Komputer Koala Giga Pet log (Comments ok)

[KrisKris]

Hey, everyone! This is my first log. I made sure it was okay with a staff member to post a non-Tamagotchi log here!

INTRO

I had a Komputer Koala back in the '90s and am now starting to run one again for the first time since that time frame! Some of you may have seen my photos in the collection thread somewhat recently. At the time of that post, I'd recently bought a used koala off eBay and had started it up to ensure that it worked. Since then, I replaced that koala with this one new in package since the other one had the print on the front worn off, its beeps sounded a bit messed up, and I like having the original packaging and instructions to treasure anyway.

So here I am with my actually NEW koala, and I figured this would be a good pet to do my first log with! The koala is so cute, who wouldn't enjoy seeing photos of it? Lol. Also, this was not really one of my most used virtual pets back in the day, and I remember so little about the details of it that this will be sort of like recording first-time reactions. I remember it just barely enough for it to still be nostalgic for me.

I remember when I made my intro post on TamaTalk not very long ago, I was like, "I don't expect to have time to post much." Never would've guessed I'd be on here doing a pet log a few weeks later! Lol!

I'll be inserting photos as clickable thumbnails, as they're large and I'm posting a lot of them on this first day. I figured some people who haven't used a Giga Pet like this might be interested in seeing details.



DAY 1

This is currently running off the original batteries from the '90s! Let's hope ye olde batteries will last at least long enough to get through this life cycle and log.

Meet Koko! (That seems like it's probably not a very original koala name, but whatever! I like it!)



Birth: Koko first appeared in a tree, looking quite small and cute. She started out at 3 pounds!


The very first thing I did was accidentally discipline her by selecting the discipline icon instead of the status icon. Oops! Was it unreasonable to think the koala-head icon was the status icon? Lol. The status icon is the heart. Well, since I have read the instructions, yes, that was pretty dumb.

This is what her sad-react screen looks like, which I saw pretty much right away thanks to my above-mentioned mistake:


Her feeding options are milk and eucalyptus leaves. The instructions say that the leaves are her main food and the milk is her treat. I think this is incorrect because I think I remember (from the '90s) that the reverse is true, and on the feeding screen, the milk is on the left, which is where the main/healthy food is supposed to be for Giga Pets. So right now I'm treating milk as her main food, and hopefully that'll go well! It raised her hunger score as expected, so I think that's right. Oh, plus leaves are her only reward option when she does tricks on command, so that makes it seem pretty obvious the leaves are a treat!
It does not make cute noise/beeping while she's eating like my Micropup Giga Pet. Just the beeping when I press the buttons.


Playing hasn't been going very well for us so far! The game she plays is climbing a tree. You alternate pressing the left and right buttons to get her to climb. If she reaches the top, she happy-reacts. If she falls, she sad-reacts. There are 5 rounds per game. I'm assuming I have to win 3 rounds. That has not happened yet, lol. Why am I so bad at this? I'm a console video gamer, so I am used to button mashing. Maybe the buttons have to be pressed at a very precise speed, but I've tried doing it fast and doing it slower and she still falls. I got an idea: maybe I need to use the training feature to teach her how to properly climb.

So I used the training feature and told her to climb. First, she scratched herself instead (which is the wrong trick). Tried again, and she climbed, so I rewarded her with a leaf. After the successful training, I returned to the game to try again. Still fell almost every time, but now I am usually getting her to the top of the tree on ONE out of five rounds -- occasionally twice. I'm not sure whether I suck at this or she does. Probably me. Whoever it is, I hope we get better at it soon so I can keep her happiness score up! I've seen that each game seems to raise her happiness score by 1 point when I don't win the overall game, which isn't much on a scale of 100. I think each game will raise the score by 20 if I win, or at least more than 1 point.

The training feature, for those curious, is pretty simple. You select the bell icon and choose "trick," then select a trick for her to do. If she does the correct action, you reward her with a treat. If she does the wrong thing, you keep trying. I think the training does not last forever and she will need to be retaught, maybe as often as every day. (I don't remember that, but I read that recently about Giga Pets.)

This is what her happy-react screen looks like. Her arms go up and down. Pretty cute! There is no noise that goes along with the reaction screen like with my Micropup Giga Pet.



I snapped a photo of her first poop, lol. Like my Micropup, the poop isn't constantly on the screen after she poops, but it returns to the poop screen frequently. It's interesting it keeps showing the screen with her squatting over the poop even after she's walking around doing other stuff. When my Micropup flashes a poop-view screen after he poops, it's just the steaming poop (which I always found hilarious, just to see flashes of steaming poop appear on the screen to interrupt your view of him walking around. Lol).



