tamagotchi (& general digital pet) thread!

[kitten]

you might be assuming this is a "does anyone remember these?" thread, but it's not. they've apparently been "back" for quite a while and in some sort of serious capacity. not just classic tamagotchis, but new color ones! they're not only big in japan, either, giga pets are back, too! often with the exact same play structure, even.



they're not a budget toy, either, per se - they're often about $20 just for starting prices. and they're popular with kids, it's not just some sort of weird retro-collecting fad. the popularity in japan seems really significant and there's some various, innovative products.



these vital bracelets that bandai make have several varieties, and along with the varieties, they have special dim cards that can give you additional characters. think of cartridges for a video game, only they're ultramans or digimon or whatever for your tamagotchi-fitbit.

has anyone taken a ride on this train? any secret fans hanging around these parts?

i've not taken any serious dive, but i did pick up an evangelion tamagotchi on a whim, and have currently initiated third impact once (with the intent to initiate it several more times, obviously). you get to raise a little angel and play with it, clear up its lcl messes, and, occasionally, catch a weird little snippet of fuyutsuki playing shogi or mari parachuting in or whatever. i think that's super cute and fun! and, frankly, i've found it just as easy to get over-invested in caring for a weird little digital pet as i did as a kid. i have sleep issues and my schedule is sometimes upside-down, so my partner takes it to work and babysits (a co-worker of hers described me as a "kid who gets a pet and hands it off to mom" ;__;). i could easily see myself getting a bit more seriously into these, maybe buying one of the "vital bracelets" or color tamagotchis or whatever.



i'm kind of glad to see this having become a somewhat immortal toy, i feel like they're a fun combination of imagination space and temporal stress and obligation. pay attention to a little goobler and pretend it's your little baby friend, slowly lose your mind wondering if it's going to grow up right, begin praying to whatever you believe in and several things you don't that, somehow, a 32x16 resolution screen with a little wiggling blob will understand your extremely human desire for it to be well.

[drauch]

I recall about 12 years ago I was in a Toys R' Us and I saw there were some that played musical instruments. I wasn't aware they were still being produced in the US at that time. You could connect them with your buds and they could jam out in a band. I thought that was pretty sick.

Not to derail too hard, but I'd really love another Seaman. I like the idea of interacting only briefly with something and checking in on it later with chances of evolution, especially when I can chat with it and it can tell me to "cheer up".

Trying to think, are there many software-based digital pet games anymore? Where you strictly raise it, not have it fight other things and shit.

[kitten]

i'm really a bit curious if there are any newer games like seaman, i assume there have to be, but maybe not. was nintendogs the last big hurrah?

i distinctly remember feeling like digital pets were some sort of really futuristic thing that would only get more and more amazing as time went on. here we sit, more than 25 years later... and we're right back to the exact same old technology becoming novel, again lol. they kind of embody this forlorn notion of a future that never coalesced, to me. interacting with them in earnest, now, after the hope for them to become this ascendant idea i once dreamed up for them as children has slowly mutated into a strange absence feels eerily "nice."

there are good and bad things about constantly yearning for the future. but sometimes when your head gets too far in the clouds and god knocks you back down to the ground, you find there were a lot of nice things on the ground you didn't appreciate, before. kind of goes to show you these things were always innovations and ingenuity and never really particularly aided by technology with them being received in a positive way, again. resource scarcity and increased need for economical design may finally bring the world back to more meaningful innovations for fun stuff like this.