Furbster's Full Review: Tamagotchi for Game Boy Color
The craze came and went a few years ago. Tamagotchi, created by Bandai Japan (original idea by Akai Mata), which exploded in popularity spread like wild fire to the US and other countries.
In my review I'll touch a bit on the Virtual Pet as well as the Game boy game, since there doesn't seem to be a category for the original VP.
First came the Virtual Pet, Tamagotchi. An tiny alien who has come to earth to find a care taker so that it may be hatched and grown to an adult, so that it may retire. Retire in the US meant turning into a Tamagotchi Angel (which became another Tamagotchi all together) and in Japan that meant dying and becoming a spirit.
I'm sure many recall what a Tamagotchi is, however here is the run down: It's an egg shaped container in which has 3 buttons and a pixel screen on the front and a reset button on the back. The Tamagotchi goes through stages. The egg stage (unhatched), Babytchi stage, Teen stage, and adult stage. Some turn into Secret characters and others just continue their adult life. Eventually they die/turn into an Angel.
During this time the owner must feed, keep it healthy, play games with it, put it to bed and clean up its bathroom. It was to be taken with the owner everywhere and it was on 24/7 until it passed away. How much care per hour depended on the character and the neediness level that character was at (babies were really needy, old adults were real needy, sickly characters real needy, otherwise it was easy going).
What character you got depended on how good of care you gave it and what kind of discipline you gave the pixel pet. How you cared for it, also depended on when it died. Times it went to bed depended on the character and was a regular schedule as long as you had that character. When it changed the schedule of things changed. The point was to get as healthy a character as possible and keep them alive as long as possible. Character also depended on the Tamagotchi you had. There was a P1 (original and first) that had its set of characters and P2, which had a new set of characters.
Other types of Tamagotchi came out later, but I won't deal with that here as that did not reflect on the game boy. For lots more information and further details into this you can <a href= http://www.mimitchi.com/html/tindex.htm >go here to Tamagotchi Planet</a>.
That is the basic idea. The characters were very cute and the game varied between the Japanese version and the US version, making the Japanese version the most sought out for collectors. They go for much more then regular price (14.99) on ebay.com!
All of this idea was incorporated into the Game Boy game, Tamagotchi. There are a handful of changes in the Game Boy game. You can enter your Tamagotchi into contests and it is done with full cartoons and music (much much more detailed then the VP). The Tamagotchi Game Boy allowed you to choose how fast the growth process took place (the vp had a set growth) and it also allowed you to have 3 characters going at once. All of the graphics were not pixeled, but in Tama cartoons. Plus you could get ANY of the characters from the two types of original Tamagotchi (P1 & P2)!
The Gameboy has extremely cute graphics and is not as difficult to deal with. You can shut it off any time and began play whenever you turn it on next (unlike the VP, which only had a pause feature which would wear at the batteries if left too long).
I'm not one to go with fads and surely not one to throw something away because people decide it is 'uncool'. I own over 80 Tamagotchi VP and the gameboy game among other items.
The Game boy game is quite fun and entertaining and even if you have never had a Tamagotchi VP, I think that anyone could enjoy this. It is no regular game, but the graphics are ultra cute. To anyone that has played with the Tama VP, then the graphics are just a bonus on cuteness, as the pixel versions are very cute as well!
This is not challenging, so almost anyone could play it. The hardest part is grasping and understanding about Tamagotchi and how to take care of them is in order. I think that this game is really fun and enjoyable and if Tamagotchi was not a fast passing fad, I think that the game boy game could have been popular and well enjoyed.
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