Aurora Minui's Virtual Pet Reviews

Virtual Creatures Red Knee Tarantula

Due to a lack of Hard Drive space, I only have one of the two Virtual Creatures available from the Virtual Creatures website. (I also briefly owned their other virtual pet software, MopyFish; however, there is a distinct disadvantage in owning a pet whose happiness depends on its owner printing out Multiple Original Prints of documents on the printer when one does not, in fact, have a printer connected to the computer.) The Chilean Rose Tarantula is reputed to be as lovely as the Mexican Red Knee Tarantula; which one you download will have to depend on your own personal taste.

Platform and History

Virtual Creatures is a Windows 95/98 program.
Its requirements are:
Pentium(TM) 166 processor or above
Minimum 32Mb RAM
30MB Free Hard Disk Space
Sound card (optional)
Accelerated graphics card (optional)
256 Color Display or above

Gameplay and Level of Interactivity

This is, in someways, a typical Tamagotchi-type virtual pet in which you feed your pet, replenish its water bowl, pet/poke/interact with your pet using the Mouse Cursor, and decorate its tank. However, Virtual Creatures has one thing that many virtual pets do not have: beautiful, realistic animation and behaviour.

Although I must confess that I have never owned a tarantula (and never will; I have an intellectual awareness that spiders are beneficial to the environment and food chain, and an emotional instinct to crush any living spiders before they bite me), the Virtual Creatures tarantulas move like a tarantula, act like a tarantula (when irritable, they react negatively to petting and spit venom at you) and still manage to be rather sweet in behavior and temperament, without being cutesy like PostPet or Petz. Oh, and they actually grow bigger, casting off their old skin in the process. And you can move the skin around the tank, watching as it shrinks and grows according to the laws of perspective. Very neat. The spiders also make realistic crunching sounds while eating their prey, but this can be turned off in the Options.

The registered version of the pet reputedly has more realistic behaviours than the trial version: if hungry, it will start laying functional webs (i.e., will catch any crickets in its vicinity), and if it's in a good mood it may climb up the glass wall of the tank. Although the way in which it reacts to your touch (whether poke, stroke, or rapping on the glass) depends on its mood, there's something very sweet about the way the virtual tarantula wriggles around and shifts into a comfy position as you gently "scratch" its back.

Unfortunately, part of the "realism" of this game is the fact that you can't seem to pause it. It seems that you have to take regular care of this virtual critter to ensure that it doesn't kick the bucket.

Extra Stuff

The Virtual Creatures Website promises upcoming add-ons for registered owners. These include new toys for your pet to play with, as well as updated versions of the program itself. The last update let you select Virtual Creatures as your screen saver... who knows what they'll come up with next! (More importantly, who knows when they'll actually update their website next? They've been promising Virtual Scorpions for quite some time now...)

As well, registration ensures that you can resurrect your pet, should it starve to death while under your care. Registration also allows you to replenish your pet's supply of grasshoppers. Yum.

Overall Rating

Virtual Creatures is an excellent computer Virtual Pet. It has an appealing graphical interface, and its icon-based menu makes it easy to figure out how to care for your tarantula. The realism is not limited to the tarantula itself; even the crickets you use to feed it, and the various decorations for the tank seem to be really alive and natural. In the registered version, you also get the special treat of watching your tarantula grow and mature.

The only negative aspects to Virtual Creatures is that it has a trial period, and that it's difficult to tell whether your tarantula has a unique personality or not. (I suspect that this is the same for live tarantulas, though, so I should really let that pass.)

As well, Virtual Creatures may temporarily adjust your desktop settings when in full-screen mode, and may run slowly on some computers.

Taking all this into account, I give Virtual Creatures Red Knee Tarantula a rating of A for excellent, or 9 stars out of 10.