Virtual Pet

I was a young teenager in the nineteen nineties and one thing that was very popular at the end of that decade was the Tamagotchi, virtual pet. I had a virtual pet myself but it was not a Tamagotchi. It was an imitation virtual pet. The internet was around at the time but it was dial-up so modems would make strange beeping and hissing noises. I associate the hissing and beeping sound of the old dial-up internet with virtual pets.

I loved Tamagotchis because they were small and the best thing you could put on a keychain. You looked after a digital pet using a few small buttons that controlled a menu.  the digital pet was made of little black dots. I think the screen was a black and white LCD  and I think it was less than 50 pixels across. This may not sound like much but you could do a lot with just a small amount of pixels.

Virtual pets were addictive because the pet would grow and develop and you would interact with it and play a role in its development.