 3 - A New Discovery ==

In the Tamagotchi Collectors Discord, I was talking with Razerek about battery glitches, and they decided to give them a go. Quite quickly they encountered something very unique:

nmgD6kM.png


The European V1 food menu... but on an American V2.

It's not the first time that menus from one version have been discovered on a later version via the glitches. In fact, the V2 games menu has been accessed using battery glitches on a V3 - and the slot game works perfectly. But this was different - it wasn't a random fluke that put us into an unused menu, it was consistently showing this menu instead of the V2 one.

The glitch quickly went away, but after some more experimentation we got it to re-appear, and this time it stuck for much longer. Experimentation with the menu revealed that it worked identically to how it does on the V2, even down to there being an invisible "TREAT" option beneath the two options that were shown.

z9zJkZt.png


Other menus were affected too. The status menu used some of the weird quirks that European V1s had, and on top of this the discipline, friends and sound menus all use their V1 connexion variants.

NzCiUEf.png


(The generation number is pretty glitchy weird-looking here, but this is just a result of the battery glitches!)

Even weirder, the Tamagotchi cannot be paused in this mode, and the angel sprite retains the little halo it had on the Connexion V1. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the other Connexion quirks were present too, like the weird connection gifts. On top of all that, the shop permanently features four balls and nothing else, as though the shop feature just stops working entirely!

It started to look as though this was the result of region changing the V2 but using the slightly more extreme region changing measures that the V1s used. As a result, we decided to name it "Hybrid Mode", being a sort of hybrid of the V1 and the V2. Perhaps this functionality isn't even intended, but a weird leftover of sorts. Could this mode have a new ROM version?

Well, unfortunately, the effect disappears upon resetting the device, so there's no hope for finding out that information just yet, unless there's a more permanent way to enable it.

There's actually one more feature of this glitch being enabled that I've not mentioned just yet. Whether this is something fundamental to hybrid mode or just something incidental that popped up at the same time, perhaps due to the chaotic way the mode is enabled, is unclear at this point in time.

eesTJiC.png


The points screen contains two counters at the bottom, one labelled as "H" and the other as "B". At first it seemed like perhaps it was an odd graphical glitch, since that's not an uncommon trait of the battery glitches. However, the counters would always be present when the hybrid mode is activated, meaning it was potentially some previously unseen debugging functionality. But what could these counters even mean?

Notably, they were a little bit different each time the hybrid mode was activated. I pointed out that they could represent the Tamagotchi's care misses, since the V1 patent document described the two levels of care miss that are apparently present on the device - though I wasn't sure what "H" and "B" were supposed to stand for. If this were the case it would become potentially extremely useful in determining the way the growth works on the V2.

== Part 4 - Investigation ==

The inconsistency of the glitch was the number one thing holding back research into this phenomenon, but after some experimentation Razerek discovered that slipping the battery in and out at the same time as the "DOWNLOAD" option is pressed seemed to relatively consistently trigger the glitches (though I never managed to figure it out, personally).

Since the prevailing hypothesis was that the points screen was showing a care miss counter, the next thing to do was to confirm it. We turned on hyperspeed mode and watched the counter tick up in line with the care misses - just as we expected, the care misses aligned with what was written in the patent document - supposedly, H for "heart", and B for "body". Further research confirmed that winning a round of Jump or Bump also decreases the B or H counters by one, respectively.

The need to activate the glitch via a very inconsistent method was still an issue, of course. There could be a lot more we can learn about hybrid mode and the care miss counter which we just can't access due to the difficulty and inherently temporary nature of the approach we took to activate. We needed something more reliable.

A few days later, SA311 brought to our attention an unusual V2 he had. He'd bought it fresh from an unopened box, so it couldn't have been tampered - it was 100% legitimate, but unlike anything we'd ever seen before. A European Tamagotchi V2 using an American firmware version, "A.2".

arfXD2b.png


The hardware looked like a European board, too, and certainly not a US board - so how did this even happen? Was there some freak accident that caused a bunch of devices to be given the wrong version?

While looking at the board, SA311 noticed that the front of the board had a bunch of unused jumpers.

02.png


There's not really any documentation on these jumpers. What happens if they're used? Say, for example, J8. What happens if we short that jumper?

h1GUfm4.png


The miss counter is enabled. Permanently. Or, at least, for as long as the jumper is shorted for. Only the miss counter though - hybrid mode was not enabled by the jumper.

So, this entire time, European V2s have had this feature readily available to us, in a fashion almost identical to the way the debug mode works, but apparently nobody ever noticed! Speaking of which, the debug mode can't be accessed on European devices, right?

7rWIfzr.png


Well, as it turns out, the CSWD jumper enables it here, too. Not sure if it only works because the device is running an American version, though. Oh, also, the region?

m1bBjG6.png


That can be changed too - J1 is the region change jumper. If we compare with a standard European V2 board...

A1UeJss.png


On a standard board, the J1 jumper is already shorted! I feel like the only explanation is that every European device also contains the US firmware, just like is the case for the American devices - the J1 jumper is supposed to be shorted to change the region, but evidently this particular device somehow got released without having its region changed, resulting in the American version being used! This also feels like strong evidence in favour of the "Single ROM Hypothesis", too, if you ask me.

