Welcome to Clover's Tamagotchi and virtual pet shrine. I first saw a Tamagotchi at a comic book store near my house in California (they always had great Japanese imports). I got one and became kind of obsessed with it. My mom said I would stare at the screen endlessly and thought it was funny because the idle animations were so simple. I was so enchanted by the mystery of what they would evolve into and what all the different animations meant.
I would always ask my parents to get me a virtual pet when I saw one I'd never tried before, so that lead me to discover Digimon, plus tons of knock off tamagotchis (many of which didn't function well or were super difficult). I still have a clear Tamagotchi backpack full of older ones I owned, plus all the mcdonalds toys, and now I have a decently sized collection that includes vintage and newer Tamas.
Tamagotchi spawned things like NeoPets, and even video games that had pet-care type elements to them. Nowadays you can get virtual pet style games on the PC or your smart phone, and the options are seemingly endless.
I enjoy collecting some of the more hard-to-find virtual pets. Top of my wishlist is a Devil-gotchi and a Magical Witch virtual pet that bandai released. Both of those go for at least $500-600 minimum at this time and will probably only go up in value. My best hope is that they get re-released some day.
Anyway, I made this shrine resemble a desk because I remember the days of bringing Tamagotchi to school and having the teachers get mad if they beeped. I never got mine taken away, but some kids sadly did u_u I also remember seeing kids that had unique virtual pets I had never seen (like a keroppi, and a little mermaid gigapet). We would frequently do trades where you would take care of their pet for a day, then swap back the next day or so.
One of the pets I used and played with most was Pocket Pikachu. It was a pedometer, which made me want to carry it around everywhere with me. Then you could play some mini games to get in-game currency, and the more you used it the more animations would unlock. The Pocket Pikachu really had some amazing animations and eventually they released an in-color version which I also had to get of course.
Many years later I tried a "teku teku angel" and tried to document my experience with it one summer. Someday I hope to make my own virtual pet.
I hope you've enjoyed my shrine for Tamagotchis and virtual pets.
