Digimon have not been popular for a long time. If you happen to be like me, you may have fond memories of playing with them in your past. I recently purchased one, to have a bit of fun and relieve those memories.

Let me tell you my story. My Girlfriend asked me one day, if I had ever heard of a Tamagotchi. I told her that I had my own experience playing with virtual pets. My particular favorite was the Digimon. "What's a Digimon?" she asked. As I was explaining Digimon, Pok'emon, and other imaginary creatures to my Girlfriend. I did a search on Ebay for Digimon. Lo and behold, there were some Digimon for sale, still in their original packaging. And selling for the low price of 10 dollars a piece. I bought one. This started my epic journey in discoverying what Digimon I had purchased. I was under the impression that Digimon were all created equal, and that the way you interacted with the Digimon was the same. Boy, was I wrong!

When the Digimon arrived, I was happy to see that it looked very much like the original Digimon I had purchased back in my childhood, albeit a bit smaller. This explained why the Digimon had been called MINI by the seller. I pulled the tab out, just like I remembered doing as a child to activate the device. An Egg appeared on the screen. It then hatched, and the Digimon was born. As I was playing with it, I quickly figured out how to feed it, and clean up after it. I also played around with more combinations of buttons and discovered how to toggle the sound and lights off when the Digimon went to sleep. However I was a bit disappointed in my new found pet. It appeared to be missing a key component. I couldn't figure out how to train the Digimon. The top button on the Digivice fed the creature, and the second button brought me to the battle screen. The bottom button just got out of whatever menu I was in.

The Digimon I remembered has four basic functions of care. It needed to be fed, meat and pills in the proper combination. Digimon needed to be rested, the proper amount of hours. Digimon needed to be battled, the proper amount of times, and last but not least, they needed to be trained. The purpose of training a Digimon, was to entertain the owner, keep your Digimon fit, and to make it more prepared for upcomming battles. This was one of the staples of owning a Digimon, so I was a bit surprised when I couldn't figure out how to do it.

My next step was to break out the directions. To my surprise, they were in Japanese. Since I know about as much Japanese as a caveman would, I attempted to look at the pictures. I saw growth charts, and I could make those out, but the directions were mostly text. A few english words here and there, like LEVEL and others but these really didn't help me, so I turned towards my next resource. The internet. I tried different search terms; Digimon Directions, Digivice directions, Digimon 2.0 directions, Digimon 2.0 translation, translate Digimon directons, and Digimon translation. None of which gave me any help whatsoever in my search. The most common results were Digimon fan sites, that were several years old, and only gave basic operating instructions for the first Digimon.

After giving the Digimon to my Girlfriend, I briefly explained how to take care of it. She looked at me and said, "I don't want this." After some more talking I finally persuaded her to play around with it some more, and keep it for a week. After the day of playing around with it, she held it and said, "Is this really all it does, eat and sleep?" I explained to her how you can connect the digimon to other digimon and they could battle. Within that explanation, I ended up buying another MINI 2.0 Digimon from Ebay, so I could more accurately show her the true point of the pet. I also talked about training the pet, but that I didn't think this version allowed you to train it. She accepted the explanation, and continued to carry around the pet.

As her Digimon aged, I became more certain that we were missing something. It changed into a creature that crawled on all fours and had four tails. This I recognized, was not the optimal evolution, and usually was the "second tier" evolution for a digimon. I did some more research and still was unable to find the answers I was looking for, so once again I chalked it up to being a different Digivice, and let her continue to take care of it.

After another evolution however, I became sure that we were doing something wrong. When her digimon evolved into a Poop shaped creature, I knew that this was not the optimal path for evolution.

There are TONS of different Digimon out there. And different Digivices as well. Since there are many different sites already dedicated to the standard types of Digimon, I will concentrate on the type I purchased, the MINI Digimon. There are three different types of MINI Digimon. Version 1, Version 2, Version 3. The type I purchased was of the second version. The differences between all three really is the software inside. They all have different growth charts.

After much much thought, and contemplation, I decided upon a different strategy to find the answers I was looking for. I went back to ebay, where I looked up my previous purchases. I then took the description, Digimon MINI 2.0 Yellow Keychain, and pasted that into a search. That did not get me what I was looking for, but it did bring me to sites that sold the same type of digimon I had bought. This was getting somewhere, as the fan sites I was looking at above, didn't even list my digivice. Still no directions however, so the search continued.

I then searched MINI Digimon 2.0 Directions Translated and bingo, someone put up a PDF document. This was the site I was looking for. It also had a growth chart!

As I figured out how to train the Digimon, I passed that knowledge on to my Girlfriend, who aptly surmised the situation, "Well that makes a lot more sense..." There are two lessons I am taking away from this story. The first is always know what you are buying. The second is that Digimon, can still be fun even though you are no longer a child. For anyone who is yearning to get back in touch with their inner child, I am putting a Ebay module down below. If you liked my story, feel free to buy from here.

To feed the Digimon 2.0, you press down on the top button. You then have the option to feed your Digimon meat, or pills. (sorry no vegetarian Digimon!) A player wants to keep his Digimon well fed. Feeding your Digimon until it will eat no more, is essential to getting a strong healthy Digimon.

To clean up after the Digimon 2.0, you press the top button. You only need to do this after he makes a poop. It is essential to clean up quickly after the digimon, this is linked to his happiness.

To train your Digimon 2.0, you press and hold the second button on the digimon, until the count menu appears. You then press the middle button as fast as you can, as many times as you can, until it shows how many times you pressed the button. Your digimon will then blast his shadow opponent, and hopefully win. (The more times your press the button the greater chance you have at winning. I have lost with 20 and won with 19, so I think it is random) He will then either show an angry cloud, or a happy sunshine depending on if you win. Angry cloud means you lost the training session, happy sunshine means you won. Train your digimon often to make him very strong.

To battle your Digimon 2.0 you press the second button quickly. This will bring you into the Battle menu, where you have the option of looking at your Digimon's battle record, or actually going into battle. If you choose battle, a count menu appears. You then rapidly tap the middle button, just like in training, until the number appears. Then the word battle will come up on the screen, and you hook your digimon up to your friend's digivice also in battle mode. Press the middle button once more, and the devices will read, OK! and your two digimon will duke it out. Like training, there is a randomness factor, as well as the level of strength by each Digimon.

You can also turn off the sound of your Digimon. Simply hold down the top two keys on your Digivice to bring up the sound menu. On means the sound is on, off means the sound is off on your digimon.

Another feature that allows your Digimon to be healthy is turning off the lights when he is sleeping. This allows your digimon to get the beauty sleep it deserves. Keep in mind, lights off won't allow you to see any poops your Digimon has made recently. When the digimon wakes up, the lights will turn on automatically.

 PDF doc for directions on how to operate the Digimon MINI 2.0. This gives an accurate translation from Japanese to english.

Here are the growth charts for all three versions of the Digimon MINI.