June 2000

For the early half of June, I concentrated tidying up my room in preparation for upcoming trips, freaking out about my future academic career, and doing odd little crafts like working on candle- making.

As well, I played a great deal of Dragon Warrior Monsters... much like Pokemon, only using teams of three monsters, which follow you around slavishly and occasionally spout off at you.

Then I took a two week (approx.) trip to Japan.

I was astonished by the number of Poo-Chi and AIBO ripoffs that I saw in various toystores, ranging from T-Dog 2000 to a series of wind-up dogs in Poo-chi colours that came in anywhere from keychain size to palm-top size. The oddest of the lot was probably Mega Weenie (possibly Mega Winnie), which was essentially a stouter cousin to T-Dog 2000 and Tekno the Robot Puppy. The latter was in a neat box that let you hit some buttons and try out its "walks and barks" action. Unfortunately, my habit of playing with any and all toys that seem operational rendered me less than welcome in a number of department store toy areas...

And then there was Furby Baby.
Every toy department I went to had a Furby Baby on display for people to cuddle and potentially shop-lift, given the lack of security. I made it my personal duty to cuddle and feed every Furby Baby that I saw, and I marvelled at how badly the baby dialogue had been translated into Japanese. The most I can say is that it sounded very convincingly like an alien being trying to learn Japanese via an English-Japanese dictionary.

There were also some WuvLuvs on display, but none of the ones I saw were working. Perhaps it was for the best.

Oh, and I saw my first ever working Furby Gizmo, but I think this one was just an English Gizmo stuck in Japanese packaging.

In terms of buying stuff, I bought some Pokemon Gold/Silver stuff and a Pokemon/Pocket Pikachu Colour. However, I don't plan on starting it up until I've hit 1000000 steps on my current Pocket Pikachu.

When I got back from Japan, I discovered to my great joy and surprise that my free PostPet The World CD had arrived. I now have to figure out which of my offline pals I can lure into using the software. Mwahaha. The Jelly Belly sample packet I was supposed to get so many months ago also arrived. Hurrah!

July and August 2000

July was spent in a flurry of activity. I had to sort out academic stuff, play Pokemon Gold, bring my Pocket Pikchu up to 1000000 steps, play Pokemon Gold, try out Azure Dreams for Gameboy Colour (hrm, should I review that as a "virtual pet" game? It's not *quite* virtual pet-ish, but...), play Pokemon Gold, plan for a long vacation, and play Pokemon Gold. All in all, I was fairly well occupied.

July 20th to August 1st was spent travelling to and from a convention with some friends. For no good reason, the venerable Furby Yoda accompanied us on this road trip. I will probably eventually review Furby Yoda when I have the time and energy to do so. He was.... special.

Some time in August, I gave into temptation (and the subliminal messaging contained in the few episodes of Digimon that I'd caught while on vacation) and purchased a clear red Digivice. Although I found it rather gaudy, it was significantly less tacky than the Clear Orange With Blue Buttons and Clear Green With Yellow Buttons. It was also significantly more expensive than it should have been... less than a block away, I found the exact same thing at an Electronics Boutique for 9.99 US. Grrr.

My review of the Digivice can be found here. Barely hinted at in the review are the looks of barely contained disgust and irritation shot at me by my companions, as I kept stopping in the middle of traffic or blundering into shrubbery and through doggy droppings, helpless and unable to ignore the mournful, helpless, above all LOUD bleepings of my Digivice. It was almost like having an Ocean Tamagotchi on my belt, only harder to take care of.

The problem with the Digivice is that it is more likely to get "attacked" by an Evil Digimon after quite a bit of walking around on my part. I am less likely to be able to help my poor Digimon if I am, in fact, in the middle of walking around, especially when I'm walking around New York City.

My eventual solution was to avoid using the Digivice, and to periodically hand it to my host so that he could shake it madly and play with it whenever it got attacked. Oddly enough, Palmon seemed very very reluctant to Digivolve. My default Digimon, Patamon, seemed to Digivolve with the least amount of fuss and effort. How very very strange.

The rest of August was spent in a blur of preparing for school, sending PostPet e-mails, and playing copious amounts of Pokemon Gold and Azure Dreams. (Perhaps I'll do a triple-game review, comparing and contrasting Pokemon Gold, Dragon Warrior Monsters, and Azure Dreams.) I also started wearing Pocket Pikachu Colour on my belt. I likely won't do a review of the pet, given that my reviews tend to be pretty much a description of the pet, and why I like it.... in short, the webpage above.

I will, however, note that Pocket Pikachu has really cute animations. All new, all different, all "interactive" in that you can sabotage Pikachu's happy little life by jostling him and making him, say, do a face-plant into his icecream.

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