◕‿◕ Rediscovering Tamagotchis and The Old Web

⊹⋆。⋆The Trigger ⋆。⋆⊹

Around the end of last year, I got a remade gen 1 version from my brother.

And then I remembered that I used to have one and went dug into my drawer and found my old Music Star v6 Tamagotchi.

The most important thing is to have someone play together, so I asked my partner whether he wanted to play together and he said YES!

Starting Tamagotchi Tamablrs

After playing for a bit, it became evident that my Music Star has way more features than the gen 1 remakes. So I became the most invested player of the three (my partner, my brother, me).

Actually, I think my partner was more invested in researching on understanding how everything worked, and then I started researching.

No one else around me is still playing Tamagotchis, but I wanted to have someone to talk about it. Then I had an unexpected chat with Kay, who has been running a fandom community on Tumblr. (Oh yeah! Community is the new shiny thing on Tumblr!)

There wasn’t an active Tamagotchi community in Tumblr during that time. I even messaged one of the larger Tamagotchi blogs on Tumblr, wishing that they could create a Tamagotchi community. (Yes I wanted to be lazy 🫠)

I was still hesitant on starting a community, but Kay eventually convinced me as she said “I only check the community whenever I want to” after getting help from other mods. Also, most of her members came organically, which means I don’t need to spend extra effort on “marketing.”

That made the idea sound doable, and Tamagotchi Tamablrs is born! I also made a companion website for the community: tamablr.neocities.org.

The Old Web

So, what does all this have to do with the old web? While browsing communities on Tumblr, I found The Neocities Club.

It brought back the old days, where people built their personal websites instead of going on social media. The y2k nostalgic layouts, the background music, and the non-responsive designs brought back so many childhood memories.

I went from browsing sites on Neocities to discovering status.cafe and then forum.melonland.net. I love how Melonland closes on Monday, letting everyone take a break from the forum.

tamablr.neocities.org

Going through all of that, there’s no way I’m getting out of it without creating my own website! Then comes the hard part: what should the website be about?

As I was so into Tamagotchi, of course it will be about Tamagotchi. Didn’t I just create a community?

That’s the story of me going from playing Tamagotchi, starting a community, and then diving into the old web.

#tamagotchi