Back in the late 1990s, there was a virtual pet craze. Little electronic keychains with LCD screens and three buttons that house a pixelated digital “creature”. The two most prominent names in the Vpets (as some people call it) are Tamagotchi and Digimon.

The functionality of these devices is the same. You set the time, hatch an egg, and depending on how well you feed, clean, train, play and take care of the sprite, it will evolve and grow into other sprites. The difference between the two is that you can battle with Digimon.

Strangely, the goal of these virtual pets is not to be the best caretaker but to get them all, to complete the bestiary. Most of the hard to get sprites are the result of extreme care or neglect. Anything in between is usually common. Also, these virtual pets only live for a couple of weeks at best.

The oldest of the Vpet devices that I still have is the first generation English version dated 1997. It needs cleaning and repairs. The notoriously fragile speaker wire came off, and the buttons don’t work so well.

Anyway, feeling nostalgic, I went down a rabbit hole and found out that Digimon Devices are still a thing. As recently as March 2020, Bandai released an updated version of the device. Although they sell it only at their much-despised P-Bandai web site. Despised because they don’t ship to Malaysia, only Singapore.

This limitation creates a secondary market, which in turn just makes things more expensive than it should. These are toys, after all.

Browsing through the different virtual pets and seeing what’s available, I decided to pick one up. For old time’s sake. But, I had to choose one of the many versions the Japanese company has produced. The selection is dizzying, a money grab.

The most recent version is called the Digimon X Ver.3. It has all the latest gimmicks and mechanics, a limited roster with exclusive sprites, and it comes in two versions. You will need both versions and some of the older ones (Ver.1 and Ver.2) to unlock everything.

It’s the latest and most exciting thing in Digimon. But the combination of price, limited roster, and the incentive to hunt down the other versions is a difficult pill to swallow.

That’s when I found out that Bandai also released a 20th-anniversary edition of the device a couple of years ago. The classic version features all the sprites from the first 5 versions of the game. Sure it still has that annoying gimmick that makes me want to get one of each colour, but the roster is large enough that I don’t feel like I need to.

I also found a shop that sells the English version of it. I was surprised that it is still available. It is not cheap, of course. But, I took the dive anyway, it should be here in the next couple of days.

I blame nostalgia.