20 years ago the idea of a virtual pet hatched from an egg and lived or died based on your actions seemed like a novel idea… and one that launched the sale of millions of Tamagotchi toys.

But a lot’s changed in the last two decades and it’s hard to imagine a single-purpose toy with a tiny LCD display would be all that appealing.

Bandai America is giving it a try anyway. The company has launched a new 20th anniversary Tamagotchi, presumably going after the same nostalgic gamers who are snapping up NES Classic game consoles.

The new version is smaller and cheaper: it’ll go for about $15 when it hist stores “in limited quantities” on November 5th.

Like the original, the new Tamagotchi is an egg shaped device that alerts you when your pet needs attention. But it doesn’t have any new features. In fact, it has fewer features than its predecessor.

Bandai’s 20th anniversary edition device has just a 16 x 16 pixel screen (which means you get a total of 256 pixels, compared with 512 on the original). It lets you feed your pet and clean up after it, but lacks the classic options for “playing games” or disciplining your pet.

It was kind of hard to explain the charm of the Tamagotchi two decades ago, but it was a novelty device that hit fad status… and which paved the way for modern games that you can play on your phone such as Neko Atsume, a game that basically involves putting out furniture, food, and toys to see if virtual cats use them.

But while modern games have the benefit of running on a device you probably already own, letting you flip between them and your news feed, email, or YouTube videos, the new Tamagotchi is a standalone device with even less charm than the model it’s meant to remind you of.

At least it’s cheap.

via Engadget, Gizmodo, and The Verge (all of which have stories about the life and death of their own virtual pets)

 

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5 replies on “Tamagotchi launches 20th anniversary virtual pet for some reason”

  1. 20 years ago electronic devices had to have a trick to get you to look at them multiple times a day. Now they are more in control of us. 😉

  2. “for some reason”

    The editor must consider the dear readers to be of limited intelligence.

    The only reason this device is being launched (just in time for the annual obesessional gift buying season) is to make money for the people selling it.

    1. Similar to, if more functional than, those doofy “HDMI Stick” PCs, Raspberry Pis, and other junk-drawer fodder. P.T. Barnum just keeps grinning.

      1. Wait, are you saying you haven’t used your Raspberry Pi as both a media server and a security system? And it’s gathering dust in a drawer? For shame!

  3. Editorializing right in the title – I like it.
    However, not sticking to a single spelling of T(a/o)mag(a/o)tchi is confusing. I guess if you can’t decide on one, use them all!

Comments are closed.