I guess I've always had a thing for artificial life. It started early and hasn't really stopped.
I've been playing Neopets off and on since 2000. I remember I discovered it the summer between sixth and seventh grade during the height of the Pokemon craze. I was just coming down off my current obsession of Petz 4 and when I first signed up, I thought I would be able to play with my Zafara the same way I played with my weird circle dogs. No such luck. However, Neopets was a unique enough experience for me that I stuck around.
I've had three different accounts over the years. The first was eevee_85. I lost access to it when my very first email went defunct because the server was a one-off garbage site rather than one of the giants like yahoo or html. My second was either Wolfyttwisted2099 or Wolfyttwisted_2099 or something like that. Both these old accounts have long since been purged. I have bitter memories of the 2099 one because I was still pretty young and got scammed out of my PW.
My current account is grannylabyrinth and don't ask me why I picked that username, I could not tell you. I've had the account since 2005 and have four beautiful pets. I also have a side account, papawlabyrinth, where I have two more waiting for the day Neopets realizes how much money they'd make if we could just buy pet slots.
Now that I'm a grown-ass adult, I'm slowly checking things off my bucket list that have been there since the beginning. I want to beast the beauty contest, I want to get into the neopian times, and I want to fully customize all my pets lookups and homepages. I'm slowly working on this and having a good time doing it.
I play a whole host of e-pet sites now! Here are the ones I've used and I'll mark the ones I'm still active on. Feel free to add me as a friend or message me on there!
Neopets: grannylabyrinth (active)
Flight Rising: Crownless (semi-active)
Goatlings: Quesadilla_Wizard (semi-active)
Subeta: QuesadillaWizard (semi-active)
Chicken Smoothie: Quesadilla Wizard (semi-active)
Wajas: CovahV8 (inactive)
Lucky Lapine: Nick (hiatus until the site's update)
Furry Paws: Nick (inactive)
Gigapet, Octopet, Dinky Dino, Weird Offbrand Watch Pet, Nana Moon Fairy Pet
to add: Tekno and Poochi, Micropets, Aibo
FURBY
The year is 1998. Bill Clinton is president. Nobody understands the internet. Furby is here.
I don't have a very clear memory of first seeing Furby advertized but I knew I was possessed with a demon-like intensity in the knowlage that I must have Furby. It was everything I had dreamed of, possibly the closest thing to having a real Pokemon I could get. They were impossible to find. People got into fights in the aisles at Walmart. My aunt, who my dad secretly enlisted to obtain one of these chatty little bastards, actually got scratched by another woman while attempting to pluck one from the shelves. It was a different time.
Christmas rolls around and I open my beloved Tolu. He was solid black with white feet and a little mane and tail. I played with him a lot and was CONVINCED he could understand me. At one point, though, his batteries started running down and I didn't really understand what was going on when his eye servos got stuck and he started making an Unfortunate Noise. He was eventually banished to the closet as my interest shifted.
My sister eventually sold him on her ebay shop. I wonder where he is now. I hope he is being loved.
In 2018, I discovered through a youtube video that people still really love furbies and are doing all kinds of cool stuff with them. It really inspired me to seek out a furby again. Now that I'm a grown-ass adult, I can really appreciate what a neat little toy these guys are. Their program is simple but nice to interact with and I like mashing all the little buttons and making their servos move. And just kinda talking to them because my flesh pets don't speak english OR furbish.
A lovely friend from the furry fandom sent me a classic furby for my 31st birthday. This is Genny:
He is a good boy. He's an original 1998 furby. He's missing his tush tag but he still has his hang tag. It's pretty dammaged though so I may remove it when I customize him. If I do, I'll make a page just for him. I named him Genny because his name translates to "again' in furbish.
I have a Year 2000 furby still in-box that I found at a flea market and if I don't decide to customize them, I'll find them a good home thorugh the furb commuity. If you'd like a Y2k furby, let me know!
Nick Sanders, 2024