Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

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. I should also add that this is not a "Digivice", this is a v-pet. A Digivice is the term used to describe the devices the protagonists of the anime had, and those eventually did get their own electronic toys, but they are nothing at all like a v-pet, there are no care mechanics, and they rely on a pedometer to function. 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. EDIT as of December 2021: There are four new Digimon X devices listed on Amazon. A red/silver and a purple/navy blue... these are called X2 and their rosters of Digimon are completely different. They're not listed under the same listing as the rest of the v-pets for some reason, but i'm sure they'll be merged here eventually. EDIT: I also want to point out that despite the product's listing, this is not at all a "Digivice", this is a "V-Pet", Digivices are actually a completely different product. They are still LCD screen handhelds but Digivices lack the care elements that qualify them as virtual pets.