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| Everyone seems to be chronicling the lives of their Tamagotchi's, and so I figured I may as well jump on the bandwagon and do the same. Of course I wasn't properly inspired until I spent a rather lazy Saturday evening with friends enjoying the witticisms and peculiarities of some of the other Tamagotchi pages out there. Now this isn't going to be too anal a chronicling -- this endeavor was begun after I'd already had my Tamagotchi for over a week, and this is largely from memory, but what you see here is the truth about my Tamagotchi. |
Prelude |
June 11, 1997...
Well let's see, the prelude to Tamagotchi in my life began a few months back when I was reading Fetish in Wired (I have no idea what issue it was...) and I read the little blurb on cyberpets and figured nahhh... not for me. See it didn't seem like a cost effective plan to go and buy some toy that was going to last just one go, and would depend entirely upon my rather Arian (i.e., my Moon is in Aries inconjucnt my Sun and half the other planets in my chart, but that's another story anyhow). Basically, I figured it'd be one hell of a rip-off. Buy this toy, play the game, blow it, may as well go out to dinner and a movie instead.
Then on Thursday 29 May 1997, I went to pick up Thann, a housemate, at work. While we were at the mall we both went to visit the third housemate, Slyder, at the arcade, also at work. Seems Slyder's friend had acquired a Tamagotchi and Slyder wanted one, and they actually don't go dead after one playing (I guess I was being cynical, not atypical). Slyder wanted one, but not some dumb color like pink or green or yellow. Unfortunately the only remaining Tamagotchi at the toy store at the mall was green ($19.95). So we passed, and Thann and I went for comics. Not surprisingly, they had Tamagotchi's at the local comic store that I frequent. Now priced $24.95, but I've already learned that toy scalpers are prevalent enough to make toy collecting a wholly unenjoyable past-time (and that is an entirely different rant). Anyhow, they had a purple one and so I got Slyder one, a store discount and good will getting me past the extra 5$. I had to get one for myself, just because I've lived with Slyder for so damned long I know better than to get him a toy like this and not get one for me. Poorer yet somewhat elated, Thann and I left the store and returned to the car. |
Arrival |
Having already played with an empty Tamagotchi box, it was sheer simplicity to cut the scotch tape on the box and extricate the egg. I feel that I actually managed to show great restraint -- I didn't pull the paper out before reading the instructions. I read the instructions several times and tried to commit it to memory. Unfortunately, it has been proven in my life that there is no subsitution for practical experience, and so I managed to only partly know what I was doing at first.
Getting the paper out was easy enough, it didn't tear like I thought it might. Then the instructions proved useful in setting the clock... of course there was no big red notice saying This little monster is going to shut off at 8pm and then wake you up at 9 am no matter what time you go to bed!! Woulda been nice. See I have a rather peculiar schedule. At 9 am I am usually drooling on my pillow. |
Genesis |
Anyhow, we got the clock set and started the little guy going right at 4:00 pm Pacific Daylight Time, Thursday May 28, 1997. On a momentary sugar high, I have to wonder what the natal chart would look like.. Then I started the car. Well another habit of my life is that I don't always eat before 5 pm. Well... I was plenty hungry and the little guy was going to hatch eventually. I figured what the hey, I can drive and watch it hatch. I was wrong, but I figured it'd work. Now Thann and I had been gaming in the car for lack of anything on the radio, and I was playing Rogue (yeah, the X-Man Rogue). Well, I had been having fun and decided that Rogue would be playing with the Tamagotchi, only Rogue insisted on driving, and poor Thann got stuck being Remy. Remy wanted to look at the thing, and Rogue insisted that he might hurt Tamagotchi. Remy being duly insulted held a grudge. "Remy, here hold mah Tamagotchi for me while Ah drive... an' let me know soon as it looks like it is goin' t' hatch..." Well, true to form, Remy protested. That's a nice way of putting what was said about little Tamagotchi.
