Tamagotchi is back! Again! One came in the mail from Bandai. Here are my thoughts, bearing in mind that I have not played with one for 10 years.
1. They’re are better games than they used to be. This latest iteration of the toy is themed on a rock career: raise your sprog and train it to sing or play instruments. There’s a bunch of subgames of the sort children obsess over, but won’t likely please anyone used to more sophisticated fare. It is, at least, much better than the original, which amounted to playing “Tapper with Turds” in very slow motion.
2. You can apparently link Tamas for vs. play.
3. You can also pause it. The originals lacked this facility, meaning that even a few hours distraction could result in your digital pet’s death by starvation, or toxic shock from swimming in its own excrement. You know, as if there were some sort of child-rearing point to be made.
4. The display is still very low-tech, black-on-gray LCD as befits the watch battery that must power it.
5. It’s cheap, tiny fun for kids 8 and up: good for shutting the little things up for a few hours without having to fork out for a Nintendo DS game.
Product Page [Bandai USA]
In the late-90s there was a “Japan-only release” version of the Tamagotchi where its interactivity/”feeding” required a 3.5mm headphone jack passthrough and you’d have to play it music for your virtual pet to survive (and dance!). I still think that’s a great concept, but can’t seem to find any information online about it (besides seeing one in person at the aforementioned time in history). So, dear Lazyweb, please recover it from the mists of time past.
about two years ago I got one for my niece (she was a bit too young to understand it but know she kinda understands). Numbers 2-5 is pretty muh exactly what you described. One thing that I thought was cool beyond the gen1 ones I had was that it would generate a hex code to use on the internet, where it would “travel” to the tama village for flash game funs. And when you were done it’d generate an exit code.
What I was wondering but never looked up is if you could fake it out.