Win Free Entry to Digimon Celebration

January 26th, 2016. Digimon World Tour updated the Pittsburgh Digimon Celebration Facebook page today, offering one lucky fan free entry to the Celebration on February 6th. Fans can enter to win by making the above image their cover photo on Facebook and commenting in World Tour's post about what they're most excited for at the event. The winner will be chosen Friday.

Digimon Celebration will take place at the Victory Pointe gaming lounge in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on February 6th, 2016. Tamer Union will be traveling to provide on-site coverage of the event. The event is being organized through Facebook, and currently 68 persons have committed to going. 157 others are "interested," and 336 invited. In addition to the gaming and cosplay events that day, the Celebration will feature artist duo Ramen Bento as a vendor, selling Digimon plush toys, stickers, and magnets. Up until February 3rd, fans can purchase commemorative Digimon Celebration T-shirts from Redbubble, and those that arrive wearing one will be awarded 200 DigiDollars just for attending.

Online Digitama Hatches into Botamon

January 22nd, 2016. Bandai's latest "Nade-Nade" campaign reached its next stage overnight, with the online Digitama for Digimon World -next 0rder- and Linkz hatching into a Botamon. The command to rub the Digitama ("nade-nade") has changed to "give food," emulating the style of care in the original Digital Monster virtual pets. Clicking the button creates a premade Tweet for fans to share, which contributes to the "Care Counter" on the website.

Currently the counter is at 3031; at 3500 Botamon will evolve to his Baby II stage, and the next tier of in-game rewards for both -next 0rder- and Linkz will unlock, granting Digimon tamers an additional Chain Melon and two Digistones in their respective games. The website encourages fans to share the game on Facebook and over the LINE messaging application.

Chain Melons are items which extend a Digimon's lifespan in the World series, while Digistones recover stamina in Linkz, allowing Digimon to train longer. 

Digimon World -next 0rder- will launch in Japan March 17th, 2016, on the PlayStation Vita. Digimon Linkz will launch in 2016, on Android and iOS.

Global Launch of Digimon Heroes Approaching

January 21st, 2016. The official Digimon Heroes Facebook page posted today hinting at a rapidly approaching global release for Heroes, the English-language localization of the Digimon Crusader mobile game. Until now Heroes has been restricted to specific regions; it was originally announced for a late 2015 global launch, but was delayed to fall 2016. More than 3,000 people had preregistered for the game the first day that registration opened late last December, and the current number of cumulative preregistrations at the time of this writing exceeds 19,000.

Second D-Pet Beta to Begin This Week

January 14th, 2016. Over the 8th, developer Jorge "JoMdz" Mendez made an announcement that the successor to Digimon Ver. PC, D-Pet, will begin its second beta in the coming week. JoMdz had previously stated that the second beta would be available through the dedicated D-Pet Facebook page. At this time, the second beta has still not been launched.

Although the D-Pet name was coined to reflect that it will be available across platforms other than just Windows computers, JoMdz has stated that the Android and iOS versions are not being tested as of yet. Currently it's known that the second beta will implement variable window sizes in its settings.

The first beta for the game went out late last December, during which time several bugs were uncovered in early testing. Most prominent was the "sleep glitch," which caused a Baby II stage Digimon's training count to drop to 0 while it was asleep, making evolution to Child and above impossible.

Digimon Ver. PC was originally developed by Malaysian programmer Hong Ming (alias "nrg890110" or "hosc") during Digimon's dark age in mid 2009. In part due to Digimon's long official hiatus--Savers had ended two years prior and Xros Wars did not air until a year after DMPC came out--the game experienced a brief surge in popularity when it first launched. After hosc disappeared in 2010, DMPC was revised by JoMdz into 2.0, working with a small team of designers and individuals that acted as public relations contacts, managing its various communities. DMPC 2.0 introduced color graphics, additional evolutionary levels, and new Digimon. The game had been especially notable throughout 2009 and 2010 for having online battles through Hamachi.

Right to left: Tyrannomon in Digimon Ver. PC, and in D-Pet.

Eventually, the difficulty of managing community fanpages for the game, design conflicts over the direction of Ver. PC, and a lack of enthusiasm on the part of fans lead to a slowdown in development and its user base shrinking considerably. In 2013, JoMdz resumed work on Ver. PC, and began developing D-Pet in 2014 as a continuation of the program. The rechristening to D-Pet was chosen in order to reflect the fact that the new program will be playable not just on PCs, but also on Apple computers, iOS, and Android devices. D-Pet is planned to eventually have Facebook connectivity in order to make finding a battle easier once the online functions are completed, and will use redrawn sprites rather than basing its graphics on the original Digimon virtual pets.