Hi all,
I finally found a GigaPet. Last weekend I made the rounds of Toys R Us and Kay Bee Toys and at Kay Bee I found the alien and bit critter GigaPets. They didn't have any of the other models yet. The bit critter graphics looked dumb, and I thought it might be kind of cool to have a pet alien, so I got the alien. The game play and graphics are so similar to that of the Playmates Nano Pets, i.e. a direct ripoff, that someone obviously copied someone else's ROM. Or both companies are getting ROMs from the same supplier. There are no appreciable differences between the two, and they are both slightly better than Tamagotchis. I like the design of the case on the Alien, and it has a printed background screen (a planet scene), whereas the Nano Pets and Tamagotchis have plain reflective background screens. The alien only has the fetch game, instead of the fetch and handshake games like the Nano Puppy. Also, the alien has the arrow buttons on the sides, whereas the Nano Puppy has the arrow buttons in the middle. That gets confusing when I am switching between pets. For anyone doing comparison shopping, I don't recommend running two or more virtual pets of different brands at the same time. :-)
In Bandai news, Bandai will soon release some web-surfing software, called Surf Monkey, for kids. This software runs on top of Microsoft's Internet Explorer and will use Infosspace directories to give kids a "safe," "fun," and "easy" way to surf the web. The package will cost US$24.95. More info can be found at:
biz.yahoo.com
surfmonkey.com
surfmonkey.com
Will this do anything for Bandai's profits? Probably not much.
Finally I found yet another virtual pet, this time at a Hallmark store. The packaging is written entirely in Japanese, except for the two words Rakuraku Dinokun, which I assume is the product name. The game had 5 buttons and 5 icons down each side of the screen and a sticker showing a Tamagotchi-looking beastie on the screen. I guess it works like a Tamagotchi and maybe has a few more things you can do, but is otherwise similar to the other virtual pets. I have collected enough of pets for now, and don't plan to collect this one. The name is fun to say, though.
If you are tired of hearing about Tamagotchis, here's a cool Tamagotchi parody, Traumagotcha:
toymania.com
And here's a fun web site where you can create a virtual creature and keep tabs on it as it wanders around a virtual world interacting with other virtual creatures:
tdg.linst.ac.uk
Happy surfing,
Kirk |
