Here is the offspring of my V5 Asia/Oceania Nemutchi and my V5 North American Furikotchi.

It is Iwatchi, the baby of the rare space family.  It can only be gotten by breeding two V5s of different locations (Asia/Oceania, North America, Europe, Japan) or via the dating show when a Planetchi shows up as the host instead of the usual Ms. Busybody matchmaker.

The Tamagotchi still shows it as a blended family though.

I could honestly say that the Tamagotchi Connection V5 / Tamagotchi Familitchi has probably one, if not, the hardest set of games ever placed inside the Tamagotchi. 

TV Surfing is one tough game to master and complete successfully despite it being the first of two games available for the V5.  It gets annoyingly difficult around the 7-9 mark that more often than not, you get it wrong because your reaction time was too slow.  Tea Time is a slightly easier variation of the Flag game found in the V4.  The challenge there is distinguishing the cup standing upright from the cup lying on their side as they have little variation between each other.  There is also the "game trick" where none of the cups can be filled with tea because they are both lying on the side.  Golf Putt is another timing game that can be likened to the TV job in the V4.  It's more achievable than the TV Surfing game, but you have to concentrate a lot as the arrow can get really fast, and you need to putt 30 times.

Then there is the Shoe Pairs game.  Albeit only available starting fron generation 2 onwards, Shoe Pairs, the game where your eldest child plays with the mother and match shoes together, is probably the easiest and most fruitful game in the Tamagotchi V5.  You only need 20 matches, speed is challenging but bearable (not as fast as golf putt and TV Surfing) and you have a 4-5 pixel leeway for the shoes.  It also adds 30 bonding points (note: points, not percentage) if you successfully complete everything.

The Tamagotchi V5 / Famitama / Familitchi has introduced a new feature called "Bonding."  The Bonding Level is a percentage stat that indicates how close the members of the family are to each other.

This bonding level increases when you train your tamagotchis when they ask for training (usually happens at 10:00 AM, 12:00 NN, 2:00 PM, 4:00 PM or 6:00 PM), use certain items (like the Magokorotchi, disco ball, or Gotchi King DVD), or play golf putt/shoe match (not applicable when your pets are in the first generation as these games need parents).  Take note that the bonding level is shown in percentage and in steps of 10% so doing these activities will take several tries to "see" an increase in the stat page of your tamagotchi.

So how important is this bonding level and your experience with your Tamagotchi?  So far in my playtime with the V5s (The pink and the fuschia one are both in the fifth generation turning sixth), if you're serious enough to see everything in a V5, it is the way to get a pure family, evolve your teenager into a certain adult character or see all the animations when you press the right button with no item selected.

Procuring a Pure Family

In my third generation in my fuschia V5, I successfully mated my Violetchi with 100% bonding to a Sukatchi via the dating show producing the pure Violet Family (a Mamavioletchi and Papakizatchi as parents, a Violetchi as adult, a Kizatchi as the younger child, and a Hanatarezoutchi as a pet.

However, in the fourth generation, I again successfully mated my Violetchi to a Sukatchi via the dating show.  At that time, the Violetchi had only 80% bonding with her family at the time of marriage.  This produced a common blended family with Furikotchi, Violetchi, and Nemutchi as adults when they grew up.

Getting a Certain Character

The level of bonding combined with what type of training type they get determines what adult character you would get.  If you want to get let's say a Mametchi, then you must train your tamagotchi with the 1st option (Smart) often so that at least one of your toddler males turn into either a Mamekatchi, Bakutchi or Korokotchi at the teenager stage.  You then need to increase your bonding levels to 80% - 100% so that it turns into a Mametchi.

You get different characters if your bonding levels are from 0%-30%, 40%-70% and 80%-100% by the time they evolve into adults.  Mix and match levels of bonding with a certain type of training to see different characters.

Different Animations

This is probably the least important impact of a bonding level.  There are different animations that the tamagotchis do when you press the rightmost button when there are no icons selected.  At a low bonding level, the tamagotchis will act confused.  The next level will have them running off screen, running back and sliding down the screen.  The next one will have the eldest child going near the screen.  The last one will have all of them going near the screen or if you have a pure family, get a special animation associated with that type. 

