I have a P1 now (got it a year ago on eBay)...and I love it!!!!
I didn't have a Tamagotchi when the originals were out (I was only 4 and I had a copy-cat vp ). :furawatchi:
It's a shame, too. I often wonder what the virtual pet craze was like. By reading Tama Logs on older websites, I get a pretty good idea, but it would still have been awesome if I was just a little bit older back then, just enough for me to know that Tamagotchi was the original vp. :furawatchi:
-Tamaguy#1 :mimitchi:
I remember what is was like. I was 12. Now if you go to a store you can find Tamagotchis. Back then, you were lucky if you could find one in an entire city. The craze was bigger back then than it is now. Probably because back then the toy was brand new. No one had ever heard of it. I remember when they first came out. They hadn't been out in America yet, but they had been released in Japan. I remember reading an article in a magazine about this new thing called a Tamagotchi. I saw a picture of a little green, clear plastic egg. It talked about feeding it virutal food and cleaning up after it. I ran into my mom's room screaming about it. I couldn't wait.
Little did I know the difficulty of finding one. The moment they hit the shelves is the moment they left it. Think about how hard it was to find a PS3 or a Wii before Christmas. That was what it was like trying to find a Tamagotchi. My first virtual pet wasn't a Tamagotchi. It was a Giga pet. The number one pets back then were Tamagotchi, Giga Pets, and Nano. There were Dinkie Dinos, and LOTS of other knock-offs (a lot more than there is today), but Tama, Giga, and Nano were the best.
Tamagotchi was indeed the original. Giga pets came soon after; followed by Nano. Avid players back then knew that the Tamagotchis were the originals and pretty easy to learn and play. Giga pets were very intensive and hard to play, but when you figured it out, they were amazing virtual pets. Nanos were basically easier Giga pets. Tamagotchis came out with tons of different colors. 1st gen. Giga pets came out in a cat, dog, monkey, koala, frog, bit critter, and then the licensed versions like the T-Rex for Jurassic Park. Nanos came in a cat, dog, baby, and a year later came out with a few animals. Nano really took the market when they came out with the baby. EVERYONE went wild over the Nano babies. That is when they thought to come out with the Tamagotchi Angels. EVERYONE went crazy again. Babies and Angels turned out to be the most coveted of all virtual pets then. Younger players usually went for Nano or Tamagotchi, because they were easier to play, but older players went more for the Giga pets, because they had more strategic, in depth play.
Well, I hope my long rant here gave you an idea of what is was like.