Blast From The Past: Tamagotchi For Apple Watch

Ever since gaming was a confirmed little corner of Apple Watch, we’ve all been waiting for a good Tamagotchi throwback. And though there are several awesome homages to the original plastic pocket pet, that original itself is finally making an appearance on the new wearable.

Unfortunately, the app isn’t for sale in the US App Store. More unfortunately, the experience isn’t really up to snuff, even compared against the critter’s first run some 20 years ago. The Verge reports:

Third-party apps remain limited on the Watch, and it’s clear that Bandai Namco ran into some obvious walls. There’s no animation, for example, so you don’t get any feedback when you feed or discipline your pet. You also can’t “play” with it, for some reason, meaning it’s harder to fill the emoji-rendered “Happy” meter. (Although you can complete this task using your phone.)

While it’s true that you can’t directly add animations to third-party apps on Apple Watch just yet, this is also a case of Bandai Namco being a little bit lazy in its port of Tamagotchi Classic. A basic (albeit tedious) workaround for the lack of animation support in the Apple Watch SDK is to simply “fake it” by assembling a series of stills to display one after the other in quick succession (as with GIFs and APNGs). These Watch Apps do that particularly well:

[Image via The Verge]