Remember Tamagotchi, the virtual pets who lived in an egg-shaped device you could clip to your keyring that dominated elementary schools in the ‘90s? You’d have to feed and care for them regularly throughout the day, and they’d suffer if you left them for too long. It was a nightmare for teachers and parents across the globe (my mom would have to take care of mine while I was at school), but a core memory for many millennials—I will never forget my yellow and green Tamagotchi, and how excited I was when one of my pets lived for 20 real-world days (they typically lived for about a week).
Tamagotchi have since become a nostalgic bit of plastic you can still technically buy, but its most diehard fans are still discovering the nearly 30-year-old mysteries locked in the tiny plastic eggs, including the ability to play as previously unplayable NPCs that the community has wondered about for years.
As reported by 404 Media, a Tamagotchi player with the Discord handle rhubarb_pie posted a lengthy guide on how to unlock twin characters Moll and Lora in the Mothra-themed Tamagotchi, which debuted in Japan in 1997 as a tie-in product for the release of the Rebirth of Mothra II movie. Moll and Lora were exclusive to the Mothra Tamagotchi, and until rhubarb_pie’s post, were just NPC nurses who would heal your little guy whenever it got sick—unless you used a “battery glitch” to play as them. Rhubarb_pie discovered how to unlock them naturally through gameplay.
“The way to get them is extremely obscure so I am not at all surprised they were never found until now,” they wrote in a post in the “Tamatown Forum” Discord. “Looking at it now, this looks like a bad schoolyard video game urban legend. But it is real.” In order to do it, you’ll need to raise a character called “Mothra Leo” with no “care mistakes” (like allowing its hunger or happiness bar to hit zero and ignore their calls for attention/help for more than 15 minutes), keep it to a specific weight, and wait about 80 hours. When Mother Leo dies, it will lay an egg that contains the twins Moll and Lora.
Rhubarb_pie described the process as “absolutely brutal,” saying that it took “about three weeks” IRL to successfully birth the twins. But the prospect of discovering new playable characters has the Discord incredibly excited, even if it’ll take some serious work to unlock them. Rhubarb pie wrote: “This pretty much blows open all other Tama devices for possible other extremely-well-hidden secrets,” they said. “I think this is the first time there’s been an actual raisable character that is completely undocumented, its existence not even hinted at. Something Tama fans always thought was possible, whispered about in hushed tones, but dared not dream of…”
The post also mentions another “undocumented secret character” they unearthed while digging through Mothra Tamagotchi’s source code: a Mothra grave, or the in-game sprite that pops up after a Mothra dies. RIP.
Tamagotchi enthusiasts, rejoice. I think I may have to jump onto eBay and snag one from my childhood—oh my god I found the exact one I used to have.