Alright, hands up everyone who had a Tamagotchi as a child? I think I'd need about five hands. I was obsessed with the little bleeping things. They were adorable! They went everywhere you did, were utterly dependent on your input and rewarded the exceptional player with longevity and games. My personal favourite was a cat-like one I named 'Tiger'; it lived for just over a month and then died in my mother's care.
Just when us nineties kids thought it was all over and we were sad-acts with our little bleeping ovacular techonology, Nintendo comes along (remember Nintendo? They gave us Super Mario Bros., the game we all fought over the controller for as eight-year-olds) and gives us a new reason to play their new-fangled console, the DS. Here, have a tamagotchi! Only it's not actually a tamagotchi, it's a more real-looking dog that you can really feed, really clean up after, really play with! You can take it for real walks and enter real competition with it!
The tamagotchi generation kicked it's heels in the air and raced off to get a copy of these cute puppies/kitties/other domesticated animals as the Nintendogs-craze began. Me? I liked them, but Nintendogs required a daily committment that I wasn't willing to give, so my puppies are now very hungry and very dirty. It reminds me of high school, when I had a friend who had a Pikachu tamagotchi. You shook it to earn points, which could be traded for items and prizes. She'd carry it everywhere with her. Nowadays I don't think she even knows where it is. Funny how games go in and out of vogue, isn't it?
I think that game designers need to keep this in mind when creating games. Classic games like Super Mario Bros, Final Fantasy VII and VIII, Sonic the Hedgehog, etc. are all classics for a reason. Their content resonates to the core values of a generation. Perhaps the Tamagotchi generation has a core value of instability and disposeability. Who knows?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment