Let’s talk about Ballz.
Or is it pronounced Ball-zee?
Ah you know what I mean: BALLZ!
The spherically-focused fighting game with a testicular title from 1994.
Or maybe you don’t know what I mean; it’s not exactly the most widely-remembered property,
despite the chuckle-worthy name.
Nonetheless it’s pertinent to the topic at-hand because this was the first time developer
PF Magic revealed their balls to the world.
Each fighter was built using 2D spheres that mimicked 3D through a clever combination of
scaling, rotating, and animation.
The game itself only received a lukewarm reception, but the tech was fast and versatile, which
was notable at a time before mainstream 3D rendering hardware.
But how did this lead to making virtual pets?
Amusingly enough you have to look to Night Trap for that.
Rob Fulop, a designer at PF Magic, had worked on Night Trap and was really irked by the
negative media coverage the game was getting in regards to it 'ruining children' and such.
On retrospect he said, “the next game I made was going to be so cute and so adorable...
what's the cutest thing I could make?”
The answer came to him after talking to a mall Santa Claus that Christmas, because who
would know better what kids want than Jolly Old Saint Nick?
Santa replied, “the most popular thing that kids ask for every year is a puppy.
For the last 50 years! Ho ho ho!”
Combine that knowledge with the existing tech they had from the game Ballz,
and a winning idea was born.
Thanks, Santa!
That brings us to the 1995 computer game Dogz, providing puppies for the kids by expanding
on the graphics of Ballz, and continuing PF Magic’s tradition of avoiding S-based plurals.
“Your Virtual Petz,” it says on the box.
That’s right, this is the first in what would become a long line of titles in the
Petz series, eventually becoming the property of Ubisoft who then made
14,000 games for the Nintendo DS and such.
But back in 1995, Dogz was a trend-setter, being what PF Magic described as...
"the first computer pet, ever.
They live on your desktop, you adopt them as a little puppy,
and then you grow them up to be a full-grown dog.
You play with them their entire life."
Its combination of cute pets, novel interactivity, and an asking price of $20 proved irresistible
and in the days before Tamagotchi was even a thing the Petz series was a huge hit,
selling 1.5 million units in less than 3 years.
With the success of Dogz, the logical follow-up came in 1996 with Catz, altering the software
in feline ways, while also taking the opportunity to partner with
animal shelters to promote pet adoption...
"The San Francisco SPCA...
wants to save every cat.
PF Magic wants a home for all its digital Catz.
It's a win-win situation!"
PF Magic had a good thing going with Petz, but what was next?
Oddballz of course, another title from 1996, but one that
harkoned back to their ballzier roots.
It was still a virtual pet sim, but instead of domesticated mammals, you had weird alien
creatures and sci-fi machinery to play with.
And it is just as enjoyably quirky as it sounds.
This original trio of Petz programs is what we’ll be looking at today, but let’s start
with Dogz and Catz first.
These particular programz begin with a menu that let you play with and adopt one of five
puppies or kittens, each of which has a unique set of traits that affect
how they’ll respond to your commands.
Some will be naturally playful or hyper, others are curious or skittish, but for the most part
you’re just choosing whichever one strikes you as the cutest.
Or you can take a "pup" quiz and let the game decide for you because
you’re actually that predictable.
Choose your pet, give them a name, and from here you’re given free reign to play.
And what does that enTAIL, you may ask?
Well, unlike many later virtual pet experiences, Dogz and Catz are more like activity centers
or desktop buddy programs, rather than fully-fledged games or simulations.
While they can be fed, watered, trained, groomed, and played with,
none of this is 100% vital to their survival.
In fact, don’t worry about survival at all since Petz can’t die,
even when they grow old.
Instead, your desktop is a totally safe play area for your animated dog or cat, and they
can’t be harmed in any way.
Well, unless you count painting them stupid colors, that’s arguably harmful.
But yeah, you can ignore pets for ages and they’ll still be just as alive and happy
whenever you return.
This is in stark contrast to later games like Tamagotchi, where it was infamously easy to
have your pet die.
In fact, with the popularity of Tamagotchi in 1997, PF Magic started polling their players
on the topic of death, asking the question “Should Virtual Petz Die?”
The results were overwhelmingly against mortality in Petz, with an adorable set of responses.
Said Shelby O: “I'm 10 years old...
I don't think oddballz,dogz,or catz should die.
Although some poeple do need a touch of reality."