So far, she is actually seeming less needy than my Micropup Giga Pet. Not that my Micropup is hard to care for by any means (he's actually easier, I think), but his attention icon lights up/beeps just for treats fairly often. She hasn't done that yet, so I've only fed her treats for doing a trick. Do reward treats count toward her health/weight the same as treats from her regular feeding menu do? I'm not sure, but I'm playing it safe and not feeding her treats from the feeding menu unless she tells me she "needs" them at some point.

The beeping that she does when she needs something is different than my Micropup. Hers is louder and longer.

My following posts will be a lot shorter, as now I've already shown a lot of the details and the rest should just be providing updates on her progress! She is currently 5 pounds, up slightly from her 3 pounds at birth a few hours ago.


Her first day is far from over, but I felt like I had plenty to go ahead and already post about. Wish me luck with improving her tree-climbing! If I don't get better at winning to keep her happiness score up, this might be a short life!

 

[KrisKris]

DAY 2

Koko is doing great, and I love her! She's definitely becoming one of my favorite virtual pets!
Thankfully, we've gotten much better at tree climbing and we make it to the top most of the time now. I'm not sure whether I just needed to get the hang of it or whether she's not a very good climber as a baby.

Age and weight update:


I'm keeping her stats up with ease! Yesterday, I think my overall score was down in the 60s for a while and was slowly climbing up. I've kept it up in the 90s all day today. Not quite a full 100, but still pretty good, I'd say! I'm a little nervous because this almost seems too easy. *looks around with shifty eyes*


Her happiness is pretty much staying at 100 and not dropping down! I think doing her training/tricks must count toward the happiness in addition to playing her game. I also realized that the training raises her discipline score, so no need to use the discipline feature!

Yesterday, I had her do the tricks "climb" and "roll" (where she does a somersault) throughout the day. Today, we've been doing the tricks "walk" (where she walks on her back legs) and "suck thumb."



LOOK AT HER CUTE SLEEPING ANIMATION. (Might need to click and look at it bigger.) She holds on to a tree, and you can see her outline moving with the Zs while she sleeps.


I thought of a good word to describe the sound of her attention beep which I mentioned yesterday: trilling.


Additional differences between her and my Micropup besides the ones mentioned yesterday:

• Her stats (hunger & happiness) don't drop overnight.
• She didn't poop the instant she woke up like my Micropup always does, lol. He wakes up, poops, and sits in the dark with his poop until I turn the light on.
• She doesn't seem to go to sleep by herself. The light needs to get turned off first, and she asks for naps with her attention beep when she wants naps.
• Last night, she didn't even ask to be put to bed at bedtime. I was expecting her to want to sleep around the time her clock said 9:00 p.m. At 10:00 p.m. she was still wide awake and happy. Shortly after 10:00 by her clock, I turned off her light and she went to sleep for the night. Interesting.
• She turns her light on by herself when she wakes up.
• When her attention icon highlights, it flashes/blinks rather than just highlighting. Also, there was one time I saw the icon of what she needed (her light turned off) highlighted and flashing in addition to the attention icon. I'm thinking that happens if you don't tend to her need quickly. That doesn't happen with the Micropup.
• No training/tricks feature on my Micropup.
  
  I'm thinking this is the more common type of Giga Pets programming. Both are '90s Giga Pets, by the way, if that wasn't clear.

Okay, this wasn't a short entry either. I guess I had a lot to say the first couple of days.

 

[Penguin-keeper]

Oh man, this little lovely is so super-cute! I was a big fan of koalas when I was a youngster (shows like Noozles and The Adventures of Blinky Bill were popular on British television at the time, which certainly contributed to this), and though I wasn't a fan of the original Giga Pets (a relative had a Digital Doggie and neither of us got on well with it) it's possible that I would've made an exception if I'd ever seen the Komputer Koala for sale.

I'm absolutely loving this log - the sprites on this pet are fab (and the poop one is hilarious! ). Can't wait to see what's next, since the original Giga Pets were notorious for being challenging/difficult.

 

[KrisKris]

Can't wait to see what's next, since the original Giga Pets were notorious for being challenging/difficult.

