I'm not sure if this is video games, but if it is: Anyone here still have their Tamagotchi?

Sounds like anti-thesis to feminism.

I used to have a Tamagotchi Angel. No regrets for being a double-fag.

Bionicle, dbz, tamagotchi and yugioh were all big at my school. It's kind of interesting how none of those things are really too extravagantly priced for most kids to have except maybe yugioh but you could probably still be given some by the kids who had a lot. Modern kids are pretty much fucked I think, is there even any area of interest besides 1000 dollar gadgets

My sister seems to like the Gunpla I give her, and she also enjoys knitting. She says none of the other kids do, though, so she might just be the odd one.

I wasn't allowed to have one because my mom read or heard somewhere that these things are harmful to a child's mental development because children get emotionally attached to a machine and don't develop the ability to distinguish between real and virtual anymore. Yes, for real.

So once I got one as a gift (I don't know from whom anymore), a real Bandai Tamagotchi, and I wasn't allowed to play with it. I knew where it was so when I knew my parents would be gone for several hours I would sneak it out and "play" with it. Of course that was barely enough time to get it to evolve once and then I had to slide back the plastic strip insulation strip that disconnects the battery from the device (you know that thing you have to pull out when you open it the first time) and hide it back. Yes, that's how pathetic I was, playing Tamagotchi in secret while other kids would smoke in secret.

By the time I was older and the moral panic was long gone I finally convinced my parents to give it to me and when I got to play with it proper it was shit. My reaction was pretty much "wait, this is all there is to it?". Back when they were new they were all over the news, being hyped as this sort of simulation that has all feelings and shit. In hindsight it was all just a marketing ploy for a shitty LCD toy without a pause button. I raised mine to adulthood and that was it. My younger brother played with it later and I guess the batteries ran out eventually.

There were news all over the place about kids taking them to school and they would constantly beep and interrupt class, forcing teachers to ban the toys at school. Do you think the lack of a pause button was deliberate to stir up controversy and get children more interested in the toy?

They just didn't add a pause button because it would have ruined the effect of it being a living creature. They were tolerated at my school.