Says JeAnna B: “NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!!!!!!!
Don't kill my puppy!”
And says the wise W. Melvill: “I don't know”
Hehehe, the entire page is worth reading, I’ll leave a link in the video description.
But yeah, no one’s being sent to the farm here, so just click around at your leisure
and have some wholesome fun with your virtual friend.
A friend that’s made up largely of spherical sprites by the way, the same kind of method
used in PF Magic’s ill-fated Ballz.
I think it’s used to greater effect here though, presenting more as solid creatures
than loosely-connected orbs.
Anyway, your mouse cursor acts as your hand, letting you pet them, pick them up, call them,
and interact with any on-screen items.
Pets are constantly aware of your mouse hand too, reacting to it even when you’re not
clicking on anything, providing a sense of awareness to your petz that’s adorably convincing.
Additionally you have an array of toys and treats to choose from, each of which can be
clicked and dragged into the play area.
Dogs have things like shoes to chew, balls to play fetch with, and bones to gobble up,
and cats have even more, including catnip, yarn, brushes,
bouncy toys, and cheese to entice mice.
Your pets can also be gently scolded using a spray bottle, or given food, water, and
treats to improve their mood and encourage certain behavior.
For instance if they do a trick, give them a treat, and their AI will learn from that
and seek to do more tricks.
It’s also possible to play with your pets on top of other applications, even if this
really just freezes the background program to use as a static wallpaper.
You can also let your pets play around in a smaller window while you do something else,
although it’s the reverse issue here where you can’t interact with them until you switch
back to the program.
You can also use Petz as a password-protected screensaver to guard your computer with cuteness.
It’s non-interactive of course, but it’s a nice little addition for the mid-90s when
more people still cared about unique screensavers.
And finally, you can also snap a photo and save it as a small bitmap file, which you
were then encouraged to share on the PF Magic website.
This sharing of content was pushed even further through the Dogz and Catz “adoption kit,”
which is really just a demo version.
The idea here is that you’d share the program on floppy disks, or just spread copies online,
with the goal being that players would get attached to the pet they adopted and feel
compelled to pony up the $20 to activate it with PF Magic.
This was actually pretty devious because, if you refused to pay, the program would say how
heartbroken the dogs would be that you didn’t love them and were abandoning them,
followed by sad sound effects...
*puppy whining and yelping*
Geez, talk about a hard sell.
And then we come to Oddballz, which is probably the weirdest entry in the series -- well,
at least until Babyz came along some years later buuuuut that’s another topic entirely.
Anyway, Oddballz is understandably an odd one, where instead of adopting puppies and
kittens, you’re hatching trippy creatures from multi-colored eggs.
Each one of them is thoroughly unique, with appendages, proboscises, and body shapes that
run the gamut from endearing to unsettling.
Then you’re provided an assorted of fantastical resources to play with, some of which result
in the cataclysmic destruction of your Oddball...
*BOOM, SPLAT, BOING*
well, temporary destruction, it’s all played up for laughs.
You’ve got items for shrinking, pulverizing, gravity-altering, dancing, and just going
off the rails with lighthearted fun.
My favorite has to be the transformer ray, which completely alters their physical form
and gives them an entirely new existence for a bit.
It also sometimes blows them up, and if their eyeballs fall out just
plop them back into place like nothing happened.
Oddballz also introduced a collecting mechanic to the series, where you’d accrue more monsters
by going online and registering to download more.
For free, imagine that!
Ah what a neat little thing this was.
It’s still the same basic idea as Dogz and Catz, but Oddballz went nuts with the creatures
and takes the idea of a pet sim to a silly extreme that I enjoy.
And seeing as digital monster collecting was about to become huge due to Pokemon and the like,
I’m surprised they didn’t capitalize on it with an Oddballz sequel.
But I’m glad we got what we did, and it’s still enjoyable to go back to some of the
earliest virtual pet titles like this.
Sure, the Petz series got sequel-ized and cloned to death in later years so it may not
seem particularly special now.
But I hope that, like me, you at least enjoyed revisiting one of the most noteworthy starting
points of the virtual pet trend and its bouncy globular roots.
And hey let me know in the comments some of your experience with the Petz series,
or virtual pet games in general. I find subjects like this
pretty darn fascinating. And if you do as well then
you might like some of my other videos. There are new ones every Monday and Friday here on LGR!
And as always, thank you very much for watching!