You might remember that many years ago in 1996 there was something called Tamagotchi which took the world by storm. It was the first cyber pet to be introduced to the world and came in the form of an electronic device with a simple LCD screen and a few buttons to manipulate with. The goal was to take good care of your Tamagotchi pet so that it grew up to be bigger, healthier and more beautiful. Neglecting it would result in it turning mean and ugly.
A world wide hit with millions of units sold worldwide and hundreds of licensed products under its belt, Tamagotchi sparked off a whole following of virtual pets after its launch. Many other variations were spawned and later even Sony came up with its own version in the form of Aibo – the robot dog.
One interesting thing to note is that most of these virtual pets hailed from the island of Japan . It might be because of the fact that the Japanese are incredibly lonely individuals and had a need to fulfill something within the missing bits of their lives, but that’s another topic altogether.
In February 2008, a mobile phone middleware development company called Hi Corporation from Japan launched another interesting ‘virtual pet’ product called the Machicara. Running on a proprietary 3D engine platform called the Mascot Capsule, Machicara allows 3D rendered characters to ‘live’ in mobile handsets and perform tasks like announcing the arrivals of phone calls, text messages, upcoming events and the like. There are about 36 event-triggered animations the characters perform. Otherwise they just amble about doing random stuff.
The first mobile phone company to embed Machicara within their mobile phones is Sharp. Japan’s mobile service giant operator NTT DoCoMo provides the downloading infrastructure and backend support. Singapore animation companies Mediafreaks Cartoon and Character Farm have licensed their cartoon characters to Hi Corporation and Sharp in this collaboration.
There are talks that this would be the next big hit in Japan ’s virtual pets community, with mobile phones being an essential tool of their lives and the fact that all Japanese girls love ultra cute stuff. Let’s keep our eyes peeled to see if Machicara stands up to its expectations.
You can visit the Mediafreaks blog to read up more on gadgets and trends.
This article was written by Aldric Chang - a creative businessman who is active in music composing and production, internet marketing, casual games production, animation production, cartoon production and character licensing. His 3d animation studio - Mediafreaks - is focused on producing high-end animation work for documentary producers, advertising houses and cartoon animated series - with projects ranging from the animation of dinosaurs to the visualization of natural disasters and something as chic as 3d jewelry animations.
