Will you marry me, Tamagotchi On?

Few children from the 90s don’t remember this small, but very important and requiring attention gadget. Everyone (to be honest, maybe, every third) had this Japanese toy.

The inventor of Tamagotchi was Aki Maita, a marketer of the Japanese toy company Bandai (yes, a subsidiary of the famous Bandai Namco Holding). As the story goes, Maita loved pets very much and wanted to think of a way to take her beloved animal everywhere.

After a series of tests in Japanese schools, Bandai released the first batch of the original Tamagotchi. They were egg-shaped and equipped with only three buttons that allowed you to control a digital pet.

Interest in the toy disappeared after the appearance of the mobile phone, which also had various games. Like the gadget itself, it vanished from a worldwide sale (however, in Japan there is still a trend for such electronic friends).

Twenty-two years from the official release, several reissues - and Tamagotchi returns to the market with new features. Plastic eggs will now require not only feeding and cleaning the virtual tray but also soulmates. Such updates are contained in the new Tamagotchi On.

Gizmodo journalists explored new features of the gadget. The first thing that caught their eye was an enlarged egg. Previous versions could almost unnoticeably hang like a keychain. There are still the same three control buttons.

The Tamagotchi color screen appeared back in 2008 in the Tamagotchi Plus Color version for Japan. Large pixels and rough animation of a virtual pet remained more like a tribute to the original device. In 2004, Tamagotchi was already able to communicate via infrared. But the level of interaction has grown up in the novelty: you can send pets to visit or even get married. Up to 16 generations of pets can be on the device at the same time.

However, the price of such a friend is not so insignificant - $60. Tamagotchi On will go on sale in July.

Now the main question is whether there will be a demand for such a gadget, if now everyone has a modern library of games, including pet care, in a modern smartphone? For example, amusing kittens can be grown right on the site (not sponsored, just an example), without taking up space in your phone. And there are a lot of such websites in any languages. There is an assumption that the new Tamagotchi will be bought only by nostalgic children who have grown up or collectors.

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