1997 was the Summer of Tamagotchi, much in the way that younger readers might remember the summer of 2016 being the Summer of Pokémon Go. Meaning that everyone and their parents were taking care of their Tamagotchis - in the case of the parents, not necessarily voluntarily. But, let's start at the beginning.
The "tiny pet from cyberspace", as it was marketed in the West, was invented in Japan, by Bandai employee Maita Aki, in 1996. And, while there had been digital pets in the sense of computer games before, the Tamagotchi took it to a whole new level by making the whole thing portable, and (at least if you used it as intended) non-pauseable.
"Tamagotchi" is a portmanteau blending the Japanese words "tama", meaning "egg", and "uotchi", a loan word from English "watch" - two important elements of the game, as your virtual pet both hatches from an egg, and the hardware itself is egg-shaped, while the whole game revolves around a 24-hour-cycle, literally making you take care of your baby alien around the clock. In the initial design concept, the hardware even was worn around the wrist like an actual watch. This design, however, never made it into production.
The game itself was very simple. You had a little LCD screen with a number of symbols that you could access via three little buttons, and a pixel display in the middle. When starting a new game, you first had to set the time, and then a little soon-to-hatch egg would appear on the screen. From this point on, you had to take care of your digital pet by feeding it, playing with it, cleaning up his poo poo, turning off the light when it went to sleep, checking his health and weight, and occasionally scolding it, if it misbehaved. If it needed something, it would make a little beep to let you know you better check what's wrong. And depending on how well you took care of it, it would develop into different creatures, and stay with you for a longer or shorter period of time.
That simple premise, paired with the novelty of the whole thing, proved so popular that, in 1997 alone, Bandai sold 20 million Tamagotchi units worldwide. And those wouldn't stay the only virtual pets out there. By the time Tamagotchi reached Europe, there had been enough time for competitors to produce Tamagotchi knockoffs of all shapes and sizes, ranging from bad copies to virtual pets that were actually better than the real thing.
I was in year 4 at the time, the last year of elementary school in Germany. And over the final month or two of the school year, which would end with the summer holidays, more and more of my classmates would get either actual Tamagotchis, or, in most cases, one of the many available clones. If you believe the Internet, in Japan and the US, Tamagotchi was very much marketed towards girls, but I don't remember it ever being seen as a "girls' toy" over here, which may or may not be related to the fact that the knockoffs included ones with less kawaii designs, and pets like dinosaurs, reptiles or, obviously, dogs. I remember the most popular virtual pet with kids in my class being a dog character, actually.
We've probably all heard stories about schools banning the digital pets, as they would beep during class and prevent students from focussing, and, while I don't recall there being an official Tamagotchi ban at my school, the problem still became obvious, and many of my classmates eventually made their parents take care of their Tamagotchis during the mornings.
Having always been a rather responsible kid, I myself was sceptical of the whole concept at first. After all, weren't they meant to simulate having a real pet? And you wouldn't bring a real pet to school with you. I decided I didn't need that, but at the same time, I'd always been a huge fan of portable games coming out of Japan (AKA the Nintendo Game Boy), and, soon enough, I got infected with Tamagotchi fever, and put it on top of my wish list for my birthday, which happened to be at the beginning of the summer holidays, right when the school year ended.
My wish should be granted: I got one of the pink and yellow clock-face design original Bandai Tamagotchis for my 10th birthday. And so began my own adventure in alien-sitting - and what an adventure it was.
For the following weeks, I became obsessed with taking care of the little creature. Always having been a bit of a control freak, after having figured out how the game works, I would regularly check through my virtual pet's stats, making sure to take care of its every need even before it could annoy its surroundings with its notorious beeping sounds. To be clear, that wasn't because I knew about the different ways it could evolve and wanted to get a particular character or anything, it was just what I felt was the right way to play the game. I would schedule vacation activities around taking care of the thing, take it with me literally everywhere, and check the screen and stats all the time. And while I had seen the Tamagotchis of my friends die before, I was somehow convinced that I was taking such good care of it, it had to live on forever (which didn't agree so well with my plan to not take a Tamagotchi to school, did it?).
It actually didn't die, but after three weeks or so, it spread its wings, in order to leave for its home planet. I remember crying. And not just because the tiny alien that had been my best friend for the last couple of weeks had grown up and left me to start a life of its own - no, also because it wasn't very apparent that that was what's happening.
You see, in gen 1 Tamagotchis, the (very unambiguous) image that would appear if your Tamagotchi died because you had failed as a caretaker - and which probably traumatised millions of children all in its own right - was that of a ghost next to a tombstone. If you had successfully raised an independent adult specimen, however, after a maximum of 25 days, it would start its journey to its home planet. Tragically, that was illustrated in a way that was extremely reminiscent of your character becoming an angel, which is video game language for dying. Hence I, and probably millions of kids like me, was extra devastated, believing that, despite my dedicated efforts, I hadn't been able to keep my beloved pet alive.
The misunderstanding could only be clarified after a friend, who also had an original Bandai Tamagotchi, and had apparently not taken care of it as religiously as I had, showed me her tombstone death screen, and after buying a guide that finally explained all of the different shapes and forms that Tamagotchis could take on, confirming that mine was prove I had taken amazing care of my weird baby. I definitely wasn't the only kid traumatised by this, as for the gen 2 Tamagotchis, which were released shortly after, Bandai decided to drop the "angel" animation in favour of one showing the character taking off in a little UFO.
Despite the digital toy consuming so much of my time and mental energy, the new information helped heal my trauma and got me excited enough for getting the other characters, that I would go on and raise another Tamagotchi on the gen 1 toy I had, and later buy the Tamagotchi Game Boy game, which included more characters and mini games, and was altogether way more stress-free, as you could save it and turn it off, only to resume it when you actually had the time to.
Do I think the Tamagotchi fulfilled its purpose of making children realise the responsibilities that come with having a pet (if that ever was its purpose)? To be honest, I think it may have overdone it a little bit and was, in many ways, more taxing and inflexible than having an actual pet, and maybe, subconsciously, the memory of my Tamagotchi might be one of the reasons I never got one. But was it also a milestone in gaming and toy history? Absolutely. This simple, but groundbreaking new invention would go on to inspire later successes like Digimon (which started out as a Tamagotchi clone), the Pokémon Pikachu (a digital pet with an integrated pedometer) and possibly the Pokémon games themselves, the next big artificial pet trend Furby, and all sorts of virtual pets that came after it, like the super popular web-based Neopets, or Nintendogs for the Nintendo DS.
And even the Tamagotchi franchise itself has a dedicated fan base that is very alive and active online up to this day, collecting, cataloguing and playing all of the different iterations of Tamagotchi that would follow in the decades after that long past Summer of Tamagotchi.
