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Spent the whole day in bed and have more energy right now than ive had all week long 😮‍💨 why didn’t I do this sooner!! I could have wasted so much LESS time!!

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|still trapped inside your own walls| . . b3313 was a lot of fun and its something that i still pull up every once in a while to play around in and find places ive never been before. highly recommended if sm64 has a special place in your heart.

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And that’s on WLW baby.

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link to da original art btw

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(In the cuck chair)(starts booing)

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I neverr lose

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This could've been a yuri

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So I got the newest tamagotchi model that just released (Tamagotchi Paradise) because I am always interested in virtual pets and it’s nothing super astonishing, it’s still Literally Toy For Children, but I’m fascinated by it because it’s the biggest shakeup in the like. Design ethos I’ve seen for the brand since like 1998 in a way I find SUPER interesting but also I am nothing like an expert on the subject so I don’t exactly wanna go all out talking about it.

But I will anyway!!!!!!!

Suffice to say, for the curious, that I said 1998 because that was when there were two models, Tamagotchi Ocean and Tamagotchi Garden (in English, the latter is more correctly translated as Tamagotchi Forest) where you basically raised fish or bug themed tamagotchi. I was interested for a while in perhaps hunting one down until I saw that these devices are notoriously difficult to keep your tamagotchis alive in and I get Sad when my tamas eat it so it wasn’t worth the significant cost of getting a vintage device.

Since that point, the model for adding features and complexity has involved tamagotchis not just being funny little Creatures, but creatures who experience a very modern human way of life. The tamagotchi Connection line I played when it was in stores when I was a teenager, and in that, your tamagotchi goes to preschool, normal school, and then goes on to get a job where you go play mini games for a regular goddamn salary. Since then, my understanding has been that this has been THE direction for tamagotchi. When I got back into it a few years ago, the tamagotchi didn’t have a job, but could go to the park, the arcade, talk to other tamagotchis, and get married. I believe they released a game somewhat recently where you also go to metropolitan areas with other tamagotchi NPCs who are all basically People and do life-sim stuff. I noticed newer tamagotchi designs were becoming more complex and more anthropomorphic—they have become more like funny little people than funny little animals.

THIS IS NO LONGER THE CASE

In a move I find very interesting, they’ve completely switched gears with the release of this single device. The tamagotchi you raise include some of the old favorites from VERY early days, but the majority of the designs are brand new, and are sometimes just literally An Animal From Real Life. When you clean up poop (WHICH ALL THE ADULT PEOPLE TAMAGOTCHIS WITH DEGREES STILL NEEDED YOU TO DO???), a DIFFERENT, more anthropomorphic (indicated by wearing clothes and ostensibly having a job) tamagotchi shows up and does it “for you,” looking very particularly like some sort of zookeeper. The pet you raise turns into a…bigger animal. You put enrichment toys in the area you have unlocked and they interact with them like animals would, even the very first one I got which is one of the old bipedal types. They don’t talk, they do not receive education, and from what I understand if you connect with another device they just Produce an egg rather than like. Marrying each other.

So the interesting thing to me is after like 30 years they’ve fully shed the model of tamagotchi pets living people lives and are trying their hand at: what if they were a bunch of animals and you just looked after them, which is a bold enough move that I’m actually really surprised by it. I think it’s smart. It definitely is way, way more interesting to me personally.

I’ve also noticed other changes like drastically changing the amount of time you need to spend interacting with the pet in order for it to stay alive, and how frequently you can make care mistakes. There’s a built in function for a “tama sitter” which costs money and only lasts until evening that day, but keep in mind some tamagotchi devices used to require that you do things like open the clock to change the time because that was the ONLY way to get away with needing to be away from it for several hours bc at some point they got rid of a pause function that existed in very early models. I’ve noticed that the device chirps less, especially in the baby stage, and that overall I can easily go hours not engaging with the device without suffering any consequence. It also allows you to CHOOSE when the tamagotchi goes to sleep if you look at the device past a certain time, which is great for anyone (children!!!!) who need to put things like that away for the night. You can also choose to wake it up without any negative consequence.

All of that indicates to me that they’re consciously trying to move away from a model that ropes you in to full concentration on the toy for extended periods of time and reluctance to go away from it to tend to other things, which like, is great. As much as I like them, that function becomes stressful, and with kids in mind as the target audience, it’s GOOD to have them not constantly worrying if their weird little digital guy has dropped dead or not.

So im enjoying it so far! I feel much less stressed than I have with previous models, and most of all, I no longer have to be upset that my child I raised who has a job and a wife and a house is constantly shitting on the floor for some reason. Now, it’s an animal who lives outside and has someone whose job it is to clean their enclosures.

And finally, as always, shouting out my recent most favorite virtual pet app Boing-Boing Animals for basically already being exactly this model but more forgiving and it lets you change the poop icons into little hearts and is very very cute and fun.

If you feel the virtual pet bug biting, go download that, it’s made by one person as far as I can tell and it’s way better than any tamagotchi device I’ve ever owned. You can’t even neglect your pets to death like you can in tamagotchi so you don’t ever have to be sad and they just get kinda hungry and dirty.

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mischievous puppy

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im gonna kill myself [remembers that suicide jokes make people uncomfortable] uhh [in valley girl voice] im like soooo totally gonna blow my brains out... [waiting for polite laughter that never comes] sorry [remembering that i apologise too much and i need to work on that] No im not

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wait wtf is cream soda

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Artwork of Knuckles from digital stickers, which were available on LINE messenger software as part of a ‘Sonic The Sketchhog’ set.