Remy positively refused to watch Tamagotchi until Rogue made quite clear that it was taxing her concentration to watch Tamagotchi and drive along Water Street, navigating the road nexus of downtown. Remy relented and took the thing in his hand and held it gingerly and watched, checking the time to see how lot actually took to hatch. I think Remy was overly anxious in the presence of Rogue's more nurturing and mothering tendencies, and her insinuations about them joint parenting this Tamagotchi... Well it hatched, somewhere near the courthouse. And yeah, it was darned close to five minutes after starting it. |
Birth |
So Tamagotchi was born at about 4:05 pm, and is still referred to as "my Tamagotchi" or as a masculine entity sometimes. No, I didn't feel any great overwhelming need to name it anything at all. It turned from a bouncing egg into a bouncing thing, small and roundish and dark thing with a face. Well it looked like a face. And it beeped, a lot, and we had no idea how difficult it would be to manage. Food, play, and it wanted it right then and there, and it didn't care that I was on Soquel Road in rush hour, or that "Remy" did not want to nurture it.
In a flurry of activity we somehow managed to get it some food and some play before getting to the restaurant, avoid any traffic accidents, and not scar it for life. Rather remarkable if you ask me. We enjoyed taking care of its needs while eating, turning the sound off to avoid strange looks from the people in the restaurant, and hiding it from the waitresses. We already get enough weirdness to add to the situation, grown adults playing with little toys. At least Tamagotchi can pretend to be a pager if you don't let anyone really get a good look. That's probably not going last long, I imagine they'll be as prevalent as dog dookie any time soon. I tried to make it go to sleep for a nap through dinner, and that didn't work. I learned the hard way that turning off the lights didn't halt time for real life. When I turned the lights back on, there was dookie and it was unhappy and needed shots. |
First Change |
Well it was this floating bouncing sort of head thing, and the novelty wore off fairly quickly. It was cute enough some of the time, but the specifics of the game got annoying real fast. What kid gets happy when he loses?? Get real. Kids are happy when they win and when you play with them. I don't know what sort of counter-intuitive parental tools they're teaching with this thing, but that's wacky. It got pretty annoying pretty fast. Who cares if I lose. Hell, statistically speaking, if I just press the same button forever I win half the time, and it takes about 45 seconds per game. This is assuming it works on simple probability and not some arcane and malevolent scheme.
Thann had to go and suggest to me that perhaps it didn't decide which way to go until you guessed, and that way if it didn't like you it could make it so you lost all the time. Granted I don't put it past some programmer somewhere to make the game function on some hidden parameters and not tell someone about it, but I just thought that was a bit over the top. It must not have been too over the edge though, as that night I did indeed dream that my Tamagotchi waited to decide which way to go until after I had guessed. Talk about over active minds with insufficient input to digest. Anyhow I'm getting ahead of myself. Sometime that evening it beeped at me some more and went from age 0 to age 1. I have no idea how soon this happened after the egg hatched, I was perfectly happy about this anyhow. I didn't like the little ball thing. Now I had a big smiley face thing to nurture. Only it decided to go to bed at 8 pm, only a mere seven hours before my bedtime. I began to worry about the next morning. Sorry, my sleep schedule is more important than Tamagotchi. And I had no idea what to expect. That it went to bed at 8 pm was a total shock to Slyder, I'd given him his surprise purple Tamagotchi after we got back from dinner. His had gone to bed with dookie and he had to wait all night to clean it up. |
| Second Change |
Returning to this memoir some ten months later, I find that many of the events have become sketchy at best. I do recall distinctly that the smiling bouncing thing did change, some time after three or four days of nightmarish maintenance. I mean really, there are other things I'd rather have in bed with me than a Tamagotchi. I couldn't leave it on the night stand, because my bed is too large to reach the night stand easily, and my goal was to deal with it after it woke up and then go back to sleep for several hours. Stupid toy. I didn't want to abort my first attempt, not knowing but beginning to suspect that setting the clock wrong would work wonders. I didn't know what would happen if I tampered with the toy early.
