Furby: This ain't your average Virtual Pet

Tiger has had mixed reviews with me. With the Game.Com leaving me a little sour and my overall impression of Tiger's electronic entertainment not impressing me, I was expecting to be very dissapointed with Furby. As you can recall, Furby was the "must have toy" for the 1998 Christmas season. I wanted to get one, but I had to wait until April of 1999 to get one, and even then I didn't really get the one I was looking for. I settled for a second generation Furby, which basically means they fixed a potentially fatal flaw and these were the new "skins". I'll address the fatal flaw later on in detail.

The previous virtual pets were quite literally 2 dimensional: a small key-chain sized device with a simple LCD screen and the "pets" with predictable personalities depending on their evolution. Furby is much more complicated. Furby has a light sensor in the eyes, a motion sensor somewhere inside it, touch sensors on the front and back, an active base and an infrared wireless port above the eyes for communication with other Furbies. Because Furby can be picked up and viewed from any angle, this toy is a little friendlier to little kids. Please keep in mind that Furby is an electronic toy and it really won't take much abuse before breaking.

In regards to the sensors, Furby can respond to being petted, moved or its eyes covered. Furby can play a few games, and those instructions are included in the manual that comes with it. If any of you are into trivia, you'll remember that Furby was banned from the Pentagon because it could "learn". Let's clarify what Furby learns. Furby does use some speach, but Furby can not learn new words. As Furby "matures" through usage and play, it "evolves". What this basically means it that it opens up new words from the pre-programmed vocabulary and more word combination subroutines. Furby starts out speaking Furbish, a combination of random jabbering and some partial real words. You can't teach Furby to swear or learn another language, but if you have one, please send me one, that would be cool. If you don't want an English-speaking Furby, Tiger now makes them in a variety of languages. I hear the French version also chain smokes... just kidding. Furby's learning is in regards to an action/reward system. If you like something Furby does, I think you stroke its back three times. Furby can burp and fart, and I've rewarded that behavior, so now my Furby has a gas problem that even the folks who make Beano would say "damn!" Furby eats too, but no extra parts or accessories are required. Simply stick your finger in Furby's mouth and it will take a "bite" triggered by the tongue switch. There is no "biting down" so you don't need to worry about kids getting their finger-tips snapped off by a toy. Furby can also get sick. While both types of virtual pets have their commonalities, Furby exceeds this with the various switches and sensors. Furby is rather sophisticated.

I mentioned about that there was a fatal flaw that occured in some Furbies, especially the first generation ones. The problem was fairly simple. Before I go into this, let me tell you HOW Furby works. The eyes, mouth and ears all work off a single mechanism. These items do not move independently. Rotating this mechanism in one direction or the other, Furby can move these items. By making the eyes one mechanism, the mouth another and the ears still one more, the cost increases both in terms of servo motors and parts, but programming as well. This could easily tack another $20 to the price. Tiger wanted cheap, but their being cheap is NOT why this fatal flaw occured. In some Furbies, this mechanism would get stuck and could not unstick itself. As a result, the little electric motor that moves this mechanism could overheat and possibly catch fire. Tiger was replaced such Furbies for free, provided you could prove that your Furby was having the problem. Tiger claims to have fixed this in later runs. Mine is OK, but I have had it asleep for many months.

Virtual pets communicating with each other is nothing new. Digimon were the Digital Monsters that could fight other Digimon via the communications dock. I think there were other fighting virtual pets that basically did the same thing using variants on the same idea. If I recall, there were Virtual Wrestlers that could chain fight, as in more than just two could interact but it was in a series style, not "gang fight", a one fight at a time deal. Furby has an infrared communications port on its head that it can use to communicate with other Furbies. Great, put a bunch in a circle and they can emit "furbish" all day long until you go nuts and start whacking them with baseball bats. The amusing part is that a sick Furby can infect other Furbies, so now there are Virtual Pet viruses. No, there is no Norton Anti-Virus Furby edition, just feed your Furby and it will get better.

My Furby for the most part remains "comotose" because of the random nature of it. I can't have it making noise during certain phone calls. Also, the electric motor that runs the base portion generates enough radio frequency interference that it puts noise into my audio system and computers. I'm not saying to avoid Furby, these are merely things that I observed. Overall, Furby is pretty amusing. Just get used to the fact that there is no off-switch and you'll do fine.