Anyone else still playing with virtual pets in 2023? (I know Kirbizard is at the very least!)
I was into Neopets in the mid 2000s, though I forget why I fell out of it, and I was also into Tamagotchi during the "Tamagotchi Connection" reboot. I actually had people to connect mine with and that was neat, though I don't remember how much I played with it... I definitely have a lot of stuff where I'll think it was a big part of my childhood and then I look back and there's not really that much evidence for it.
In any case my girlfriend got into Tamagotchi and Digimon (and other virtual pets) awhile back because they help her a lot with her anxiety, and that got me back into them (I did try the Pac-Man one at some point in the past but it didn't really fully stick, probably because it's so basic). I found my old childhood Tamagotchi Connection v3 and I got several more that you'll see at the end of this post hehe.
It's nice to be at work and look at my desk and see a critter moving around, and pretend it's some company the same way I would a plush. They don't really do all that much, which is a shame because an always-on screen would have been a great opportunity to have all sorts of idle animations. The Connection/Plus series does mix it up a bit and there's some idle animations like singing, brushing teeth, and rolling around, but there's not many of them. I'd like to try and solve that myself in a virtual pet I've been slowly working on.
I'm currently running my Osutchi and Mesutchi toys and I want to get through all four generations, though it's kind of a commitment since there's no save feature so I have a time limit in the form of the batteries. I also have two V3s I'm playing with sometimes, and a V4 which I never had as a kid so I want to see what I missed out on. Plus, I'm very curious about any changes to character animations in characters that have been reused from previous versions. But once I get through those four generations and satisfy my curiosity I'm not sure what I'll do... probably just run like, one or two, and mix it up.
I have considered getting back onto Neopets but I think the Neopets that exists now is probably very different from the Neopets I remember from like 2006, and I've been trying the games and a lot of them really weren't anything special. I'm probably best off just having a few Cybunny plushes and playing the games on Flashpoint when I want to.