Tamagotchi

Tamagotchi (たまごっち) is a series of handheld virtual pets co-created by Yokoi Akihiro of WiZ Inc. and Maita Aki of Bandai. The product was introduced by WiZ in November 1996 and subsequently marketed by Bandai. Its name is derived from the portmanteau of "tamago" (たまご), meaning "egg", and "wotchi" (ウォッチ), "watch".

The Digimon virtual pets were initially conceived as a boys-oriented version of the Tamagotchi before expanding out in their own right. While the Tamagotchi was shaped like an egg (jap. "tamago") with a crack in its shell where the screen is, the Digital Monster was shaped like a brick cage with bust-open bars. The general control scheme and methods of play are much the same as the Digimon virtual pets: three buttons (labelled A, B, and C) allow the user to select various options to feed, play with or otherwise take care of the virtual pet. There is a wide range of "characters" which the Tamagotchi can evolve into, depending on how the user takes care of it. On the Tamagotchi, the toilet icon is portrayed by a duck themed potty, which is also used as the look for the Portable Potty items in many Digimon games.

Just like in the Digimon franchise, the Tamagotchi also grow through evolutionary stages along a branching path, depending on how well you take care of them. The original line of Tamagotchi as well as Digimon owe their designs to Watanabe Kenji. Generally all Tamagotchi's names end in "-tchi" or "-chi", similar to how Digimon names end in "-mon".

The Tamagotchimoji is an identical script to the Digimoji, yet stylized differently.