Making the most of a recent nostalgia trend in technology that has brought back brands like Furby and Pac-Man, Bandai is reintroducing Tamagotchi, the digital pet from the 1990s, as a lifestyle brand called Tamagotchi L.I.F.E. (for Love Is Fun Everywhere).
The original Tamagotchi was a toy that fit on a keychain; the new version is a smartphone app. An iOS version was released on Thursday, following the introduction of an Android app last month. The app is free, but comes with banner ads; an ad-free version is available for 99 cents.
The app recreates the same nurturing play that Tamagotchi offered when it was introduced in the United States 16 years ago. It eats, it sleeps and it poops. It can die, too, so you have to take care of it by feeding it, playing games with it and giving it medicine when it gets sick. To increase awareness of your parenting duties, the little guy sends alerts when it needs attention, at least a half-dozen times a day. Fortunately, Tamagotchi sleeps through the night.
The app has color graphics and better resolution than the original Tamagotchi, but it still has the same pixelated appearance of the original. If you?re feeling really nostalgic, a toy mode replicates the look of the original, including the shell that housed it. The app also includes a few extras, like a rock-paper-scissors game and the ability to share photos of your bouncing baby blob on Facebook.
The app is a simple pastime, but I can see how it could get tedious after a few days for anyone over the age of 7. The Tamagotchi?s incessant appetite is bested only by the piles of stinking poop it makes (you can tell they are stinky because they have wavy stink lines rising above them).
Unlike other mindless apps, there are no ropes to cut or fruit to slice or birds to sling at pigs. Bandai may have updated the brand for a new audience, but it forgot to advance the concept.
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