8 interesting facts about the electronic pet "Tamagotchi" (7 photos)

Electronic pet called "Tamagotchi" was a lot of children the second half of the 90s. The kids treated him like the real thing four-legged friend who had to be looked after, fed, treated and even play with it.





1. In our time, there were many different Tamagotchi, but all they were essentially clones. The original Tamagotchi toy was developed by Bandai and featured only one pet - an alien who lives in an egg that protects him from the earth atmosphere.



2. The very idea of ​​"Tamagotchi" belongs to a woman, namely a Japanese woman named after Aki Maita, who worked for Bandai. It was she who came to head the idea to make an electronic pet, for which you will need look after and with whom you will need to play. In this case, the pet will not gnaw furniture, dirty the apartment and shit on the floor.

She shared her idea with a friend - Akihiro Yoka, and together they started to develop the toy. As a result, the first batch of electronic eggs came out in 1996 and instantly became a hit.

3. In fact, there is no such word as "Tamagotchi" in Japanese exists. It is a fusion of two other words, namely "Tomago" (egg) and "tomodachi" (friend).

4. The creators of "Tamagotchi" (Aki Maita and Akihiro Yoko) got so called the Ig Nobel Prize. This anti-award is issued for dubious achievements.





In this case, the creators of "Tamagotchi" received the Ig Nobel award for dubious achievements in the field of economics, namely for investment of millions of man-hours in the care of virtual pets.

5. It turns out that there is a virtual museum of sounds. Museum presented on the site savethesounds.info, where a huge the number of sounds from the past, such as the sounds of a dot matrix printer, Pac-Man games, Nokia original monophonic ringtone, etc. The sound of the original "Tamagotchi" also wormed its way there.



6. The death of a virtual pet was very upsetting for the fledglings. minds, which sometimes even had to seek help from psychologists. This fact gave rise to many rumors about mass suicides. children due to the death of an electronic animal.

But in fact, rumors of suicide appeared only in the media, and in In reality, such cases were isolated, and even then in Japan. AT Russian cases of child suicide due to a virtual pet was not registered.



7. After the success of the original Tamagotchi, the market was taken over various clones, in which there was no longer one pet, but 2, 4, 10 and even 32. Moreover, many clone creators have moved away from the usual form eggs, creating their toys in the form of hearts, cat paws, houses and etc. Also, four-button virtual pets began to appear, although the classic version only had 3 buttons.



8. UK, Japan and some other countries there is a real cemetery of virtual pets. Many people came from different countries to bury a virtual pet there your child with all honors.



Do you have your own Tamagotchi? And how did you react to the "death" of your electronic pet when he first left this world? write, please in the comments.