So why? What's wrong with them? Well, I know it's not very politically
correct these days but to be honest I wouldn't recommend one. This page
represents a quick resume of my experiences (and those of my friends)
with Ban Dai's creation. I hasten to
add, incidentally, that when I say "Tamagotchi" I mean that, explicitly.
"Tamagotchi" is not a word meaning "virtual pet" - it's one particular
virtual pet. I keep getting mail from people saying "Hey you, I've got a
Dino and it's cool". Well it may be, because it's not what I'm talking
about. Was that a bit terse? I've got a hangover, sorry.
There are plenty of Tamagotchi sites which tell you what they do (the life cycle, the different shapes they grow into, that sort of thing) so I'm not going to bother going into detail. If you don't know the basic concepts behind them then try doing a Yahoo search for "tamagotchi" or look at my Tamagotchi Links Page.
We managed to get one each. We pulled the
paper tabs out simultaneously and sat back. First off, the thing is very
demanding in the first hour - it performs just about every bodily function
it can, and pretty often. Nothing wrong with that; it's what you'd expect
from a real baby animal. What was beginning to interest me was that
Laura's was doing everything at the same time as mine. No matter
who fed it the most, who played with it and when, they were
sleeping/getting ill/pooping at exactly the same times. Now I don't know a
great deal about digestive systems in general but I do know that the more
you feed something, the more often it poops. This synchronisation
between the two Tamagotchi continued for at least 4-5
days. I began to wonder whether my new virtual pet had quite the personality I'd been reading so much about, and started to write down notes on just how intelligent this beast was. I put all of this on my web page and was astounded by the results - over 30,000 hits in a couple of months and nearly 600 e-mails. And now you're going to get to read it! Lucky you!