It's impossible to talk about electronic entertainment in 90s without citing the (in)famous Tamagochis (1997). These little egg-shaped watches (Tamagochi is, in fact, a mix of the tamago Japanese word for 'egg' and the english word 'watch') were tiny LCD portable devices in which the player had to feed, heal and play with an adorable virtual life form at any hour of the day, in order to make it grow, evolve and - well - die as late as possible.

These little time-wasters truly conquered the world, spreading everywhere around the globe and charming people of every age, generating a huge amount of merchandising, derived products like movies and anime, numberless bootleg clones and, like in every huge social phenomenas, pop music songs, weird scandals and exaggerated bans.

20 years after its appearance, the concept still lives nowadays in less successful clones for mobile devices, as minigames in larger retail videogames or - with more efficacy - in much more evolved life simulators like the still million seller Animal Crossing (2001) by Nintendo.

My sisters had a number of them - luckily not at the same time - and I measured the devastating effects of these little devices in daily life. Sometime you're so busy that you've to leave your little pet to your friends for a while, in order to keep an eye on it. Well, that happened with these virtual pets tool: every single family member had to understand the meaning of its sounds and reactions in order to give it food when hungry, clean it up when dirty or play with him when he bored. Or when you were bored, of course.

Isn't incredible that these raw implementations of living pets generated the same effect of true pets on humans? Is empathy so easy to manifest for humans that the living aspect is totally secondary? And, if that is true, when it becomes unreadable, unpredictable and - above all - less expected between other humans?

Plot!

Do you know that Starcats comes from eggs? Have you ever wanted to raise your own Starcat, feed and love him like a true pet? Now you can! Watch his egg hatching into your Gamatochi, give him love and see it growing, evolving, changing and... Stop spoilers! How your Starcat will be?

Use LEFT/RIGHT for selecting a function on the bottom of the display and hit the A BUTTON for confirming. You can hold down the B BUTTON for 5 seconds for hatching a new egg... but why? Remember that your Starcat still lives when you're not watching him, so come back often!

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