Tamagotchi Music Star - Received it today :D

My Tamagotchi Music Star arrived in the mail today. I must admit that my anticipatory (is that a word? ...it is now :D) experience was a mixture of dread and curiosity. To tell the truth I'm still not sure how I feel about this Tamagotchi version. I'm not sure how the whole music theme is going to be incorporated with the familiar experience of raising a tamagotchi. However it's still early for me to say if I like the Tamagotchi Music Star or not. I'll just say what I liked and not liked so far:

The first thing I noticed was that there are no antennas on this version. This is definetaly a positive thing. I had liked the small antenna on the V3 but I think that the antennas on later versions were a little bit over the top. The shape of this tamagotchi is nice and simple, I really like that. Now I have some negative comments about the screen. Although it's a high resolution screen (the same resolution as the V5/V5.5) I think that it looked really faded. Increasing the contrast didn't really help I'm afraid. The contrast option just increases the visibility of all the pixels (including pixels which are supposed to be switched off) which makes it difficult to understand what's really going on on the screen. The buttons is something that I really dislike; I don't know if the particular tamagotchi I bought is defective, but the buttons don't respond very well. I took some pictures of my Tamagotchi Music Star and I'll be commenting on each:

This is the design I chose. I really, really like it. Bandai did a great job on the designs of this Tamagotchi version. Notice the pick on the left; this was included with the tamagotchi (I love freeby stuff :D) and has a code on the back whcih is used on Tama Town (tamatown.com). Also notice the screen, it looks so faded. In the above screenshot you can see the egg. I didn't like that there was a music note on the egg...what's that about? I know that it's supposed to compliment the music theme but it doesn't look right somehow...does anyone feel the same? I'll be talking about the 3 presents later on.


After one minute the egg hatched. I was pleasently surprised to see Petichi back, so cute :) (I named her Cordy). Notice that the three presents were unwrapped to reveal a toy (the duck), 3000 gotchi points (I love it when things get easy ;P) and a musical intrument. Now I haven't really understood if these items can be changed and, if so, how can they be changed? Anyway, the toy is used to decrease stress level but will decrease music skills. The instrument does the exact opposite.


In the above picture you can see the three types of music skills which can be increased by playing the music instrument (mentioned earlier) or playing games.



I don't really know what the above screen means. Maybe it shows what kind of music my tamagotchi likes?

I took some time to visit the new tama town. Logging in was a bit confusing but I have to say that the new Tama town is really good. I LOVED it :D There is a high level of interactiveness involved: you can actually see your character on screen and you can move him/her around the online world. You can also meet other people logged in with their music stars, make friends with them, chat with them exchange gifts and lots of other stuff.


An hour later my tamagotchi grew up into another familar character: Tamatchi: one of my favourite tamagotchi characters of all time. It's starnge that some of the oldest characters are still appearing in the latest Tamagotchi versions. You might recall that Tamatchi first appeared in the P1 in 1996 (the one that started it all).


A few minutes after growing up, an exclamation mark appeared on Cordy's head. I can't recall exactly what I pressed but before I knew it, a small door appeared on the right of the screen, Cordy walked through it and stepped into a huge tub. I was totally not expecting that, it's really cute. Was this something that happened in the V5? (I've never had the V5).

Anyway, sorry for such a long post. I tried to keep is as short as possible. I'll keep you all updated on my experience with the Tamagotchi Music Star, Till then: TTFN :D