[purpurn]

When I was younger, about 9 years old, my parents wouldn't let me have/buy any virtual pet in 1997. I was completely ticked off at them at the time for it cause I was like the ONLY child at school who didn't have one. ahhhh... the ol' days of being a loser...

Anyway my friend's mom got me a present for Christmas of 1997. It was my VERY OWN, VERY FIRST EVER virtual pet!!! It was a Salem the Cat Giga Pet. I was SUPER stoked about it! OMG let me tell you - my coolness rating with everyone went up about 10 fold.

The only trouble was, it kept on dying. I was so sad and frustrated. (They did this to me on purpose didn't they? getting the most annoying vpet to make me hate them and never buy them again!) I could never get him to live for more than a day or so and he always ended up "dying" and leaving GAME OVER on the screen. I tried my hardest with it... till it broke. Unfortunately I find that gigas are kinda glitchy that way and can break pretty easy. One day mine just stopped functioning at all and the screen went into super freak out mode. :< I had to toss him out cause he was super dead.....

Fast forward 13 years and I bought a NIP Salem Giga thinking - maybe mine was a bad egg (I had never bought another giga since him ever...) and gave it a whirl. Still with the constant death and GAME OVER screen. :<

Thankfully in my adulthood I know have the INTERNETS!!!! (The internet was around when I was 9, but it was still pretty new to people and I wasn't allowed to use AOL at 9 years old....) I found an awesome site on how to keep a giga alive here! I have been running a Digital Doggie that I got recently and he is nearly 5 years old! O_O the longest any Giga has ever lived for me! I'm really surprised the people at Tiger Electronics didn't write their instructions very well and put a lot of people off to their original run of Gigas in 1997. What about you - how long did yours used to live?

-Purn

TL;DR - I had a Giga pet as a child and it would always die on me cause I was following the instructions that came with it pretty literally. I could never get my pet to live for more than a day; How about you? I recently found a site that has instuctions on how to really take care of Gigas and my Giga pets are living more than 24 hours!!! (it's the only link in the top part...)

[Stu_Dee_Jay]

I had a puppy Giga Pet (not sure if there was an alternate puppy to the Digital Doggie) many, many years ago, and I remember it driving me insane with its incessant calls for attention. I switched it off soon after I started it and returned to my P1 and Angelgotchi for my virtual pet fix.

I never returned to it, and I have no idea what happened to it after that. I tried a lot of wannabe Tamagotchis back on the day, but for every single one I felt they were ill-conceived/overly-demanding imitations of the real thing.

The closest I've got to enjoying a non-Tamagotchi were the Aqua Pets (Aqua Pals/Palz? Something like that) dolphin and fish, but they were so easy to care for that they got a bit dull after a while.

[purpurn]

I had a puppy Giga Pet (not sure if there was an alternate puppy to the Digital Doggie) many, many years ago, and I remember it driving me insane with its incessant calls for attention. I switched it off soon after I started it and returned to my P1 and Angelgotchi for my virtual pet fix.

I never returned to it, and I have no idea what happened to it after that. I tried a lot of wannabe Tamagotchis back on the day, but for every single one I felt they were ill-conceived/overly-demanding imitations of the real thing.

The closest I've got to enjoying a non-Tamagotchi were the Aqua Pets (Aqua Pals/Palz? Something like that) dolphin and fish, but they were so easy to care for that they got a bit dull after a while.

I can kinda relate to that. I really liked tamas more than Gigas and never bought another till recently. I actually have gotten a few different types and I am completely dumbfounded at how they managed to make them all so different that it's almost a pain in the butt to try and figure them out.

The Digital Doggie I have works great with the revised instructions that I found on the internet basically. Salem the cat doesn't have the same things apply to him. For instance you can raise his health by playing games with him past 100 happy points. Any extra points go to his health. Digital Doggie you have to just take really go care of him by those instructions and his health will increase. Also his training is so that you teach him one trick a day and ask him to do it throughout the day with no treat after and his discipline will increase. I tried that with Salem and it didn't work. You have to give him a treat every time he does a trick or else it won't count it. This of course brings his health down and you have to play the game forever to get more health...

I also got a baby t-rex and it doesn't even have training (NICE!). He just seems to accumulate discipline the better you take care of him which is nice (he has a discipline button and kinda acts like a tama otherwise). But he is a pain too cause he begs for a cookie (or whatever the snack is) like ever 30 minutes.

XD how did they make all of them so different and still have the same basic instructions like copy paste into each package??? So confusing hahhahah!

-Purn

[MintyDreams7]

I had a very similar experience. I pestered my parents for a virtual pet all year. Finally, they bought a "Compu Kitty" Giga Pet for me. I was super excited... but I had the hardest time keeping the thing alive. The instructions were basically useless. XD
(I got a Tamagotchi for Christmas that year and never looked back. Poor Kitty. XD)

I remember that no matter what I did, the Compu Kitty's health would constantly drop. It never stayed alive for very long. :{
Not sure if the health problem was just a design flaw, glitch or bad instructions... but it was so terrible to care for that I haven't touched it since the 90's. XD

[jzwolf530]

Back when I had the KFC "Digital Doggie", mine would last pretty long until I would lose it for a couple days and then find it dead but I always ended up restarting it for another round. However, over time, I permanently misplaced it so I didn't get to play with one for quite some time. When I was about 11, my dad surprised me with a brand new non--KFC "Digital Doggie" for Christmas and for whatever reason, it would always "break" before it reached age 6. The screen would start acting screwy and I would be forced to restart it. I enjoyed it despite that.

I never had problems otherwise with my Gigapets but since that experience, I'm too apprehensive to buy another one and it ends up doing the same thing.