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The Virtual Pets topic


Red

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Since someone mentioned these on the status updates, thought I'd go ahead and make a topic for them! :D

 

Virtual pets....they come in all shapes and sizes, and started out in the early life as Tamagotchi's. These pets were portable devices you'd take with you and you'd feed them, play mini games and even clean up their mess. They became a huge hit, and soon spawned several different versions, remakes and even other companies wanted to get in on the action.

 

The first of these were Namco's own "Digimon" devices. Made by the same people who started the Tamagotchi, these worked a little differently. Instead of mini games, you would now play a game to help level up your own Digital Monster, and then watch him Digivolve. When you connected with others, instead of receiving presents you would fight each other until the other was knocked out.

 

However, not all virtual pets were a device with a small LCD screen you carried around. They soon developed into their own toys.

 

The first virtual pet toy was Furby. They were creepy. But they also became really popular. They were limited in speech and with what you could do with them, but some people found them fun.

 

In the early 2000's came the next generation of toys. Among them was the Pokemon Pikachu. Now unlike most you couldn't really feed him or do anything, aside from playing a game and trying to get him to like you enough just like in Pokemon Yellow.

 

Then in 2001, we had Micropets. Now these are my personal favourite! They came in a variety of animals and had loads of personality to them! They could walk, talk, and even interact with other Micropets. If you left one alone for too long, they would cry too until you either pressed their little button or spoke with them. They could even learn some tricks!

 

What were your personal favourites, and what ones did you have when you younger? Do you still have them now? I'd love to hear everyone's experiences with these! :)

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First me and one of my brothers I had one of the cheaper knock-offs going around because we and my parents couldn't afford a Tamagotchi. It was a dog that would never live beyond 24 days I think it was and was always the same dog. My brother had this dinosaur one that could become one of three dinosaurs and would never live beyond 10 days. 

 

Eventually, I managed to get a 2nd Generation Tamagotchi and loved it. Got a 1st Generation one down the line, too. The only problem was looking after them at school, and though there's the pause trick with the clock, I recall that messing it up and mating it not go to sleep at its normal bed time. Best time to raise them would be during the 6 weeks holiday in the Summer. I even managed to get the secret characters:

Bill (1st Generation)

tama22.gif

 

and Zachi (2nd Generation)

zachi.gif

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Creatures, I bloody love the Creatures series, creatures have genetics,organs, brains that allow them to actually learn. Very sophisticated for the time(the last addition was in 2003, though there is an upcoming installation...10 years later), still very sophisticated for a public release.


All parts of a creature can be edited by fans, most parts of the game are open to tinkering as well, though, the fanbase has found ways to get into and alter parts of the game that weren't supposed to be touched by users.
The fanbase is very dedicated, it's a great group to be included in, and will provide you loads of new environments, objects, creatures for your virtual world, I also have some very fond memories of hours of fun,silly and/or intellectual discussion within the community, what a bunch.

Edited by Mysterics
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While I had a cousin who was into tamigotchi, I never had one. Instead I had a Giga Pet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigapet  as did my brother. I believe one of us had the scorpion, and the other had either a cat or frilled lizard, but they're long gone now. :( I remember that, among other things, they had a daycare feature that you could use to put them in while you were say, in school, and had an Explorer device you could use to play with them on your TV (though I never managed to save enough money for that.) It's a shame really, they were only $5 a piece at Target. I've considered buying a Giga Pet and explorer on amazon, but again, I never got around to saving up for them, especially since the pets themselves seem to go for around at least $18-$20 a piece on amazon (though I just found a scorpion for $8.95 with free shipping, so I may pick that up.) Still, one of these days I might have to try tamagotchi out for myself, since I'm sure they must have been even better to have gotten so popular.

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I was obsessed with Virtual Pets when I was a kid. Couldn't get a Tamagotchi for a while as they were so popular and hard to come across at one point, so the first one I ever got was a Dinky Dino.

