The Mothra Tamagotchi (モスラのたまごっち Mothra no Tamagotchi, or simply the Mothra) is a licensed vintage Tamagotchi that was released in Japan in December 1997 during the release of the movie Rebirth of Mothra II.
Background[]
Moll and Lora
Mothra is a recurring character in the Godzilla franchise. A giant monster moth, Mothra is often portrayed as a heroic protector of humanity, Japan, and the Earth. She is usually accompanied by two twin fairies, who speak on Mothra's behalf and assist with her care, including singing the song that hatches Mothra's egg.
The following text is translated from the instruction booklet:
We are Moll and Lora, sisters of the Elias family. Mothra comes from an island far, far in the south called "Infant Island". A newly hatched Baby Mothra is a tiny, weak baby. Therefore you must give it lots of "Justice Power" or it won't be able to turn into a Mothra. Mothra is a strong and beautiful Goddess; a protector of life. But sometimes, she can take the wrong path which could make her turn into something bad. At these times, you must discipline her. If Mothra gets sick, you must let her listen to us sing. For the sake of the Earth's future use love and justice to raise Mothra to be a magnificent adult.
Functions[]
The Mothra Tamagotchi functions much the same as the original Tamagotchi. After the clock is set, Mothra is born, and the user must care for it through various stages of its life cycle.
Cocoon[]
Unique to the Mothra Tamagotchi is a Cocoon stage that occurs between the teen and adult stages, and is depicted by a large cocoon hanging on the side of the Tokyo Tower. It will stay in this form for one hour, and then evolve into its adult phase. Once it's become a cocoon, the adult form has already been decided, and the stats in the check meter will change to reflect this.
The Check Meter[]
The Check meter is used to measure Mothra's status and needs. The first screen in the check meter shows Mothra's age (in days) and weight (in tons). The second screen and third screen show the Hungry and Happy meters respectively. The fourth and final screen shows Mothra's Justice meter.
Feeding[]
There are two options for feeding Mothra. The top is for a meal and the bottom is for a snack. Meals will fill one Hungry heart and increase the weight by one ton. Snacks will fill 1 Happy heart and increase the weight by two tons. The meal is typically a leaf, but for some adults and special evolutions, it may instead be an apple or a piece of meat. The Snack option is always a cupcake.
Feeding too many snacks makes the Mothra more likely to get sick, until a point where immortality is attained.
Game[]
The featured game is called the Gokigen Up game. Four holes appear, and the player must guess which hole the Mothra is hiding in by scrolling an arrow with the A button, and selecting with the B button. The game consists of five rounds, and the user must find Mothra at least three times to win. Finding Mothra 3-4 times will fill Happy by 1 unit and reduce the weight by 1. Finding Mothra all five times will fill Happy by 2 units and reduce the weight by 2.
Toilet[]
The Mothra will occasionally poo during the day and selecting this icon will remove it. If 8 poos care allowed to fill the screen, the Mothra will become sick.
Discipline[]
Mothra will occasionally try to attack a tower. Selecting this icon will discipline it, increasing the Justice meter by 25%. This affects evolution for all characters, where a higher Justice meter will result in better characters and a lower meter will result in bad characters.
All characters, make exactly as many calls as they need to fill the Justice meter and will not repeat calls. The exception to this is Mothra Larva which only makes three discipline calls. The teen characters can start with either 0% Justice or 50% Justice depending on whether discipline calls were missed in the child stage.
Medicine[]
When Mothra gets sick, selecting this icon will summon Moll and Lora, who will sing and heal it. Sometimes this takes more than once to fully heal Mothra. Leaving Mothra alone when it is sick may result in death.
Sickness may occur roughly once a day at a random time, and different characters have different probabilities of getting sick (Mothra Leo has the lowest chance and Mayura has the highest chance). This probability increases as more snacks are fed, up until immortality is attained.
Lights[]
When Mothra falls asleep, it will call out for the light to be turned off. They will turn back on automatically when Mothra wakes up. Turning the light off during the day has no ill effect. Different characters sleep and wake up at different times.
Attention Icon[]
Mothra calls to the user by beeping and lighting this icon up. Mothra will call if either the Hungry or Happy meter empties, or if it has fallen asleep. It will also call when attacking the Tokyo Tower, but will use a different sound effect from the normal Attention call. Ignoring Mothra when called for attention will have a negative impact on its evolutions and lifespan.
Death[]
After a prolonged period of time, Mothra will die, leaving an image of a cross surrounded by flowers. Pressing the C button will display Mothra's final age and weight. Pressing the A and C buttons together will make a new egg appear.
If the user raises the character to adulthood or to a special stage, maintains good care of it for a week, and then stops filling the Hungry and Happy meters, an alternate version of the Death sequence will occur where just before the grave appears, the character will lay an egg unless the character is not an adult, or dies of old age or from sickness.
Immortality[]
The Mothra's programming included a capability for each character (other than Baby Mothra and Mayura) to be fed a certain number of snacks (different for each character), which then causes them to no longer become sick. Additionally, adult characters will not become progressively needier as they age. This allows the Mothra adults to live forever as long as no care mistakes are made.
If more snacks are fed after reaching immortality, however, the Mothra character can exit this status and then has a high chance of getting sick. How many snacks cause this to happen depends on how many snacks have been fed during the Mothra's entire lifespan (including during the baby, child, and teen stages). If no snacks have been fed at all, up to 2 extra snacks may be fed before the Mothra becomes mortal again.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- The Mothra Tamagotchi is the first Tamagotchi to be based on a licensed theme.
- The idle animation (moving to the left, roaring, moving to the right, roaring, repeat) was also used for the Digimon virtual pets that debuted less than a month before the Tamagotchi Mothra. This same animation also appeared on the Genjintch Tamagotchi, shortly after the release of the first version of the Digimon Virtual Pet series. Similarly, Godzilla's spritework provides the basis for many dinosaur-like Digimon species' virtual pet sprites, DarkTyrannomon's sprites having an astounding similarity.
- Mayura is the only character that does not come from any Godzilla or Mothra film.
- The Mothra Tamagotchi is the first virtual pet of the vintage era with the function to switch the clock between AM/PM format and military hour format. While several other vintage-era Tamagotchi pets also included this function, it would not become the standard until the Tamagotchi Connection.
- The Mothra Tamagotchi leverages the ability of the processing unit to run at a faster clock speed (a capability the P1/P2 have but don't use), allowing the buttons to be more responsive and animations to move faster. This made animations such as flushing Poo or switching to or from the clock screen faster. This would not be featured on mainline Tamagotchi releases until the Tamagotchi Osutchi and Mesutchi. The Tamagotchi Angel is known to use the same processor unit as the Mothra.
External links[]
Instruction Manuals[]
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