Digital Monster (virtual pet)

The Digital Monster is a virtual pet released in 1997 by Bandai. This pet was a masculine counterpart to the Tamagotchi, which, despite having fans of both genders, was deemed more appropriate for girls. It spawned the Digimon franchise. It was similar to earlier virtual pets with the distinctions of being a fighting pet that could connect with others like it.

The Digimon game consist of the following functions:

The original Digimon Device has three buttons and one reset button. The buttons are located to the right of the screen. The top "A" button scrolls through the icons and options on the screens. The middle "B" button activates the selected function. The bottom "C" button cancels out whatever is on the screen. Pressing "A" and "C" simultaneously toggles the sound. The reset button could only be pressed with a pen or other sharp object.

When the pet was brought to the US, elements such as the "Megalthic Mainframe" were added to soften the concept of death (thus Digimon cannot die, but instead return to a fictional world). Devimon was renamed Darkmon because of censorship and the Japanese-related reference in Monzaemon's name was removed in favor of Teddymon.

In 1998, Bandai released a follow-up virtual pet series known as Pendulums which features higher evolution levels and is the first to introduce the Jogress function which enable combination between certain type of digimons. The pendulum is used to count the number of times the device has been shaken. Five versions of the Digimon Pendulum were released which is Nature Spirit for version 1, Deep Savers for version 2, Nightmare Soldier for version 3, Wind Guardian for version 4 and finally Metal Empire for version 5. Each of these being followed by a .5 version which contained a slightly-altered character lineup. A Version 0 representing Virus Busters was also later released.

Pendulum Progress was the successor of the original Pendulum series. There are three in total; the Pendulum Progress is an upgrade similar to the Tamagotchi Connection. The character lineup on each is expanded and it retains the pendulum feature that became a series standard; it also has the ability to have the current monster fight a computer monster in battle as opposed to linking up with another device.

The successor of the Pendulum Progress, the Pendulum X series, was released in 2003. It combined the RPG elements of the Digivice games with the standard pet-raising. Unlike its predecessors, the Pendulum X line was accompanied by a story titled Digimon Chronicle (デジモンクロニクル, Dejimon Kuronikuru^?), which was told mostly through prose text interspersed with short, non-sequitur six-page manga comics printed in the booklets. There were four "chapters", one sold with each progressive version of the Pendulum X.

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