Well, I guess I'll start one of these since most people at work are kinda sick of hearing me talk about Tamagotchis lately.
Anyhow, I'm a married guy in my 30's, living in Minnesota. I got back into tamagotchis recently when I saw one of the 20th anniversary minis sitting at a gamestop. The clerk noticed me eyeing it.
Clerk: "You know you want it."
Me: "Yeah, but $17 seems steep"
Clerk: "Chicks dig tamagotchis."
Me: "...I'm married."
Clerk: ".....you dig Tamagotchis?"
Me: *picking one up* "Darnit, I really doooo."
Let's hop back a bit. 20 years ago, I guess? I had a black-and-white shelled P1, but I don't know what happened to it. I think I traded it away for the Star Wars Rancor giga pet that I still have. I had a first generation digimon as well, though I haven't found that in my stuff (suffice to say, he'll get a reboot if I find him as well!) I kept them going from when I got them until I moved to Minnesota at about age 14. Those were some rough times, and high school is not the place to be raising tamas if you're 6'4" and about 240lbs (which is what I was back then), not to mention living in a town that didn't even have much in the way of internet (since this was the late 90s). The batteries went dead, though they always hung from thumbtacks on the bulletin board in my room.
Back in the present, I picked up the blue-and-yellow clock face mini from Gamestop. A couple days later, I found some batteries and booted up my old translucent orange P2 from the original run. At work, I showed it off to my team, and one of my team members grabbed one of her own that night. The nostalgia was hitting me hard, but it was more than that. I've always loved raising things. When I was little, we would raise fish and frogs and salamanders from a local stream. Pokemon, Monster Ranger, Jade Cocoon... I played the heck out of all of those games. Anything where you had a pet that turned into something else, that was my jam. There's just something so enjoyable about seeing something grow into something else. There's something so deeply rewarding about caring for a collection of black-and-white pixels and seeing it react to the things that you do, even if it's all just preprogrammed. There's something about having something to take care of, and while it wasn't that there was something missing in my life right now, finding Tamagotchis again added more than was there before, and helped me go back to a piece of my childhood that was lost to a rough handful of formative years.
I wanted to know EVERYTHING. I googled a growth chart for my mini only to discover the last decade and a half of tamagotchi that I had missed out on. It was all so amazing. I spun, I read (when I probably should have been working), pouring over the wikis, dragging through threads here on tamatalk, looking up random 'top 5' lists online in a hunt to find which tama I should hunt down. I loved my mini and P2, but... but there were tamagotchis that had color now! Ones where you could change their house and get new traits by breeding them with other characters! There was so much new stuff! I had to get one.
As luck would have it, one of my coworkers was in Japan at the time. He messaged me that day asking what souvinier I would want, assuming something Gundam or Transformer related (I've also collected Transformers since '98, and Gunpla is an on-again-off-again hobby). Without hesitation, I said 'Blue Tamagotchi M!x Spacey', and he found one for me (though I chipped in since tamagotchis had also gotten kinda pricey in the last 20 years). I was on a work trip when he got back, and even though I returned from the trip at midnight of the following evening, I drove into work and grabbed the M!x off my desk, playing with it immediately when I got home
Anyway, I've been lurking around tamatalk for about a month, and I'd really like to kinda keep up a log of where things are at with my tamas. Right now, they're in a bit of a sorry state, honestly. Got hit hard with straight-up influenza last week, and that took out my Anniversary Mini and P2. My M!x resiliently hung on, but I spent a decent chunk of time tonight getting him back into fighting shape. On top of that, my wife's Gudetama Tamagotchi arrived tonight (it was one of her Christmas gifts from me because she wanted to have her own tama... and I know she'll probably get bored of it pretty quick. )
I'll probably post once every couple days, and most of them will be shorter than this, but I'm excited to share with you all and see what your tamas are doing as well! I'm so happy a forum like this still exists since I don't really use other social media.
Tamagotchis are the best.
Anyhow, I'm a married guy in my 30's, living in Minnesota. I got back into tamagotchis recently when I saw one of the 20th anniversary minis sitting at a gamestop. The clerk noticed me eyeing it.
Clerk: "You know you want it."
Me: "Yeah, but $17 seems steep"
Clerk: "Chicks dig tamagotchis."
Me: "...I'm married."
Clerk: ".....you dig Tamagotchis?"
Me: *picking one up* "Darnit, I really doooo."
Let's hop back a bit. 20 years ago, I guess? I had a black-and-white shelled P1, but I don't know what happened to it. I think I traded it away for the Star Wars Rancor giga pet that I still have. I had a first generation digimon as well, though I haven't found that in my stuff (suffice to say, he'll get a reboot if I find him as well!) I kept them going from when I got them until I moved to Minnesota at about age 14. Those were some rough times, and high school is not the place to be raising tamas if you're 6'4" and about 240lbs (which is what I was back then), not to mention living in a town that didn't even have much in the way of internet (since this was the late 90s). The batteries went dead, though they always hung from thumbtacks on the bulletin board in my room.
Back in the present, I picked up the blue-and-yellow clock face mini from Gamestop. A couple days later, I found some batteries and booted up my old translucent orange P2 from the original run. At work, I showed it off to my team, and one of my team members grabbed one of her own that night. The nostalgia was hitting me hard, but it was more than that. I've always loved raising things. When I was little, we would raise fish and frogs and salamanders from a local stream. Pokemon, Monster Ranger, Jade Cocoon... I played the heck out of all of those games. Anything where you had a pet that turned into something else, that was my jam. There's just something so enjoyable about seeing something grow into something else. There's something so deeply rewarding about caring for a collection of black-and-white pixels and seeing it react to the things that you do, even if it's all just preprogrammed. There's something about having something to take care of, and while it wasn't that there was something missing in my life right now, finding Tamagotchis again added more than was there before, and helped me go back to a piece of my childhood that was lost to a rough handful of formative years.
I wanted to know EVERYTHING. I googled a growth chart for my mini only to discover the last decade and a half of tamagotchi that I had missed out on. It was all so amazing. I spun, I read (when I probably should have been working), pouring over the wikis, dragging through threads here on tamatalk, looking up random 'top 5' lists online in a hunt to find which tama I should hunt down. I loved my mini and P2, but... but there were tamagotchis that had color now! Ones where you could change their house and get new traits by breeding them with other characters! There was so much new stuff! I had to get one.
As luck would have it, one of my coworkers was in Japan at the time. He messaged me that day asking what souvinier I would want, assuming something Gundam or Transformer related (I've also collected Transformers since '98, and Gunpla is an on-again-off-again hobby). Without hesitation, I said 'Blue Tamagotchi M!x Spacey', and he found one for me (though I chipped in since tamagotchis had also gotten kinda pricey in the last 20 years). I was on a work trip when he got back, and even though I returned from the trip at midnight of the following evening, I drove into work and grabbed the M!x off my desk, playing with it immediately when I got home
Anyway, I've been lurking around tamatalk for about a month, and I'd really like to kinda keep up a log of where things are at with my tamas. Right now, they're in a bit of a sorry state, honestly. Got hit hard with straight-up influenza last week, and that took out my Anniversary Mini and P2. My M!x resiliently hung on, but I spent a decent chunk of time tonight getting him back into fighting shape. On top of that, my wife's Gudetama Tamagotchi arrived tonight (it was one of her Christmas gifts from me because she wanted to have her own tama... and I know she'll probably get bored of it pretty quick. )
I'll probably post once every couple days, and most of them will be shorter than this, but I'm excited to share with you all and see what your tamas are doing as well! I'm so happy a forum like this still exists since I don't really use other social media.
Tamagotchis are the best.
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