If you do find another reason to raise the levels, then feel free to comment away.

The V5 is certainly a Japanese Tamagotchi translated into English.  Some of the "new" features: characters animations activate when pressing the rightmost button on all growth levels, beep sounds when the tamagotchis leave a mess, playing games with the left and middle buttons, lower beep sounds, more animated scenes and other things are found in previous versions of the Tamagotchis in Japan like the Entama and the Keitai. 

People who are used to play with only the Connections/Connexions may be in for a little surprise or two when they grab a V5.  Makes you wonder why some of these got cut in the first place when they released the Connections.

This is a good thing though as us non-Japanese literate people can finally see and feel the Japanese Tamagotchi experience, an experience that is claimed to be way better than their Connection counterparts.

Bandai also made better use of the screen this time.  This time around, Bandai tried to cram everything into the screen, making the animations and pictures more detailed and easily recognizable than ever. Even a simple game like Tea Time (a game really similar to Flag of V4 Connection fame, but with cups) looks almost different with the Japanese table setup and teapot designs.

Games that are playable during the early stages arre pretty similar to the ones in V4.  Like I mentioned earlier, Tea Time is similar to Flag.  The other game available, Channel Surfing, is a similar but seemingly harder version of V4's Mimic.  V4 owners shouldn't have trouble learning these new games.

Another good thing Bandai included in this version is that in the stats screen, they've included the names of the tamagotchi.  One can now that a specific character is a Belltchi without looking at any character or growth charts online.  It brings a lot of value especially to the first-time tamagotchi users who don't know the difference between a Mametchi and a Kuchipatchi.

More to come as I get more acquainted with the V5s.

A new set of photos concerning the upcoming Tamagotchi V5/Famitchi has appeared recently in the Bandai Japan website, sporting a different shell than the widely-circulated key/lock type.  It seems that other parts of the world will get this house-shaped antenna type of a shell.

Maybe this is the change Bandai is doing to this version.  Instead of creating different editions of Tamagotchi in Japan compared to the rest of the world (Entama vs V4 Connection), Bandai is differentiating the regions by shell type.

What design the Philippines will get is still unknown, but whatever it may be, I'll be sure to get a pair once they come out.

• 4 games. 
• Tamagotchis are divided into families: Mametchi, Memetchi, Kuchipatchi and Violetchi.
  
• Up to three tamagotchis on screen
• a DVD possibly packaged to it

In Yesasia.com, they currently have 6 items listed for this upcoming version of the Tamagotchi.
http://us.yesasia.com/en/Toys/ListAll.aspx/did-7153/aid-1205245/seltag-3/section-toys/code-c/version-toys/bpo-d7153,s3,a1205245/

Tamagotchi : Yeah! Family Iroiro! Tamagotchi + Pet Family-chi TV
Tamagotchi : Yeah! Family Iroiro! Tamagotchi + Pet Family-chi Pet
Tamagotchi : Yeah! Family Iroiro! Tamagotchi + Pet Family-chi Love
Tamagotchi : Yeah! Family Iroiro! Tamagotchi + Pet Family-chi DVD Pet
Tamagotchi : Yeah! Family Iroiro! Tamagotchi + Pet Family-chi DVD House
Tamagotchi : Yeah! Family Iroiro! Tamagotchi + Pet Family-chi DVD Love

It seems like some versions have bundled DVDs and are expected to be released on November 23, 2007.  They are priced US$35.99  for the non-DVD versions and US$45.99 for those that have.

When the Entama came out in Japan, the world got a V4.

When the Uratama came out in Japan, the world got a V4.5.

Now, a new Tamagotchi will be out in Japan this November.  Dubbed as Tamagotchi Family Iro-Iro or Fami-Tama, it looks like it has a padlock design.  However, it's design is still is similar to all the generations of the Entama, Uratama and the Connections.  Remember that V4 looks like the Entama physically.  Same goes with the Uratama and the V4.5.