By Brad Cook
You’ve made your Tamagotchi happy. Now use your Tamagotchi to make entire planets happy. Choose one of four Tamagotchi — Mametchi, Memetchi, Kuchipatchi, or Violetchi — and play through six missions that take you to jungle, desert, and bucktooth planets. Interact with the Gaiatchi — living clouds, plants, geysers, and seedlings — that populate each planet and make them happy. Don’t forget to keep your Tamagotchi satisfied by tickling it, playing games with it, and making sure it eats and poops; unhappy Tamagotchi don’t consistently respond to your commands.
There are nine games you can play with the Gaiatchi and your Tamagotchi:
- Rock, Paper, Scissors: A classic: rock breaks scissors, scissors cut paper, and paper covers rock
- Bubble: A geyser pops out bubbles that your Tamagotchi must eat so it can burp and form new clouds
- Move It: Match the plants’ dance moves
- Beach Ball: Play catch with seedlings
- Dancing: Cut a rug under a plant to summon a cloud that rains on it
- Tag It: Run around and grab as many items as you can before time runs out
- Tickling: Sweep your finger across the click wheel in the proper direction to tickle your Tamagotchi and make it happy
- Memory Match: Another classic: Memorize the symbols your Tamagotchi calls out and repeat them
- Math Puzzle: Answer simple math problems
Successfully play games and complete missions to earn you stars that you redeem for stamps. Each stamp costs a certain number of stars, so finish all the missions to accumulate enough stars to buy all of them. Place the stamps in your virtual book so you can look at them any time.
Complete all the goals on each planet to make it happy. After you finish all six missions, you can revisit each planet with any Tamagotchi. Then you’ll finally have a happy universe.
The History of Tamagotchi
Many parents and teachers probably rued the day in 1996 when Tamagotchi first appeared, but kids were thrilled. The virtual pets were, and still are, contained in small, portable egg-shaped devices. When the owner turns on the device, an egg appears on the screen. Eventually, a Tamagotchi hatches, and its keeper must feed it, play games with it, clean up after it, and keep it happy and in good health. Similar to such computer games as The Sims 2, Tamagotchi advance through different stages of life and will die if they’re not cared for.
Aki Maita, who created Tamagotchi, also invented a story that explains their existence. All of the Tamagotchi left their eponymous home planet, but their spaceship crashed on Earth and a character named Professor Banzo, along with his assistant Mikachu, came across the survivors. Professor Banzo built egg-shaped cases for the Tamagotchi to live in because they couldn’t survive in our atmosphere. Parents and teachers have Mikachu to blame for the Tamagotchi craze, which took off after he brought a few of them to school and excited his classmates.
Bandai has sold millions of Tamagotchi since 1996, with dozens of variations available. Newer versions give players access to the official web site, where they can play games and spend the currency they earn through successful interactions with their Tamagotchi. The characters have also appeared in other videogames for handhelds and consoles, and a movie starring them was released in December 2007.
The name “Tamagotchi” is a combination of the Japanese word “tamago,” which means “egg,” and the last three letters in the English word “watch.” In Japan, it’s spelled “Tamagotch.”
iPod Games FAQ
Do you have questions regarding any of the iPod games available from the iTunes Store?
Rock, Paper, Scissors. Even though Kuchipatchi won this round, he still made the plant happy by playing a game with it.
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- Site: Tamagotchi: ‘Round the World
- Publisher: Apple Inc.
- Developer: NAMCO BANDAI Games America
- Genre: Kids & Learning
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System Requirements
- Mac OS X version 10.3.9 or Windows 2000
- iPod nano (3rd and 4th generation only), iPod classic, or iPod (5th generation only). Not playable on your computer, other iPod models, iPod touch or iPhone. Please check which iPod model you have.
- iTunes 7.5 or higher required to download (games cannot be played in iTunes)