One of our young readers, "Relic", supplied us with this excellent review of the 8 in 1 MiniPet. Thank you "Relic" !

Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1998
From: Relic

Review for the 8-in-1 Minipet

Hi,
Today I have just purchased an 8-in-1 minipet. I have been wanting to buy one since I saw my friends with one. I saw some at the local ACME but the packaging was very poor and torn up. A few weeks later I was looking for a game called StarCraft by Blizzard entertainment. I saw a large rack of Virtual Pet clones on the wall in the store including Raku Raku Chan and many others. Most of the clones I wanted badly. I chose the 8-in-1 cause my dad said to pick one. I was very happy with my choice and rode off with it. I will tell you what I think of 8-in-1's in this selection... When I took the pet home I started it up and chose the Bird character. I thought the reset button was very poorly made. It was nearly sticking out so you could just push it. It was also on the front with the other buttons. I think they should take the reset button and slap it on the back and make it so you can only reach it with a pointy object. This would make much more sense. Also I didn't like the shape of the egg. It's a little too wide for my small hands. Also the directions were kind of crummy. Many children (like me with my Dinkie Dino) would throw the directions on the cardboard box. This pet also needs the directions to understand it. So I would recommend the company to make better instructions for the pet. I also thought that the mute function was very strange on this pet. You must press all three buttons at once. I think that they should make you press A and C instead of all the buttons. This was hard to figure out even though I am experienced with many pets. A nice feature about this pet is of course it has many pets into one.

The pets include .....
A fish
A crab
A bird
A chicken
A dog
A cat
A dinosaur
Or A butterfly.

You can do 4 games with it. You can play music for it (I thought this was a crummy feature. You can't control his dancing or anything!), you can roll dice with it, YOU can dance (which is also a crummy feature because you don't have any control), or you can play a guessing game. The feeding functions are you can give it food, a snack, or water. It also says you should give it less than ten snacks per day. This is a boring feature also. I do like however like the fact that there are many functions on the pet. A nice feature on the pet is that you don't have to go all the way to the status screen to check it's hunger ect. . It pops up on the screen when you select the icon the status shows what it needs. The pet also changes form every day.

I thought this pet was okay. It's not as good as I thought it would be but it was fun. I think you should decide to buy one or not. I mean they are cheap and they can sometimes be fun. Well hoped you liked the article.

C-ya :-D

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