Meet Project Geminitchi, a DIY Angelgotchi & Devlilgotchi
If Bandai wont bring them back, then fans will, but completely updated for the twenty first century! LapinRose and TeamBlackSeraph on Twitter are a power couple that are bringing two beloved Tamagotchi from the 1990’s into one modern device thanks to their programing and 3D printing skills. We must say this project is rather impressive, and we’re so lucky to have such savvy members in the Tamagotchi community!
LapinRose has been collecting Tamagotchi’s on and off since they were seven when the P2 Tamagotchi Original was released. As a big fan of Gigapets and all pets in general, anything with a digital pet was adored. Virtual pets were gifted to them for good grades, a lot of the ones that were in their collection (of roughly twenty) have sadly been sold or lost. Interestingly enough LapinRose’s husbands is not a Tamagotchi collector, but more interested in the technical and programing side of it.
Why create project Geminitchi? LapinRose has also been interested in Angelgotchi and Devilgotchi and older gameplay in legacy Tamagotchi’s where your actions and care determine the outcome of the pet but in a slow paced and difficult gameplay. The Devilgotchi price point was too high for LapinRose to consider purchasing.
That itch to play it was so strong that LapinRose and husband found a java file and emulator for the Devilgotchi for a phone, and was ecstatic about the possibilities. The phone application wasn’t too practical as LapinRose would forget to take care of their Tamagotchi. From there LapinRose and husband discussed making a keychain Tamagotchi, and LapinRose’s husband explained that it could be possible with a bit of programming a Pi Zero and some parts!
TeamBlackSeraph said he would program it for LapinRose’s birthday and LapinRose was blown away at the idea. LapinRose’s husband was in charge of pogromming, and building it, where LapinRose was in charge of 3D design, precision modeling and printing. This is the first time that TeamBlackSeraph and LapinRose have collaborated together, this sounds like couple goals to us! The name Project Geminitchi was born then born out of the dual boot added and both from LapinRose and husband zodiac signs being Gemini.
The hardware is based around a Raspberry Pi Zero, which is the first generation and can easily be found either used or cheap with a Waveshare 1.44” LCD and UPS hat. To produce sound, they’ve butchered a cheap USB sound-card dongle which in turn is soldered to a tiny speaker.
The software is based on a heavily trimmed 32bit version of Raspbian running a custom version of the FreeJ2ME emulator combined with a keyboard drive in the usual three button Tamagotchi layout. The FreeJ2ME emulator is the most important part here LapinRose explains, as the official version hosted on Github can’t produce playable frame-rates which also emulating sound.
The custom emulator comes down to the MIDI files using in Tamagotchi’s, and this one takes care of cropping the image to the screen properly as well as swapping the MIDI file playback for pre-rendered WAV variants of the corresponding sound files. The modified emulator also adds multi-button shortcuts for features Tamagotchi owners got accustom to, like muting and resetting the Tamagotchi. There is also a button shortcut to easily switch between Tamagotchi Angel & Devil.
Where does this project go from here? There really isn’t much more on the software side to do LapinRose explains. Future projects might include additional Tamagotchi porting, they even tried porting over the Tamagotchi Original programming, but weren’t too happy with the state at he moment. This project is more a hobby for them than anything else. On the hardware side of things, they’re testing batteries with different capacities to see what will work best including 1000mAh and 3000mAh batteries. Which resulted in 2 hours of continuous gameplay, and 12-13 hours of gameplay respectively.
They need to test out which fill fit in a 3D printed shell, which they anticipate to be roughly the size of the Tamagotchi Pix. What’s also really cool if that they are considering a coil to allow for wireless charging, but that would require a flat back of the case to make this happen, and would ruin the egg shaped curved design. The jury is out on this one, but imagine the possibilities? Be sure to follow the project on Instagram.