The pet rock of the 90s, I remember the biggest “must have” at the time was a Tamagotchi. A combination of the Japanese word “tamago” which means “egg” and “chi” which is a syllable that shows affection, the Tamagotchi was basically an egg-friend. Back then it was a virtual pet on a keychain, where you had to feed it and look after it like a real pet except it was basically in the shape of an egg that lived in your pocket. Schools were banning these virtual pets from the premises because kids were too busy feeding and playing with their Tamagotchis during class time. I admit, I used to have a Tamagotchi and I was in high school at the time. In Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop 2 you aren’t really feeding or raising a Tamagotchi, instead you’re partnering with one of these funny little creatures to run multiple shops. It’s basically a bunch of mini-games meant for kids, so they aren’t all that challenging, but they’re really fun because it makes me feel like a kid again.You begin the game by selecting a partner and giving yourself a name. You only get 4 letters with tchi added at the end so you can also be a Tamagotchi. There are 12 shops in the game but you only begin with four, a gas station, burger shop, cake shop and flower shop. You are told that you have just won a lottery and you have 10,000 gotchi to spend. Each shop is relatively easy to run, you just need to meet the customer’s demands, whether it’s baking a cake, arranging a bouquet, making a hamburger or waxing their car. Once you start racking up the customers and stamping their membership cards, you’ll notice some repeat customers because your reputation is increasing. Also if you get a royal visit, you just might experience a shop upgrade!
There are 4 levels of upgrades, so once you’ve upgraded completely, there really isn’t much reason to continue to run that particular shop. The more you play; the ability to unlock other shops will open up so you can have access to a bowling alley, clinic, boutique, sushi bar and more. The gotchi that you collected can be spent either buying other shops or spoiling your Tamagotchi partner. They have a room that you can decorate and you can also buy them clothes and snacks. This really has nothing to do with the actual game itself, it’s really up to you whether or not you want to blow your hard earned gotchi on your partner who may end up giving you attitude if you poke them too much with your stylus.
There are over 100 customers for you to keep tabs on. Your goal is to really keep your customers happy and hopefully get some royal help with upgrades while unlocking items for you to purchase for your friend’s room. The mini-games are very basic but fun for awhile. The main problem is that each customer that comes in, you go through the same dialogue so there’s a lot of time being wasted. You spend a lot of your time tapping through the repeated dialogue. It’s unfortunate that you can’t bypass this, although the music does change and indicate when your game will start, so I end up multitasking while waiting for my turn to begin.
Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop 2 is a charming but repetitive game. It can definitely offer you an amusing 15 minutes of fun if you just want to play a few of your favorite mini-games, but any longer, you’ll find yourself looking for something else to do. The games aren’t exactly mind boggling, but for me, being over the age of 6, I still find it entertaining. Of course, this is mainly because it reminds me of the simpler days of gaming when I was a kid. Plus I also wanted to reminisce on my Tamagotchi days.
I am a Canadian living in California with my husband and my precious baby Bailey (95lbs of labrador fun). I work full time and go to school, so finding the time to play video games is tough. I still manage to sneak some time in, whether it's playing on my GBA while I wait in line or sitting in the back seat of my car so I can use our dvd player to play the Gamecube on long trips. I've always been fairly decent at playing games to give my younger brother some competition. I started at the early age of 6 when I inherited an Atari 2600. I played any computer game I could get my hands on during those Commodore 64 days. Now I'll play anything from RPGs to first person shooters, racing games or basically anything that's fun and allows me to play with at least 3 other people.