 

tumblr_loxfdpevLi1qa8pkuo1_500.png

 

(The packaging was different on mine, but it's the best picture I could find.)

 

I got a lot of others after that including one or two official ones and a Digimon, At one point I must have had about 40-odds including a Mickey Mouse and I think a Jurassic Park one, although it reached the point where I was just walking around with a bag full of them (plus some wearable ones) beeping all the time and it was impossible to keep up with. laugh.png After that I started getting more into the PC ones because they weren't so demanding, plus they done a lot more. I was really into the old Petz games, although I started out with Oddballz before that which was quite a strange one. Started getting bored of them by the time the 5th ones came out though as it was basically just more of the same. Before they at least used to add some new features with each one.

 

In between I had Fin-Fin (which I waited to get for ages and it so didn't live up to the hype XD), 3D Pets (can't find much information about them online, but they were sold on shop counters in a CD case and there were supposed to be 9 to collect - pretty sure none were ever released past the fifth or sixth though), the PC Tamagotchi and Creatures, which was definitely the best of the lot.

 

I also had a few Furbies, although my first one was my favourite and I got less interested after my cousin broke it. Another one exploded and burnt my finger while I was feeding it. I also had some Furby babies, a Gizmo from Gremlins and the E.T. one, but I was never so into them. Same goes for Micropets and Neopets (although I did spend a few years on their site). Just felt they weren't so interactive and tended to just wander around doing whatever, and I could never get mine to react to each other.

 

Oh yeah, and I had the Pocket Pikachu too, although I seem to remember it was basically a glorified pedometer.

Edited by Lucky
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I had one when I was little but I can't remember the brand or anything at all.

 

All I remember was it started off as a little black blob with white eyes, moved onto a little white blob with black eyes and lil arms and legs, and then with each evolution from that point began to resemble a little generic t-rex ish dinosaur.  The final evolution would be one of several kinds of dinosaur, t-rex being the rarest, my favourite being pteryodactl.

 

After that it would die - if you were nice to it you saw it in heaven with a little halo, if not it just had a very ominous looking RIP gravestone.

 

You could feed it any of three things - hamburger, ice-cream, or drink.  There was also a syringe option which you had to periodically give it if it got sick.  To make it happy there was a game you could play or two (I forget if this was the only one or if there were others but), it involved your lil buddy flicking back and forth between facing left or right and you had to time it right and push either left or right at the same time he was looking that direction to win.

 

Also at night you had to remember to turn the lights off to keep it happy when it goes to sleep.

 

 

Annnnd that's all I remember about it lol.  It was a really simple device, just a left, middle (select) and right button, and a sort of egg shape.  The commands and options were 8 I think, at the top and bottom of the screen.

 

 

 

I had a Pokémon Pikachu too (original black and white one) which I used to really enjoy using actually.  Collected 1 million steps and made him love me on every playthrough.

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The person who created the Artificial Life behind Creatures (Steve Grand) is now making a new virtual pet program all by himself, by the working title of Grandroids. What he's trying to do with the Artificial Life is super-sophisticated, I suggest a look see.

Edited by Mysterics
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tumblr_loxfdpevLi1qa8pkuo1_500.png

 

OH! I had lots of these when I was 5-8 years old. I remember the glory days of playing jo-ken-po, cleaning virtual feces and putting a toothpick in the reset hole when the little pricks died :')

Edited by Jango
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tumblr_loxfdpevLi1qa8pkuo1_500.png

 

Yes! My first virtual pet was a Dinky Dino too! These were awesome, and people might have thought they were like a budget Tamagotchi but they were very cute and involving. I remember the screen being better than the actual brand Tamagotchis, and it was cool growing them into dinos, because who doesn't love dinos. They started as a little ball with eyes. I loved this guy so much. I'm pretty sure Dinky Dino was from Japan. They said RokuRoku DinoKun on them.

