I registered my Neopets account in 2004. I can't say I remember the exact moment, or what precisely led me to registering it. But I do remember playing it pretty religiously for quite a few years. Religiously? Yeah! Gotta keep up with your dailies. The tombola, the free food, the wheels. I even visited the internet café at Center Parcs during our yearly trip just to keep up the grind!
While the pets were obviously adorable (especially their many color variations), what drew me in most were the various distinctly themed lands. Some fit in nicely with my pre-existing interests, like the Lost Desert with my interest in Ancient Egypt, or the various medieval themed lands. Other lands helped spark new interests: the mysteries of the deep sea, tiki culture in tropical islands, and a modern stone age wonderland…
The items too were very iconic. Jelly, already some exotic thing I admired in cartoons, became even more embedded in my childhood brain. The other daily food item, omelette slices, led to some weird egg experiments in real life. The developers also clearly had a taste for the weird (Grey Hot Dog), bizarre (Punk Rocker Hot Dog) or plain stinky (Double Dung Hot Dog).
For a brief while, NeoPets genuinely dominated my life. I even got my hands on a set of the Neopets TCG at some point—which wasn’t easy. I had to import it!
So, you're thinking that as the webmaster I am now, I obviously also customized my pet pages? Nope! Never even touched them! Maybe I never saw the need. I definitely was already dabbling with making websites elsewhere.
Games
I fondly remember the games, but in hindsight I appreciate them even more. I was already very much into retro gaming, but it was only later on that I appreciated how the games on Neopets broadened my arcade and puzzle gaming diet beyond the Sega and Nintendo classics I was familiar with. What follows is a list of some of the games, and what I presume to be their inspiration (or at least the closest non-Neopets equivalent). Maybe you'll find out that you too have played a lot more classics than you'd have imagined, albeit through the Neopets filter.
- Gadsgadsgame seems quite similar but not identical to Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo
- Sutek's Tomb is a Match-Three game like Bejeweled
- Snow Muncher→Mr. Driller/Dig Dug
- Faerie Bubbles→Bust-A-Move
- Swarm→Space Invaders
- Korbat's Lab→Breakout
- Meerca Chase→Snake
- Sewage Surfer→Pipe Mania
- Neggsweeper→Minesweeper
- Destruct-O-Match→Collapse!/Clickomania
Others are based on board games, though I'm leaving out the ones that plainly spell it out.
- Kou-Jong→Mahjong solitaire
- Snow Wars→Battleship
This list is definitely not complete. Feel free to reach out to me with more inspirations!