Alright, so I got myself one of those Tamagotchi things again. You know, for a bit of nostalgia. Fired it up, got my little digital pet going, and then I waited. And waited. For the beeps, the alerts, telling me it’s hungry or needs a cleanup. But guess what? Silence. Total silence. I was thinking, “What in the world? Is this thing broken or am I missing something super obvious?”
So, the first thing I did, naturally, was fiddle around with it. I pressed all the buttons, went through whatever menus it had, which aren’t many, let’s be honest. I even dug out the tiny paper instructions, squinting at them like they held the secrets of the universe. Still, no joy. I couldn’t find any ‘turn on alerts’ option anywhere. For a moment, I even wondered if the speaker was busted or if I’d bought some weird, silent version by mistake. I was genuinely a bit stumped and, frankly, a little annoyed. How am I supposed to keep this thing alive if it doesn’t yell at me?
I spent a bit of time just observing it. And then I started thinking back. These Tamagotchis, the classic ones, they’re from a different time, aren’t they? We’re talking mid-90s. Back then, not everything was trying to grab your attention every five seconds with a notification. It wasn’t like today where your phone, your watch, even your fridge sometimes, wants to tell you something.
And it kind of clicked. These toys weren’t designed to be like a modern smartphone app. The whole idea, I reckon, was for you to remember to check on it. It was about teaching a bit of responsibility, making you actively care for something, even if it was just a bunch of pixels. If it just beeped for every single thing, it would kind of take away that core gameplay loop, wouldn’t it? You’d just be reacting, not actively remembering and engaging.
Then there’s the battery. These things usually run on tiny little button cell batteries. Imagine if it was constantly making noise or trying to send you alerts. That battery would probably be dead in a day or two. So, keeping it mostly silent, relying on you to check in, also makes a ton of sense from a practical, power-saving point of view. They wanted these things to last.
So, after my initial confusion, I’ve kind of made peace with my silent little Tamagotchi. It’s not that it doesn’t give alerts because it’s faulty; it’s more like it doesn’t give many alerts by design. It needs you to be proactive. You have to be the one to remember, “Oh, I should probably check on my little Tamagotchi dude.” It’s a different kind of pet ownership experience. It’s less about being nagged and more about you making the effort.
And you know what? It’s actually not so bad. It makes me feel a bit more involved, like I’m genuinely looking after it, not just responding to prompts. So, if you’ve got a Tamagotchi and it’s not buzzing your pocket off, don’t worry. It’s just being its old-school self. You just gotta get into that retro mindset of checking in on your own terms. It’s a bit of a throwback to simpler times, I guess.