Tamagotchi

Tamagotchis are a small alien species that deposited an egg on Earth to see what life was like, and it is up to the player to raise the egg into an adult creature. On the original Tamagotchi, the creature goes through several stages of growth, and will develop differently depending on the care the player provides, with better care resulting in an adult creature that is smarter, happier, and requires less attention. There are various Tamagotchi characters (the original models have six adult characters and two at the teenager stage) and the resulting character depends on how the player has cared for it during the earlier baby, child and teen stages. Gameplay can vary widely between models, and some models require little care from the player.

Upon activating the pet, an egg appears on the screen. After setting the clock on the device, the egg will wiggle for around 5~ minutes, and then hatch into a small pet. In versions after the original Tamagotchi, inputting the player's name and birthday is also required when setting the clock, and at birth, the player can name the pet and learn of its family group and/or gender. The player can care for the pet as much or as little as they choose, and the outcome depends on the player's actions. The original Tamagotchi could only be paused by going to set the clock, effectively stopping the passage of time in the game, but in later models, a pause function was included, then replaced by a paid babysitting feature.

Tamagotchi was created in Japan by Akihiro Yokoi of WiZ and Aki Maita of Bandai. They both won the tongue-in-cheek 1997 Ig Nobel Prize for economics, dubbing them the father and mother of Tamagotchi. The first Tamagotchi was released by Bandai on November 23, 1996 (several months after the release of the unsuccessful Apple Pippin console) in Japan. It would then release in the United States on May 1, 1997.

Tamagotchi is a keychain-sized virtual pet simulation game. The characters were first drawn in heta-uma, which was a popular style found in teen magazines, and were then converted to pixel art. They were worn like a wristwatch in the initial concept, hence the portmanteau name. The egg shape might have been chosen as it was meant to resemble a pocket watch.

The Tamagotchi was extremely popular globally in 1997-1998 having been referred to as becoming a "pop culture phenomenon". The success of the Tamagotchi led to the electronic pet being appointed the Christmas Gift of the Year by the Swedish Retail Institute in November 1997. The toy was especially popular among the high school girls and young women demographics. It also spawned the virtual pet genre and led to many knock-off products or imitators at the time, such as Tiger/Hasbro's Giga Pet.

During the peak of the original toy's fad, children frequently took Tamagotchi digital pets to school because in the first two releases (Generation 1 and Generation 2), a character could die in less than half a day if it did not receive adequate care. Teachers expressed concerns over class disruption as well as general distraction from schoolwork and this eventually led many schools to ban the product. Children became emotional over the deaths of their Tamagotchi, leading to teenagers sending them to graveyards for burial and urban legends of teen suicide, such as an alleged case of a teenage girl hanging herself over the death of her Tamagotchi after her parents took it away as a punishment.