 

In addition to the above to which no other virtual pet would compare, I eventually got a real Tamagotchi. It was okay, but I think it perished in water. There was also the Jurassic Park one, which was shaped like a golden dinosaur egg and branded with the Lost World logo from the second movie. I saw this one a few years back in a container of old stuff and had no luck in reviving it, I think it's gone now. I had another one in a clear green case, it was a generic brand on sale in a Walgreens or something. I'm trying to remember if I had any else, but I definitely had the Pokemon Pikachu which was extremely disappointing. He was a pedometer so he'd count the steps you took during the day and you'd just try to get 5,000 or something to buy him a birthday cake. You didn't really take care of the Pikachu, it just kinda did tricks and got fed until you were bored of it. I'm gonna go research Dinky Dino for the growth tree. I know there was a brontosaurus.

Edited by American Ristar
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Nostalgia time.

 

My brother and I had the first generation of Digimon virtual pet toys when we were kids.  We used to raise and battle them all the time.  I think we were still playing with them up until 2002, even.  We didn't get anything past the first gen.  They were really fun at the time, though they'd probably bore me now.

 

In 1999, I got my Neopets account... only took me about four years to realize how bored stiff I was of that.

 

Sometime after that, I got a Tamigotchi... from McDonald's... so it wasn't really a Tamigotchi, but when you opened and closed it, there was a picture of the pets that changed everytime you opened i- yeah, it was terrible.

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Yeah, that was me. You know, the Tamagotchi still exists surprisingly. The newest one is called the Tamatown Tama-Go, and you can get it for a pretty cheap according to Amazon. Anyway, Tamagotchi was the first virtual pet I got, and at such a young age it took me a while to actually properly care for one so it wouldn't die before I saw its adult form! I believe the first adult tamagotchi I got was Kuchipatchi, the duck one. Next time I tried, it was a Mametchi (mascot of the entire thing). Too bad I never got Masktchi so I could get Bill. Actually considered getting a Tama-Go just to get into the little buggers again.

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I was obsessed with Virtual Pets when I was a kid. Couldn't get a Tamagotchi for a while as they were so popular and hard to come across at one point, so the first one I ever got was a Dinky Dino.

 

tumblr_loxfdpevLi1qa8pkuo1_500.png

 

(The packaging was different on mine, but it's the best picture I could find.)

 

Awesome, I had Dinky Dino too, packaging was the  same though the actual toy was yellow not green.

 

If I remember correctly, no matter what you did to keep him alive, Dinky would always die after 27 days. By that time he'd grow wings and a tail and you couldn't do anything to him, He'd beep at you to let you know he was hungry but the machine wouldn't let you feed him. So he'd just starve to death.....dark.

 

Yeah I had pocket pikachu too, but he was just a pedometer, cheap ploy to get kids active. Didn't work because you could get a days worth of tokens (each step was a token i think) by shaking it violently for five minutes. I'd be sitting, basically jerking it off in the living room, my parents must have been pissing themselves.

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I had several tamagotchi's over the years, though technically they were copy-cat versions. I don't think I ever had an actual tamagotchi. The ones I remember were a dog (which was shaped like a dog too), a penguin and a chicken.

 

I never had, nor wanted, a Furby. Much to my parents delight because they thought that Furby's were hideous and expensive.

 

I did really like Creatures but I always found it difficult to get to grips with. I have 1, 2 and 3 somewhere though because I bought it again a couple of years ago out of nostalgia. I still find it hard to get to grips with.

 

Personally I prefered the Dogz and Catz games for PC (Not to be confused with the modern Dogz, Catz, Hamsterz etc games, the ones I mean were from the 90s) because they looked better, were more interactive, had (and still do have) a big community around them and you could have lots of pets at once. Plus from Petz 3 onwards you could breed the petz too, plus people also hexed them so you could have different breeds and species. Then Ubisoft ruined it by making Petz 5.

Edited by Mollfie
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I was always interested and Catz and Dogz when I was little but, never got around to playing one of them. Then my mother gave me a real kitten so I kind of just forgot about them.

