Virtual pets

[NovaSquirrel]

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.

[Foxxhoria]

I don't have much directly to add, but how about we see some signature adoptables here, like those dragons that would level up or whatever :P

[Kirbizard]

Yea yea!!

I only got fully back into virtual pets about five years ago starting up with one of the 20th anniversary Digimon vpets. I had a gen 1 and 2 Tamagotchi as a kid and played a ton of the Game Boy Tamagotchi game, but I missed the whole Connection line which is a shame because I've only ever heard the best things about them.

Always loved the idea of raising a little fantasy creature, I miss games like Monster Rancher and the like. Plus it's nice to have a pet that can accompany you but without the worry or expenses that come with a real living being (I say, knowing full well how much half the virtual pets I've bought cost)

Here's a photo of my now already outdated collection, including some other related LCD toys. I don't have my oldest Tamagotchi anymore which is a shame, my sister probably took them over, she has a small collection too, so they're probably around somewhere still.

Currently playing around with both the Digimon Color v4 and v5 that just came out, and obviously I'm bias towards the v5 because it has Gazimon on it. Look at this floppy eared bunny, hard to imagine their official art tries to make them look mean. :)c

[orchidrabbit]

i got into tamagotchis/digimon in college for a little bit after i found a tamagotchi connection v5 familtchi for free. it's long since dead but i probably do have more cell batteries around for it somewhere in my room probably. a little later i got a digimon accel but it was one i didn't play as much, because as novel as the trigger thing was on the side, it was kind of a hassle to have to use it. also it never had an english release so i had to look up guides when i first started with it. at the time it was the only digimon toy where you could get pumpkinmon, which is my favorite digimon lol. it also has an easily removable faceplate so you can customize your digivice with whatever skin you want, but i did just like the shiny red original. i tried to play the tamagotchi on magic as much as i could, but the batteries made the weight and heft of it feel kind of bad to hold.

i also tried getting back into neopets a couple of weeks ago but the friction of how still so little of the site is converted to the new version was not really enjoyable as i have 6 pets that all need to be fed and there's still no quality of life improvements over trying to get food for your little guys. it's a shame because the parts of the new site that work do in fact work and it's nice to look at. but i still have nostalgia for the left sidebar version of neopets from so long ago too lol.

those are some really neat collections though, nova and kibizard!