I was never even aware Giga Pets were considered more difficult and needy until I read that recently! The only other Giga Pet I've had is my Micropup, which was my most-used pet back in the day (I ran my new/replacement Micropup for one life cycle recently; it lived for the standard 14 days). I can't remember ever really struggling with my Micropup, although I remember it took me quite a while to figure out that the reason its attention icon sometimes seemed to light up for no reason was because he wanted a treat. Before that, I had only been giving him 1 or 2 treats per day since the instructions said to limit his treats. After I started giving him treats whenever he "needed" them, I realized he grew into a bigger second stage that I'd never seen before! Not fat, just overall bigger and his food became a bowl of dog food instead of a bottle of milk. I don't think he was living shorter without the treats as far as I can remember, but he stayed small.
But yeah, aside from that I never really had trouble with my Micropup, and Koko is doing well! I've recently purchased a couple of other Giga Pets I haven't used yet. Might do more logs later on, but none will be cuter than Koko!

Back to Koko's log!



DAY 3

Koko is happy, healthy, and thriving! Let's hope this continues!

Age and weight update:


Her health and happiness scores have been staying at 100 for a long while now without dipping down at all! I usually let her hunger score get down to around 80 before I feed her a meal since I read that as a general Giga Pets tip. Apparently the theory is that a meal is 20 points and it can be overfeeding if you feed them sooner, even though the number only goes up to 100? I'm not sure about that, but since it's not negatively affecting her health for me to let her hunger score get down around 80, I'm going with it. My overall score is 98/100, so yay, I think I'm being a pretty good koala mom!


She hasn't been asking me for treats like I mentioned my Micropup does. She is only getting treats/eucalyptus leaves whenever I teach her a trick (and she needs to be retaught tricks the next day; apparently she has terrible memory). She doesn't need a treat every time she performs the trick throughout the day, as she will always do it correctly after I reward her the first time she does it correctly.


Today I taught her the last new trick on her trick list that we hadn't done yet: "itch." (She scratches herself.) Lol, who thought of that as a training trick?




Sorry these pictures are not the best, but here she is getting a bath!


Oh, and unlike her first night, she let me know when she was ready for bed last night. The time was a few minutes before I put her to bed the previous night, so maybe she remembered the time?

 

[Maskutchi]

Very cute! I am running my Virtual Alien right now and his attention icon was lit because he wanted a treat as well.

Do the vintage GigaPets live for 14 days max? My modern unicorn pet has survived 60 days with me. I’m getting tired of caring for it, but at this point I’ll have to see just how long I can maintain it.

I am enjoying your koala log!

 

[Hydric]

Wow I had no idea giga pets had so many options. Like the training options and all of that. Such a good log I've learned so much about giga lets reading it!

 

[KrisKris]

Very cute! I am running my Virtual Alien right now and his attention icon was lit because he wanted a treat as well.

Do the vintage GigaPets live for 14 days max? My modern unicorn pet has survived 60 days with me. I’m getting tired of caring for it, but at this point I’ll have to see just how long I can maintain it.

Not 14 days max -- I mentioned that being the standard because the instructions for my Micropup and my koala say this on the subject: "A Giga Pet reaches adult age at about 5 days and old age at 14 days. A Giga Pet more than 14 days old is very old indeed!" Plus the fact that when I ran my Micropup recently, he died at age 14. That seems about right for how long my Micropup usually would live back in the day, too, although I can only vaguely remember. When I get around to running him again, I'm planning to try to see if I can get him to an older age. I could do a log on him if there's interest, although I'm not sure it would be as interesting as the koala.

Cool that you have a Virtual Alien Giga Pet! I've tried looking up videos of that one on YouTube and couldn't find any. I'm curious about it. I bought one of the new-era unicorn Gigas too, but I haven't run it yet. When I first discovered the new ones on Amazon, I passed on them for myself but got some for my cousin's kids, including a unicorn. When I was showing her daughter how to use the unicorn, I was like, "Hmm, this is kinda cool," so I ordered one for myself, lol. I'm especially excited to try to get it to evolve to the possible 3rd form with wings which also unlocks an extra game. Sounds cool! 60 days?? That sounds like QUITE a commitment. I think I would get tired of it by then if there's no more evolving and changes happening, lol. The Tamagotchi Angel I'm currently running for the first time is now 26 days old and I'm bored with it. I stopped taking nearly as good care of it a few days ago, but it's still going strong!




DAY 4

Koko is still doing great!


