Virtual pet expert cracks a 27-year-old Tamagotchi mystery to unlock secret characters in 3 weeks

Tamagotchi
(Image credit: Bandai Namco)

Something completely life-changing just happened. The world has been forever altered by a discovery on the Tamagotchi Collectors Discord. Along with unnamed collaborators, the user rhubarb_pie figured out how to unlock secret characters hidden from the virtual pet community since 1997.

That's a big deal, considering Bandai only started releasing its egg-shaped digital pets in 1996. As 404 Media noted, players were previously only able to raise the blonde twin fairies as pets through a glitch. But rhubarb_pie, in an extensive guide posted to Discord on June 5, managed to detail and document how they retrieved both the little ladies and "an undocumented secret character" on the 1997 Mothra Tamagotchi.

The Mothra was originally released in Japan alongside Rebirth of Mothra II, a kaiju film in which the sisters Moll and Lora ally with the colossal moth Mothra Leo. They wanted to accomplish what we all do: find an ancient treasure and save the planet. 

So Mothra's themed Tamagotchi gives instructions directly from Moll and Lora: "If Mothra gets sick, you must let her listen to us sing," says Tamagotchi Wiki's translation of the booklet. "For the sake of the Earth's future use love and justice to raise Mothra to be a magnificent adult."

rhubarb_pie did that exceptionally well. According to their Discord guide, obtaining Moll and Lora is an "extremely obscure" three-week process. It requires you to take perfect care of Mothra Leo, keep its weight in the 70s, and make sure it lives as a proud adult for at least 80 hours. Then neglect intentionally, making it die and lay an egg. Try not to cry. Simply hatch the egg, then raise the alien inside to become another healthy Mothra. Congratulations! Your reanimated pet should have evolved into Moll and Lora.

Or, more hauntingly, it could evolve into a mobile Mothra grave — a twitching mound of dirt with a giant cross poking out of its center. "The condition for this character is that you have to meet the conditions for Moll and Lora five times in a row," rhubarb_pie says. "The fifth time, instead of evolving into Moll and Lora, Mothra Leo will evolve into [the moving grave]." It has identical stats to Moll and Lora, so don't dwell on the grave thing if it's what you end up with. Even the oldest secrets are bound to get dug up.

Want more of them? Discover the secret best game on PS5.

Ashley Bardhan
Contributor

Ashley Bardhan is a critic from New York who covers gaming, culture, and other things people like. She previously wrote Inverse’s award-winning Inverse Daily newsletter. Then, as a Kotaku staff writer and Destructoid columnist, she covered horror and women in video games. Her arts writing has appeared in a myriad of other publications, including Pitchfork, Gawker, and Vulture.