Gaming

Virtual Petsanity

Written by Daniel Dockery and presented by Tim Lyu from Crunchyroll, The Rise of Virtual Pets looks at how franchises like Tamagotchi, Digimon, and Neopets took the world by storm.

Their popularity and styles have fluctuated over the years, but they’ve remained our loyal technological companions nonetheless. And they’ve earned a loyal fanbase thanks to their tireless efforts. But they haven’t always lived in plastic eggs. The very first virtual pets weren’t quite as portable as we’ve come to expect. In fact, you had to use a desktop computer to play them.

He was referencing Dogz, a game where you could raise your own virtual pets back in 1995. I never got the chance to play Dogz or Catz but I did have a Tamagotchi (well, a knock off one where you had to raise a dinosaur) and I loved it. I also dabbled with the Digimon anime and spent many hours raising my Neopets on my local library computers.

For more on the history of virtual pets, stream the video below.

See also: How Tamagotchi Made Digimon Possible, the best way to play Neopets in 2021, and when Tamagotchi ruled the 1990s.