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Dogz and Catz! Best virtual pets I ever had, and my god do I miss them. I spent many an hour raising and cross-breeding these buggers (only to have them all run away >.>). In my opinion, this game will always be my preferred Nintendogs. It was so simple, so repetitive, but so addictively fun at the same time biggrin.png Oh the hours I spent cross-breeding the most bizarre combinations of dogs (Great Danes with Chihuahua's, etc.) and trying to, but never succeeding, in breeding rabbits and pigs tongue.png Sometimes, I miss this game so much I'm half tempted to buy an old Windows '98 computer just to re-live this awesomeness of a game ^^ 

 

Furbies were another favourite of mine! People thought they were creepy, I thought they were adorable. Of course, being the collecting nut I am, I had to try and collect every Furby in existence. I ended up with 45 (99% of them coming from car boot sales). I ended up selling off my collection several years back, and kind of regret not taking a photo of them all together!

 

I was also hugely into the virtual robo-pets that were around in early 2000. I ended up with almost every Poo-Chi going, and all his friends (except Chirpy-Chi, which I never did get). And, all the others such as Tekno, Dog-E, etc. I always wanted the one which cost like £1,000, but never did get one ;~; 

 

One thing I never did have, is a Tamagotchi. When they first came out, I was rather young and immensely afraid of things which made a noise (most of the above items mentioned, I took the batteries out of for this very reason). My Mum did buy me a cheap one in the shape of a Dalmatian, however it scared me so much it went straight in the nearest bin as soon as it was bought lol! 

 

 

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The chao garden mane.  The chao garden.
Same here, I don't know what it was, but when I started taking care of chao in SA2 on dreamcast I realized why didn't I do the same in sadx?
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If you ever get a 3DS, look into Nintendogs+Cats, it's even better (and the puppies and kittens look so freaklin' cute). Anyway, I actually found one of those new Tamagotchis for 10 bucks, so I decided "why the hell not?". I'm interested in seeing what the new ones are like.

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Man I'm so bummed this topic isn't more about neopets....

 

I'm still making bank on my neostocks

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Actually thanks for the reminder, Pelly. :P I quickly went back to own Neopets account, it's a ton of fun XD Of course there's still a tough decision whether to horde and sell Codestones, or actually use them what they were intended for.

 

I like testing my luck on all those wheels. XD

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Ever since I left mine on a trian in Glasgow I've never gone back to them, it was heartbreaking :P

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Had a Tamagotchi like everyone else when the fad struck in the late 90's.. Really wanted a "Trauma-gotcha", you got to beat up your pet instead of taking care of it.

 

Never got into the Furbys, although I remember people hoarding them at a department store during one holiday season (after hearing about how successful they were overseas) only to have the whole fad fail.

 

Bought a Pocket Pikachu when Pokemon were big, it was like a tamagotchi except it had a pedometer in it.. lost it on vacation

 

Had a Sony PocketStation with the Final Fantasy 8 mini Chocobo game on it (you could collect rare items, upload them into the game, unplug the PocketStation, plug it back in and repeat the cycle) and the Street Fighter Alpha 3 game (you started with a couple of Street Fighters and trained them through a small game based on timing then fought with other characters, once you beat the character, he/she joins your team)

 

Only ever took the whole virtual pet thing seriously when I finally got a VMU (there was a 3 week delay after the Dreamcast launch in Australia) and threw a Chao on there. I took a Silver Chao (straight out of the egg) on a 2 week camping trip once, maxed all it stats etc.. too bad the battery life on those things sucked.

 

Edit - yeah, did the Neopets things too, got a pretty high level Kacheek. Get codestones - level - play games to earn points - repeat..

Edited by Jix Hedgehog
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I never really got into neopets, I was mostly messing around with my Tamagotchis and Digimon. I did try it once but, gave up one it when I couldn't even find any food for my pets. I remember having to buy food using game points except, food was always sold out. Why the hell have limits?

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