What is Tamagotchi? Description and characteristics of the game

November 23, 2016, a well-known Tamagotchi toy will celebrate its twenty-year anniversary - yes, it's been twenty years since the first egg-shaped devices appeared on the market to take care of a virtual pet. In the nineties these toys were ubiquitous - they appeared in Japan, but very quickly spread all over the world. Most likely, all adults know what Tamagotchi is, but modern children are unlikely to have any idea that once such a thing was popular. They have smartphones and tablets that contain hundreds of different games, so for them the Tamagotchi is a very strange thing. But when this game was created, there were no smartphones or tablets, so it quickly gained popularity. The creator of it officially is the Japanese company Bandai, but in reality the responsible is Aki Maita, who independently endured this idea. She was very fond of pets, but she always wanted to carry them with her, and not just keep her at home. It was then that she began to consider the possibility of creating a virtual portable pet. During the year, she reflected on how this could be implemented, and she made the final decision when she saw an ad on TV. In it, the little boy really wanted to take his home turtle with him to school, and it was then that the thought of what the Tamagotchi was finally formed.

Issue Tamagotchi

Naturally, Maita herself could not have created such a toy - she was the creator of the idea, and in the realization of this idea she was helped by Akihiro Joka, an engineer from WiZ, who developed and produced various toys and products for children. As a result, a test version of Tamagotchi appeared, which was still far from perfect. In October 1996, Maita armed herself with a set of test toys and looked in the local school, where she asked the schoolgirls to try out a new toy and tell them whether they like it. For several weeks, she watched the children try to figure out what Tamagotchi is, play with the virtual pet, she analyzed their reaction, and on the basis of this, amendments were made. The test group was as many as 200 girls, so the amendments were quite ambitious, but by the end of November the work was completed, and on November 23, something happened that later for many years would eat up people of all ages in huge quantities.

Form and name

Toy Tamagotchi was a plastic egg, which had a monochrome screen and three buttons, as well as a hidden button for rebooting. And this tiny little thing became a real hit of sales. However, many still wonder what Tamagotchi is, that is, what this name means. There are different versions, however, in the official version of the manufacturer it is claimed that the name is derived from two words - Japanese tamago, which translates into Russian as an "egg" and English watch, that is, "look." So you can safely say that Tamagotchi is an egg, for which you need to look very carefully.

What's the point?

So, now you will learn all the details of this game. Tamagotchi was a sensation in the first years after the publication - the children spent a huge amount of time to care for their pets, because those without proper care very quickly died, shocking their masters. As a result, almost all children went to school with plastic eggs, as they needed not only to learn, but also to take care of small monsters. Yes, although the characters who were present in the Tamagotchi looked like different animals, in fact they were aliens from the distant world. According to the history invented by the company, they flew to Earth to study it, but the local atmosphere and climate do not suit them, therefore they were encased in an egg-like shell to avoid perishing. Naturally, they have different needs, and the Tamagotchi owner needs to satisfy them. And at first it was very important - when you just started the game, your pet always wanted something, so you had to watch it continuously for an hour. Otherwise, you risked starving him, killing him with overwhelmed depression or even drowning his own excrement in the mountains. Each need was indicated by a characteristic squeak so that the owner could not overlook it, and how well you cared for your pet depended on its development, its character and many other elements. Tamagotchi games only began to gain popularity - with the course of the years they became more common.

Development of the pet

Over time, various pets, such as dragons, unicorns and ponies, began to appear. Tamagotchi initially assumed only a few different kinds of creatures that you could get. From the very beginning, you had to choose between two different types of creatures, and as they grew older, they could be transformed into six different species of adults. And everything depended on how you behave with the pet. The best adult options, naturally, required special care, full control not only during the day, but also at a specific moment when the transformation began. In addition, it is worth noting that over time your pet has started to call you for a variety of reasons, that is, not only if it needs something, but "just so" because it became boring. In general, you had to pay a big price for growing your little pony. Tamagotchi nonetheless remained one of the most popular toys in the world.

Incredible success

Now you can download even Tamagotchi on "Android", but these toys no longer have such popularity, which they had in the late nineties and early zero. To give you an idea of the scale of the project's success, it is worthwhile to give some figures. So everyone remembers that the Tamagotchi appeared on the market at the end of November 1996, but by the end of this year, that is, a little more than a month, there were 350,000 pieces sold in Japan - it was an amazing result, which, of course, Attracted the attention of foreign markets. As a result, in the spring of 1997 Tamagotchi appeared already in the US, and then began to spread around the world. In 1999, an incredible figure was achieved - forty million copies of Tamagotchi were sold around the world. It was a sensation that dragged the whole world into the process. Manufacturers simply could not meet the demand for toys, the shelves in the stores were empty, because all new income swept away instantly. One toy cost 16 dollars, but given the deficit, it could be bought at least twenty times more from the hands - there are data that there were cases of selling Tamagotchi even for a thousand dollars. People stopped taking toys with them, and if they took them, they used them secretly from others, because more and more attacks and robberies began to occur, and the thieves were not interested in money, but only in Tamagotchi. So, in principle, you can be glad that now you can freely download Tamagotchi on "Android" and not be afraid for your health.

Mortality

So, first of all it is necessary to say that the characters you so carefully educated were mortal. Even if you created ideal conditions for them, they could not live longer than a month. However, few people managed to achieve that his pet can survive for 31 days - most pets lived about ten days less, even if they were well cared for. What can we say about the fact that the pet could die even in infancy. Later this ceased to be a serious problem, since Tamagotchi acquired a reset function, and after the death of the character it was possible to start anew. But the first version of the game, which was released until 2004, was one-time, which leads to another death rate for Tamagotchi. Online you can find many articles that tell us that children at one time committed suicide due to the fact that their pets died prematurely. It is not known what proportion of the truth in these news, but the fact remains - there were a lot of such reports, and a huge number of children were stressed because of this toy. A virtual cat (Tamagotchi) could cause nervous breakdowns, tantrums, attempts to harm yourself and much more. However, while the popularity of the game still remained on top.

Connection

For eight years Tamagotchi toys came out, when the manufacturer decided that it was worthwhile not to miss such an impressive profit, which he received from sales, which began to slowly subside. Therefore, in 2004 a new version was released, which received an incredible feature - the ability to play along with other people. Tamagotchi now had an infrared port that could be used to connect to another toy. And in this way it was possible to introduce, play various games among themselves, exchange gifts and surprises, and most importantly, the topic of relationships was introduced. Now you could start a family between two pets from different toys and even "give birth" to children. Progress went further, and eventually there was an unusual possibility of downloading Tamagotchi to the computer.

TamaTown and color

TamaTown is a kind of tamagochi-online, a virtual city into which you can enter your character from your computer. There you can play various games, communicate with other characters, visit different institutions and so on. This brought even more variety to the game, but the most notable moment was the acquisition of color in the Connection Plus Color model.

Further improvements

Tamagotchi free of charge, of course, you will not get it, although the popularity of toys is already ten times smaller than twenty years ago. However, the manufacturer continues to attempt to reanimate the brand, introducing new features. Three years ago, the last updated model of Tamagotchi Friends was released.