I was a little worried when I left her in the car while I went into the gym yesterday evening for over an hour. I think that's the first time I went over an hour without checking on her, not counting nighttime. She was fine when I came back out, no poop or drastic drops in her stats. I think it's probably about every half hour I feed her 1-2 helpings of food and have her do a couple of tricks to keep her discipline score up. I play her game with her sometimes, but not quite as often. Her happiness has been staying at 100 without needing to do a lot of playing. No need for any vet visits yet! Her health has been at 100 for a long time now! There was one time I checked her stats and EVERY SINGLE NUMBER (health, happiness, hunger, discipline, and overall score) was at 100. I was about to snap photos of all the 100s, but then she pooped, and a couple of the numbers had dropped slightly when I returned to the stats after cleaning her poop. Humph.


Here's a video of her performing her roll trick, since that one's hard to show with a photo:

View attachment kvid1.mp4


And here's a video of her going about her regular business on the screen when she's left alone:

View attachment kvid2.mp4



Something amusing is that there have been several instances now of her pooping while I'm playing her climbing game with her. She beeps her attention noise in the middle of the game, and then there's poop to clean up when we're finished playing. How does she poop while climbing?

 

[Penguin-keeper]

How does she poop while climbing?

I don't want to know, nor do I want to be in the vicinity.

 

[KrisKris]

I don't want to know, nor do I want to be in the vicinity.

LOL, my thoughts exactly!

 

[KrisKris]

DAY 5



Still doing great! All stats and score staying high. She seems to currently be gaining approximately 4 pounds daily. I wonder if she's going to evolve/grow visibly when she hits adulthood? I think most Giga Pets do change appearance once when they grow to adult stage. I can't remember that happening with her, but it's also possible I sucked at taking care of her when I was a kid.

Yesterday she had her first visit to the doctor, but it was unnecessary! I was trying to figure out why her attention icon was lit. Usually when that happens and she doesn't appear to need anything, she needs a nap, so I tried putting her to sleep. Her attention icon stayed lit. I woke her up and gave her a bath, which didn't do it either. So I took her to the doctor -- which she displayed a negative reaction to when I selected it, but she went anyway -- and that didn't fix it either. Finally I realized she was asking me to play her game with her, even though her happiness score was already up! Strange! Playing her climbing game resolved her attention request. As I've mentioned, I haven't had to play her game with her a whole lot, since her happiness score is staying up (from doing tricks?). I guess if you go a while without playing the game with her, she misses it regardless of how high her happiness is!

 

[KrisKris]

DAY 6



According to the instruction manual, "about 5 years" is adult age for vintage Giga Pets, so I think Koko is now an adult!

I assume that's why she has a new appearance when she's sitting. All her other animations still look the same. Now, in the image of her when she's sitting, she looks a bit wider, perhaps? Lol, I can't quite tell if those are her sides bulging out around her arms, or if those are her legs/feet on the outside. You can see what her previous sitting appearance was in the second video I posted on Day 4 (looks like I never posted a picture of that). Her ears also now look like they previously only did in the animation for her thumb-sucking trick.



I swear I haven't been fattening her up. I think I've been following good feeding habits, and I play with her. I would worry maybe I haven't been exercising her *enough* with her game, but her health has been staying at 100, so I think/hope she's fine even if she's growing a bit in girth.

 

[KrisKris]

DAY 7

SHE IS THICC.



(Click thumbnail for a better view of her marshmallow-like body)
How did this happen? Lol. I've been trying hard not to overfeed her! Yet she's already grown visibly wider since her new appearance yesterday.

I'm pretty sure 31 pounds is a bit much for a koala!



I'm playing her game with her a lot now to make sure she's well exercised, and I've now switched to only training her for one trick per day instead of 2 different tricks (that way, I only have to feed her one treat the first time she does the trick that day). It may be too late to help her weight, though. I'm not sure if she can evolve back into a less chubby form. I never had this happen with my Micropup Giga Pet!

Why has her health and overall score been staying so high if she's overweight? I find that mysterious. I'm hoping she'll still have a full life since her health has been staying at 100! Either way, the bright side is we got to see this plump girl! And she's happy! Lol

P.S. Do you guys think those are her sides bulging out, or are those large feet on the sides? I was thinking they were her sides, but I guess it's possible it's her feet?

 

[Penguin-keeper]

P.S. Do you guys think those are her sides bulging out, or are those large feet on the sides? I was thinking they were her sides, but I guess it's possible it's her feet?

Definitely feet! Though the idea that she's really blobby is quite funny.

 

[KrisKris]

Definitely feet! Though the idea that she's really blobby is quite funny.

