Hands-on: Pet in TV WMDD

In our never-ending quest to find the most absolutely bizarre games (usually Japanese) you could play and in an effort to broaden your teeny horizons, we have come up with games like Seaman-The Forbidden Pet, Vib Ribbon, Roommania #203, and even Space Channel 5. We had to fly to Tokyo to find it, but we've managed to hunt down and ensnare a copy of Sony/Sugar & Rockets' Pet in TV with My Dear Dog. What the heck is PiTVWMYDD you ask? Well, if monster-breeding/raising games like Monster Rancher, Tamagotchi, Digimon, or Pokemon are your bag, then Pet in TV might interest you.

As the name would indicate, Pet in TV is a dog-raising simulator, which lets you adopt a puppy and raise it and eventually breed it with other dogs to make new dogs! Just like real life! In Pet in TV, you can feed your dog and pet your dog on the chin, head, ears, chest, and nose. You can also compile a photo album of your dog and save it to your memory card. Pet in TV also has an Internet simulator where you can find information about raising your puppy.

The graphics are very realistic, and the environments are modeled after real-life (in Japan, at least) environments. The dogs you can select from tend to be of the working-class variety (golden retrievers, dalmatians, etc.) with little rat-dogs like Chihuahuas nowhere in sight.

Why would anyone want a game like this when you could go out and buy the real thing? Probably for the same reasons people buy games like Gran Turismo. Yes, you could think of Pet in TV as the Gran Turismo of dog simulators. Considering this was released in Japan (by the makers of Jumping Flash!) where real estate is priced at a premium and apartments are small, having an actual dog may be a hindrance. That is where PiTV comes in, and it's a pretty cool game to boot.

If you're interested in importing this game, keep in mind it has the antimod chip lockout on it. Here are some pictures of the game "in action." Stay tuned for the full review coming soon.