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Tech

Twitch Will Decide if This Tamagotchi Lives or Dies

A streamer rigged up what appears to be a robotic arm for this Twitch experiment.

Did you ever raise a Tamagotchi toy when you were a kid? You know, those egg-like keychain toys that let you feed and clean up after a simulated pet in case real poo was too much responsibility for you?

If you never had one, you're in luck: a Twitch streaming channel, "tamagotwitch," is letting anyone determine the fate of one of these digital pets. The channel owner seems to have rigged up a robotic finger to press any of the three buttons, which stand for the Tamagotchi's A, B, and C buttons.

It's a little less manic than the controls used in Game Boy streams, like Twitch Plays Pokémon, where viewers in the stream's chat room voted for what the next button input should be. Incredibly, Twitch eventually beat the game this way.

Unlike Twitch Plays Pokémon, viewers of the Tamagotchi stream aren't working up to an "end game." You can't "beat" Tamagotchi. Just like in real life, you can only lose when your Tamagotchi pet dies from sickness, old age, hunger, or just pure neglect. So theoretically Twitch viewers can have their way with whole families of Tamagotchi pets, but only as long as they stay interested in taking care of them.

Good luck, little Tamagotchi.