Funnily enough, this actually isn't the first time that a device has popped up with a strange configuration of firmware and hardware. In 2019, rjalda100 found a US V1 with a US shell running the US version VER 4.1 - but the hardware was inexplicably different to all other US devices we'd seen up until that point. In fact, it used the same board and screen icons as the European V2s used. We've hypothesised that it could be an early South American device from before the Spanish-language localisation (since these versions also use similar hardware to the European devices, and have a very small difference in the printing of the logo on the shell, too, which we observed on this shell as well). It does pose the question of what the other jumpers would do on the V1, though, doesn't it?

== Part 5 - What's next? ==

If this experimentation highlights anything at all, it's that there's still so many things to learn about the Connection-era Tamagotchis, and a lot of their interesting and unique quirks may be hiding in plain sight. For one, the care miss counter jumper was apparently present the entire time on the majority of Connexion V2 boards, and we've confirmed that it really does activate the care miss counter consistently on other devices:

RnzzqOY.png


Evidently, there's still a long way to go in terms of understanding Tamagotchi hardware. As a result I've decided to finally begin documenting all of the different circuit boards used by Tamagotchis, in an effort to identify the full potential that might be hiding in these boards. Who knows, maybe even the hybrid mode can be activated with consistency and permanence using a hardware method.

cJvi4R8.png


If any of you would like to help out (and you're experienced with taking apart Tamagotchis already!!) then it'd really help me if you could take good quality photos of a device's board - both sides, ideally - along with some details about the device:

  • The region of the device, e.g. US / Europe / Australia etc, and ideally the country of origin too in case some countries received some slightly different hardware,
  • Which shell design it uses,
  • The ROM version of the device,
  • The manufacture code of the device (the number printed on the battery door),
  • And if relevant, any other details?

(You won't need to take the entire board out like in the images above though, of course - you can just take a photo of the board whilst it's still in the shell).

I'm focusing on the connection-era devices at the moment, and probably only pre-V7 stuff - though I'll include the Japanese devices in that, too. Any help would be appreciated, though I'd really recommend only doing this stuff if you've taken apart Tamagotchis before, e.g. for activating the debug mode or performing hardware maintenance.

== Part 6 - Any other glitch updates? ==

Oh, just a brief additional update - my V2 decided to give me a glitch jackpot and I received about 50 glitch items. I'm going through each one individually and logging their effects, which I may make an update on soon - it also provided helpful in identifying the IDs of a few more of the V2 items. Battery glitches continue to teach us more obscure Tamagotchi knowledge!

 
That's a pretty awesome find! I thought id take a peek back in the forum and see if there was anything going on. I'm still bent on doing a ROM dump of this V3 I have sitting on my desk, but have been playing around with more battery stuff lately. Looks like were still active in here! Do you have a link for the discord? I've got a new facebook account as well and forgot your name :)   thx

 
That's a pretty awesome find! I thought id take a peek back in the forum and see if there was anything going on. I'm still bent on doing a ROM dump of this V3 I have sitting on my desk, but have been playing around with more battery stuff lately. Looks like were still active in here! Do you have a link for the discord? I've got a new facebook account as well and forgot your name :)   thx
I’ll send over the details in a DM :)  looking forward to seeing any progress you might make with the V3 ROM stuff!

 
h1GUfm4.png


The miss counter is enabled. Permanently. Or, at least, for as long as the jumper is shorted for. Only the miss counter though - hybrid mode was not enabled by the jumper.
Once I stopped chuckling at how the counter looks like it says "HOO BOO" (or "HOI BOO" in the earlier picture), it reminded me quite a bit of the hidden meters in the Tamagotchi Game Boy game (which cover "Fear" and "Mine" - poor translations of Stress and Selfishness), which can be enabled by a button-code.

Do you think that this was ever meant to be user-enabled (or otherwise made available to end-users) at some point in development, or does everything point to it purely being a debugging feature?

 
That totally looks like a debug feature but who knows? :)   Ive personally never came across that before, at least not as obvious as this lol. Maybe its because my tamas are all USA? Im in Canada so Id assume north american devices up here. I have been looking into trying to bust into the ROM but that is much over my head. However, I have lots of free time now and nothing better to do ;) I've examined the ROM chip and found some info on it 

My tama currently on the operating table has an ISSI rom in it, which is pretty well documented. Ive never done anything like this before and am working slow but hoping to get some others together and make the magic happen lol

Issi 607 408-a 20
6C
40BA-26

 
I have been looking into trying to bust into the ROM but that is much over my head. However, I have lots of free time now and nothing better to do ;) I've examined the ROM chip and found some info on it 
Freakin' awesome! :D I think that preservation like this is super-important, so I wish you the best of luck.

My tama currently on the operating table has an ISSI rom in it, which is pretty well documented.
This is probably an advantage of Bandai's lateral use of well-established "old" technologies right from the very start of the Tamagotchi line - I'm going to hazard a guess that, at least with the Connection line and below, the parts are mostly going to be well-understood ones, since that was how they were able to make a good-quality product to such a low cost.

 
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I am hoping so! I would pay some serious coin for some sort of low power tamagotchi emulator that was true to the original V2 V3 ect... 

There must be a way to get into it, and I know a few of us have must have the patience to do so ;)

Hoo Boo

 

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