My Tamagotchi: a story of hope and loss

I wasn’t all that rebellious of a kid back in elementary school. There were a few days where I brought my Game Boy to school. Occasionally, I put more duck sauce on my chicken fingers than I was supposed to. I’ll admit I did cheat on an exam on U.S. trivia once in fifth grade because I hadn’t been paying attention to the last week’s worth of classes. (Nowadays, I just accept my impending failures.) But these were all one-off or otherwise infrequent incidents.

In fact, the most consistent rebellious act I’d ever committed was bringing my Tamagotchis to school. Every day. Every class. I got caught maybe once or twice, and the teacher would confiscate my Tamagotchis, ruining my mood for the rest of the day.

I was the type to carve and draw on desks in retaliation (or even when I was bored), and I’d write out some vehemently worded wishes for my teachers to stop sticking their noses in my business. Okay, maybe I was a pretty rebellious kid.

I learned about Tamagotchis around the time I was also introduced to Neopets. Both revolved around raising virtual pets, an activity that appealed to me since my mom would never approve of our family getting actual pets.

However, Neopets was a website, and unlike college lecture halls, I could never get away with staring at a computer screen in an elementary school classroom. Tamagotchis were tiny handheld devices; They were discreet and easy to play with under the desk.

I remember my mom disapproving of my Tamagotchis (I made my parents and relatives get me several — I wanted a whole family of virtual pets), especially upon finding them in my backpack. I just assured her that they were strictly meant for play during recess.

But who was I really kidding? I’d be caring for my Mametchis and Kuchipatchis the entire school day; All the pets were extremely needy. They weren’t potty trained and could die in a few hours from poor hygiene if you didn’t clean up right after them. They’d also get bored quite easily, so I’d need to play mini games with them to keep them content.

Raising my Tamagotchi pets was tedious but also surprisingly fulfilling. Some of my friends also had them, and there were cool multiplayer games we could play together, but I was definitely one of the more devoted members of the Tamagotchi cult.

I played Neopets less and less to spend more time on online Tamagotchi pet-raising guides and walkthroughs. Near the peak of my obsession, Bandai, the company that made the Tamagotchis, also released TamaTown, an interactive site that was just as fun as playing with the toys themselves.

I would return home after school to play TamaTown just after playing with the actual toys in school. TamaTown brought even more life to the act of raising Tamagotchi pets by showing you the world they lived in. It was more complex than I’d ever imagined.

From seeing the hints and glimpses on the devices, TamaTown had everything. There was a school, a shopping mall, a post office, resident houses and more; All that a growing Tamagotchi needed to be happy.

By interacting with TamaTown and exploring everything it had to offer, you could also generate extra codes to put into a Tamagotchi device for more rewards for your pet.

This system perpetuated a cycle where it seemed impossible for me to stop playing, until I began to spend more and more time on TamaTown while neglecting my actual pets on the devices. In class, I would start to doodle Tamagotchi comics and write stories about them based on what I saw on TamaTown instead of actually playing on my devices.

The thing about Tamagotchi pets is that once they die without having kids, everything associated with the pet is lost forever, even your money and your items. Meanwhile, on Neopets your pets couldn’t die, and you’d be hard-pressed to lose money or items unless you got scammed or hacked.

So when my Tamagotchi pets started to die and along with them my virtual wealth, I felt cheated. I was still devoted to the Tamagotchi world through TamaTown, but other virtual pet worlds didn’t have such harsh punishment for any form of neglect. Feeling betrayed, I began to spend my time on Neopets again.

I know Bandai just re-released the original devices in Japan earlier this month and could very well do so in the U.S. soon. But that isn’t going to tempt me. I’ve surely escaped that rabbit hole by now. But Neopets? If that site goes through a revamp, now that’s another story...