As a huge fan of the Yoshi video game character, I want to share my very first entry in the Hidden Vault series on everyone’s favorite cute and persistent dinosaur. Yoshi, the Web Pet, was a virtual pet game developed by Nintendo in 1998 to promote their then upcoming Nintendo 64 game Yoshi’s Story. The game required an Nsider account to play. The goal was to raise and take care of a baby Yoshi for as long as possible.
History
The game was available from 1998-2001. On Nintendo of America’s official site for Yoshi’s Story, there was an option to play the game below two other links to the Yoshi’s Story game. Yoshi, the Web Pet also had a dedicated fan base as shown on the website Yoshi’s Story Book. A fascinating fact about the online game is that it may be one of the very first virtual pet games ever released, as virtual pet games at that time were very rare compared to the present.
An image of the site hosting the game back in the day from the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive.
Gameplay
According to several sources and users online, the general gameplay of Yoshi, the Web Pet involved taking care of a Yoshi known as a “Yoshi Web Pet.” Players would start off by giving their web pets a name and then choosing a color. They were then tasked with increasing the happiness of their new dino pals as much as possible, such as by exercise, playing with their pets and feeding them food. Apparently most, if not all, of the food fed to the Yoshi included fruit, but each individual Yoshi had a special Lucky Fruit assigned to them that increased the Yoshi’s happiness more than the normal fruit. A Yoshi’s stats, including happiness, hunger and fitness were shown using the Smile Meter from Yoshi’s Story. Yoshis also had a mood of the day that ranged for example from very sad to extremely happy. The game also had other visible representations of the player’s progress with their pets such as a score, the age and rating of the Yoshi, and when the player created and erased their pet. The owners of their Yoshis had to be very careful though because their creations could also die without adequate support.
Personal Thoughts
Yoshi, the Web Pet was one of the first games that I thought about when I wanted to make this blog. It’s such a unique concept for a game in general but the fact that it was one of the first virtual pet games makes it even more interesting. There has never been a Mario virtual pet game before or since, which is a shame since Yoshi, the Web Pet sounds like a very entertaining video game. I wish Nintendo would bring it back somehow, as either a mini game in another Mario or Yoshi game, or even as its own standalone game. This is definitely one of the most amazing obscure and lost media relating to the Yoshi franchise, and I hope we can learn more about this cute game in the future. I would also love to know if anyone has played Yoshi, the Web Pet before or has more information about this game. If so, I would love to hear more from you in the comments section below or by contacting me in the contact form on this blog.
Gallery
Sources
https://www.mariowiki.com/Yoshi,_the_Web_Pet
https://www.angelfire.com/co3/yoshi2000/pets.html
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/yoshi-does-web-tricks/1100-2462914/
https://forums.lostmediawiki.com/thread/10291/lost-yoshi-flash-game
The Hidden Vault 
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