Key takeaways
- A virtual pet is an artificial companion kept for enjoyment or companionship; keeping it alive and growing often means feeding, grooming and playing.
- Wikipedia names Neko, a cat that chased the screen cursor, as the first known virtual pet; PF.Magic's Dogz in 1995 was the first widely popular one.
- Bandai's Tamagotchi went on sale in Japan on 23 November 1996; the original sold about 40 million units and the brand passed 98 million by 2025.
- Classic digital pets move through life stages and, in Tamagotchi, can die from poor care, illness or old age.
- Wikipedia names breeding among the focuses of pet-raising video games; a modern game such as Dragon Pet Evolve Hatch Eggs also adds collection, evolution and battles to the care loop.
Long before phones, people carried pets in their pockets: small, demanding creatures on a screen that needed feeding, cleaning and attention. Tamagotchi, the best-known of them, has been sold since 1996, and its care loop is still visible in pet games today. This guide explains what defines a virtual pet game and how the genre has grown, using Wikipedia's articles on virtual pets and on Tamagotchi.
What makes a virtual pet
Wikipedia describes a virtual pet, also called a digital pet or pet-raising simulation, as an artificial companion kept for companionship or enjoyment, or as an alternative to a real pet. Its key features:
| Feature | How Wikipedia describes it |
|---|---|
| Care | Keeping the pet alive and growing often requires feeding, grooming and playing |
| Attention | Daily interaction, such as games, petting and acknowledgement, keeps it happy |
| Growth | Goal-oriented pets must be kept alive and helped to grow into higher forms |
| Species | Simulations of real animals, as in the Petz series, or fantasy creatures, as in Tamagotchi and Digimon |
| Goals | Pet-raising simulations often lack a victory condition and can count as software toys |
Unlike biological simulations, Wikipedia adds, the pet does not usually reproduce, although it also notes that some pet sites and pet-raising games include breeding.
From desktop cats to a global fad
The history moves quickly:
- Neko, a cat that chased the screen cursor, is the first known virtual pet; at the time it was called a desktop pet, because the term "virtual pet" did not yet exist.
- In 1995, PF.Magic released Dogz, the first widely popular virtual pet, followed by Catz in 1996; the series became the Petz franchise.
- Tamagotchi and Digimon followed in 1996 and 1997 and became, in Wikipedia's words, a massive fad across Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom in the late 1990s.
- From the late 1990s, cyber pets served as mascots on personal websites hosted on services such as GeoCities, and pet sites such as Neopets built whole communities around them.
Tamagotchi: the pet in the egg
Tamagotchi, Wikipedia explains, is a brand of handheld digital pets marketed by the Japanese toymaker Bandai since 1996. Created by Akihiro Yokoi of WiZ and Aki Maita of Bandai, the first went on sale in Japan on 23 November 1996 and worldwide in 1997. Most are housed in a small egg-shaped device with three buttons.
The numbers explain the fad. The original sold about 40 million units during its run, including about 12 million in the US and Canada, and Bandai struggled to keep up with demand. As of 2025, more than 98 million Tamagotchi units had been sold worldwide. The creators even shared the tongue-in-cheek 1997 Ig Nobel Prize for economics.
The design is strict. A Tamagotchi passes through life stages, each lasting a set number of days depending on the model, and its appearance changes at each new stage. It can fall sick, from overfeeding snacks or uncleaned droppings, for example, and it can die from poor care, sickness, old age and, in a few versions, predators.
A worked comparison. In a pet that lives in real time, care is a schedule rather than a session. If a pet needs attention every few hours, a day of school or work means planning around it. Wikipedia makes the point that this constant need, and the consequences of failing to meet it, make the virtual pet seem more real than other toys. Games that let pets wait, or that let resources build while you are away, change the deal: you choose when to visit, and missing a day slows progress instead of ending it.
How modern pet games grew
Later pet games kept the care loop and added layers. Wikipedia notes that video games focused on the care, raising, breeding or exhibition of simulated animals form a sub-class of life simulation games, with richer visuals and interactivity than gadget-based pets. Wikipedia names breeding; the other layers below are ones that Dragon Pet Evolve Hatch Eggs, described in the next section, lists on Google Play:
- Collection: many species to find, tracked in an album.
- Evolution: pets that change form and gain abilities as they grow.
- Breeding: pairing pets to produce new ones.
- Battles: teams of pets fighting, with elemental strategy.
- Idle progress: resources that build while you are away, the pattern what idle games are explains.
A dragon pet game today
Dragon Pet Evolve Hatch Eggs shows how far the genre has travelled. It keeps the classic care loop of feeding, playing, baths and naps, and adds hatching eggs of seven elements, evolution through several stages, hybrid breeding in a breeding cave, a collection album, an island with idle income and turn-based battles; the listing says core features work offline. Its guide walks through each step, and elemental type advantages covers the battle side. It is one of our anime and creative apps.
Good to know
Frequently asked questions
What is a virtual pet game?
What was the first virtual pet?
How many Tamagotchi have been sold?
Do virtual pets die?
Sources
- Virtual pet (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
- Tamagotchi (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
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