Well, that's a relief! I wish they'd put paw pads on the bottom of her feet like in some of her other images. This image is a little confusing! I thought it looked like three possibilities:
1. She's fat
2. She has large feet
3. She's holding onto a horizontal branch with all 4 paws

Lol. Maybe I'm just looking at it weird. I'll go with your interpretation! That would indeed be some excessive blobbiness.

 

[KrisKris]

DAY 8



She's still gaining weight steadily despite the fact I thought she's an adult. She may not be as blob-like as I thought when I first saw her new appearance, but I'd say she still seems a bit hefty!

I noticed that sometimes her happiness score goes down a point after I play her game with her if we fell off the tree some, even if we were successful the majority out of 5 rounds. But I thought I had noted earlier the opposite: her happiness would go up a point after a game even if we'd done poorly. I don't think I've seen the game raise her happiness by more than 1 or 2 points when we win all 5 rounds -- but since her happiness score is already at a full 100 most of the time, there haven't been that many chances to observe how much it goes up. It does seem to be a little inconsistent how the game affects her happiness, though, and it's not by many points. Seems quite different than my Micropup.

Health score still staying up. Healthy and happy!

 

[KrisKris]

DAY 11

There hasn't really been anything new to post the past couple of days, but Koko is still doing great, and she's still puttin' on them pounds!



She is a FIFTY-ONE POUND KOALA and counting.

 

[KrisKris]

DAY 13

Here's an age and weight update, but still nothing new/exciting to report, other than the fact that she is still somehow getting heavier. Did the creators have any idea what the size of a koala is?

She's still healthy and happy.

 

[Penguin-keeper]

Did the creators have any idea what the size of a koala is?

I'm guessing probably not!

 

[KrisKris]

DAY 19

Koko is now age 18 and a whopping . . . drumroll . . .



EIGHTY-TWO POUNDS, you guys. 82 pounds. I just can't.

She still looks the same! No more visible growth. The print of the word "Left" beneath the left button has begun to wear off after 18 days of use. I really try not to put my fingers on the markings on the front of my virtual pets, so hopefully most of the design on this one will be okay, but I can't really avoid touching the print right where the buttons are.

I find it a little strange that her main food never switched from milk to something more "adult." She's just been drinking milk for her meals her whole life (leaves are her very occasional treat for training), whereas my Micropup Giga Pet graduates from milk to a bowl of dog food once he reaches a certain size.

 

[KrisKris]

DAY 27



She is now a 100-pounder! A koala of unheard-of proportions. She just keeps growing and growing. No more visual changes, though -- her appearance has stayed the same.

I'm pretty sure I never got my childhood Komputer Koala to live this long. She's been pretty easy to take care of. It helps a lot that her stats don't drop at all while she sleeps. My Micropup wakes up with his hunger and happiness scores down at 0, an immediate turd drop, and he can die if not tended to soon after he wakes. The other day, I forgot to tend to Koko for a while (like at least an hour and a half) after she woke, but she was fine. I also left her alone when I went to see a 2.5-hour movie, and she was without care for probably at least 2 hours and 45 minutes. Her hunger and discipline scores had gotten pretty low afterward, so that was pushing it, but those were easy to get back up and her health/happiness scores were fine.

I've been amazed at how her health and happiness scores have been staying as high as possible. They haven't dropped down at all other than very occasionally going down 1 or 2 points below 100. Those scores definitely weren't as easy to keep up with my Micropup. This is making me want to try him again soon.

I took her for an accidental doctor visit again the other day when she was in my pocket and I bumped against the counter in my kitchen. I heard her button beep and checked on her to see that she was at the vet's office, lol. It dropped her happiness down 2 or 3 points since she wasn't sick.

Oh, and another difference I didn't include in my earlier list is that she doesn't have a brief tune that plays at the beginning of her game like my Micropup does (I know I mentioned she doesn't have the eating or reaction-screen sound effects, but I didn't mention the lack of game tune, lol). She truly doesn't seem to have any sounds other than the button-press sounds. I'm a little curious what the version with "real animal sounds" sounds like -- Giga Pets started releasing the same animals with "real animal sounds" a little later than the originals, but I didn't have any of those. I kind of prefer my virtual pets to make beeps and sound like little video games rather than make animal sounds, but I'm still curious what she would sound like.


Definitely wasn't expecting her to live this long! I'm pleasantly surprised. I'm not really getting tired of her. She's definitely a favorite of mine.