So my Tamagotchi changed and changed and changed, and eventually changed into a squid-lipped mongrel that was no fun to play with. I diligently did try to get it to change into whatever secret character there was, but let's face it -- with my sleep schedule there was no way it was going to happen. My first Tamagotchi made it for several days, being maintained on the freeway or in the restaurant. I carried that thing around for days... until I had a job interview. I was about 60 miles from home when I realized that I had left my Tamagotchi on my night stand. Real life just had to come first, and it's just as well. What was I going to do? Stop half way through an interview question and say, "Excuse me while I pooperscoop my electronic toy." No, I don't think so. Tamagotchi got babysat by Thann, I was able to leave an electronic message for Thann via a friend where I was interviewing. I drove home, and in the few weeks before I heard about the job, I continued to care for my Tamagotchi. |
| More Changes |
Tamagotchi left me somewhere between day ten and day fourteen. I don't remember, I just know that it lasted nearly two weeks, and I felt like I'd accomplished something. One day it got progressively harder and harder to keep happy and then it just up and left while I was working on something. No big loss. I'd well outdistanced Slyder's first Tamagotchi's lifetime. I'd done better than the people he worked with, and felt vindicated somehow.
I must have had enough fun that I started him over. But this time I changed the clock first. I fixed it so that the clock was more in line with my sleep schedule. This worked wonders... until I had to go to work the next morning (Yes, I got the job...) and had to get up earlier and couldn't wait to go to bed. So I manipulated the clock. Heh. Little Tamagotchi was sound asleep before I knew it. Wow. What power. Well, I got to work at 8am or so, and had meetings and orientation and all sorts of annoying things to deal with beside Tamagotchi. So I fudged the clock again, maybe it would wake up around 11am, and then I could take a break and deal with it. He woke up and I managed to care for him throughout the day. It was funny, listening to a sales rep talk to people on the phone trying to find a Tamagotchi to buy, and here I was hiding my Tamagotchi in my desk and feeding it every so often. One positive thing -- it kept my fingers more limber after spending hours on end doing repetitive and mindless work. |
| Mad Scientist |
Funny, the more real life encroached on my time, the less time I had for Tamagotchi. I could play with him during lunch breaks, after work, after dinner... but by god after working a fourteen hour day there was no way in hell that I was going to stop in the middle of my dinner to take care of the toy. This is something I have known for a long while, I'm still having too much fun being independent to have to worry about dependents. The neat thing about Tamagotchi, it turned out, was that I could completely control when I wanted to play and when I didn't. Days started to whiz by...
For Tamagotchi at least. Not for me. Through the Tamagotchi equivalent of genetic engineering, I succeeded in creating and maintaining a perfectly behaved and cute little cyber pet. I took great pleasure in controlling it like that, laughing maniacally in front of aghast friends who also owned Tamagotchis. How could I... How could I not? At least kids go away to school or nap or play with friends. Pets sleep and eat and spend a lot of time alone. I couldn't really justify taking care of Tamagotchi on the freeway after the novelty wore off. So there I was, Tamagotchi mad scientist. My Tamagotchi was aged in its late twenties, I forget the ultimate result of my masterpiece. I'd wake him up for four or five hours a day, when I had the time to be playing with it, and I wouldn't cheat. One day I woke him up and I fed him and played with him and it was so bad that as soon as I finished he would beep again. Whatever decay cycle is built into the stupid little thing had taken hold firm and fast. Tamagotchi wanted constant attention. By now it was mid August 1997. And I was housesitting for parents, and it was too freaking hot there. My patience was at an end. I just turned him on one day and ignored him until he went away. The little happy angel was on the screen for months. When my roommate got his Tamagotchi 2 and then his monster thingie, I finally reset mine so that it is now a bouncing egg. The battery will probably run out that way, but no, I'm not loaning it out to a friend. |
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