Tamagothi (1997) | Hacker News Reader

Tamagothi (1997)

studiohunty.com

71 pointsloosescrews35 comments

See this article: Building the Infinite Matrix of Tamagotchis

http://hackaday.com/2015/11/24/building-the-infinite-matrix-...

A limitless network of Tamagachi has been created using some amazing tricks to feed, socialize, and monitor the beast now known as the Tamagachi Singularity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_-e_cJ1-Gs

Thanks for sharing the talk

I made a modern virtual pet, for iOS and Apple Watch. Apple Watch seems like the perfect modern form factor for one of these.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/raise-emoji/id1045353760

Hey, Andrew! It'd be great if you can add more features to it? Something like, different activities as the emoji grows, giving it a name when it is born, difference in gender, dating with other emojis, etc. I grew my emoji till 32 years old and I noticed there was nothing new in it.

This got me thinking, a virtual pet could be a great way of gameifying positive activities. Maybe you could exercise your pet by going for a run yourself, or make it more intelligent by doing a language tutorial. You could connect any fitness or learning app that provides an API. Every pet would end up being unique because of the unique combination of activities done by the owner.

Right now I can't figure out if that's a good idea or a really terrible one. Do I really want a virtual dog looking at me angrily all day because I didn't take him for his morning walk?

My Pebble Time came with an application on it that is literally exactly this.

https://developer.getpebble.com/blog/2015/05/17/timeline-cha...

Nintendo released one of these back during the original tamagatchi craze. It had a pedometer built in, so you needed to exercise to feed your Pokemon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Pikachu

I started making my own wifi/internet enabled "tamagotchi" – I posted two videos on my progress.

https://vine.co/v/iamKLtvD5dp

https://vine.co/v/iamezw1ZnMI

Oh wow, I remember this from my school days! (and the Tamagotchi on which it is based, of course). Funny to see it still online. I remember 13-year-old me thinking it was hilarious at the time...

Thanks for the nostalgia trip, OP.

> (and the Tamagotchi on which it is based, of course).

Thanks for that, I thought I was in another Berenstain time loop for a second.

I would love a modernized tamagothi, I live in London and aren't allowed pets, but I would love a wee virtual cat.

Face recognition is at the point where you can recognise different faces (members in the family) so that would make the kitty happy and play a bit. Throw a ball around and play fetch, that sort of thing

The 'tamagothi' is a parody of the Tamagotchi ('the little egg'), I think you meant the latter.

That should be tamagotchi. It's a geminated 'ch', at least in the original Japanese.

Ah yes, thank you!

I like that. "Thanks for nitpicking my spelling."

As if no one could figure out what you were talking about.

> Thanks for nitpicking my spelling

I didn't write that, you did, I did upvote the GP, and my thanks were sincere. To expand on that I'm more than happy to have mistakes corrected so at least I don't end up propagating wrong spellings or ideas or to have them further ingrained. Actually, I'm stupid for not looking it up.

Mine was a jerk comment. Not going to attempt to defend that.

You should try My Talking Tom - http://talkingtomandfriends.com/tom/. (links to stores in the link). If you're more keen on female cats, there's also My Talking Angela (or other virtual pets from the series). Check it out, it's really well made and tons of fun ;).

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.namcobanda... might be a pretty good substitute too.

Another very popular one is Pou.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.pou.app&hl=...

It's also an impressive story of a single developer.

http://www.wamda.com/2013/05/the-24-year-old-lebanese-entrep...

I think Pou is much more similar to the original Tamagotchi, and very impressive too.

Wow, just realised how similar this would be to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

I find android animals like that cool, but also kind of creepy.

You can`t have a pet in London?

I remember the Tamagotchi crazy back in the day (this is a very well done play on it, really enjoyed the linked site) but never owned one (and am not sure how they worked exactly on a technical level). I wonder if it is technically possible that some of them are still "alive"? I wonder if the programmers made any implicit assumptions about lifespan that were tested by now (assuming the batteries could be changed without "killing" them).

Yes, tamagotchis did age and eventually died even if taken care of.

This reminds me of people holding funerals for their Aibo robot dogs. The future is going to get very weird.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new...

As an aside, the game that launched the Sony Pocketstation was inspired by tamagochi. "Doko demo issho"

You played with your characters and they would ask you questions like "Tell me something you like". You'd type in something like say "banana". The character would then ask something like "Is it something you (a) use (b) eat (c) drive (d) wear ..." and it might ask "How much do you like it? (a) a lot (b) so-so (c) a little".

Later you might meet a friend, Jill, with a pocketstation. The pocketstations could communicate via infrared. You'd play hangman against each other. While that was happening, in the background the game would transfer some (all?) of your info.

Later you'd be playing with your character and it might say "Hey, did you know Jill really likes bananas?"

It was a big hit in Japan. It never came out in the USA IIRC.

Oh gosh, the standalone redistributable flash player with a swf embedded. I remember those.

Adobe 'air'? Pretty much Adobe trying to re-make java the flash way.

Could always tell when you were using a Flex or Air UI, they had a very distinctive clunkiness.

I owned one of these. I remember them being a genuine problem in school. Some parents would actually agree to look after the pet while the child was at school - not bad for such a simple algorithm.

I tried some of those operations (beat, specifically) on some of my sister's 'gotchis; mostly affects the owner, I found.

There's probably a joke in the name but being not a native speaker can someone explain it to me please ?

It's Tamogachi but with the word "Goth" (short for Gothic, typically used to describe macabre / death-related things. Lots of the colour black, etc.).

Got(h) it, thanks !

Tamagotchi was a huge fad for a short time in the 90s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamagotchi

It was a digital pet and you had to press certain button to feed it, keep it happy, healthy, etc.

The joke is they added "goth" to the name, and you are supposed to keep it unhappy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goth_subculture To be more precise, they are referring to the goth stereotype: http://www.gothicsubculture.com/archetype.php

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