Glad to see you at the grand opening of The Vpets Everlasting Tribute, which you can call The VET for short^^

If you don't know what a vpet, or virtual pet is, or you think that it mainly refers to a Neopet, then you must be younger than I am.

If, on the other hand, you know the word Tamagotchi and use it to refer to virtual chicken pets, virtual dinosaur pets, etc., then you're doing one of the things I hate that people do.  Tamagotchi is a brand name, a proper noun, not a category.  Not everyone that uses in-line skates use Rollerblades, so please don't

refer to them as such.  Call them in-line skates, as they were meant to be.  Q-tip does not have a monopoly on cotton swabs, so please don't call every single cotton swab you see a Q-tip.  After all, John is not the name of every person in the world, right?  How would you like it if an alien came to this world,

met a human named John and decided that all humans were to be referred to as Johns?  "Hey, that group of Johns standing over there is so diverse!  Some female, some male, some different skin colors," said one alien scientist to his colleague.

The point is, Tamagotchi may

have started it all, but they're not the be all, end all of virtual pets (although they certainly are the best of the lot).

So now that you know that the words "virtual pet" and "Tamagotchi" cannot be used interchangeably, it's time to explain what a virtual pet is!  Virtual means to be simulated

by a computer (or in a philosophical sense, real in essence, but not in fact) and so add pet after it and it's a pet that's simulated by a computer.

This site is only dedicated to the portable, key-chain  and clip-on types, though, so things such as that weird,

white and blue creature I saw for a gaming console during commercial breaks in Rurouni Kenshin don't count.