EyePet, this cute little monkey type furby thing with big ears… You know, I have absolutely no idea what it’s meant to be, but even with the risk of shattering my non-existent tough guy image I have to say that it’s still really cute. Anyway, as I was saying… What? Now it’s hopping around trying to get me to play with it? Ok, just for a few minutes.

….

Damn loveable monkey thing!

Right, let’s get back to business. EyePet, the PS3’s new virtual pet, will be out on 23 October here in the UK – which has only just recovered from the great Furby invasion of the 1990’s (the things I saw in those years, Furby’s taking over entire towns and enslaving their populations. Those times are far too horrible to talk about) – so you can stop watching videos and actually play with the thing yourself pretty soon.

Oh, go on then, here’s one more video. Well, actually it’s above this post so you’ve probably already clicked on it, but for those of you who didn’t then I’m politely asking you to continue to read until the end of this post.

Still with me? Good, let’s continue. EyePet makes use of the PlaystationEye (yes, it IS actually useful for something), meaning that the monkey hybrid thing will appear on whatever surface you have the camera pointed at (it won’t actually appear in reality of course, but it will on your TV). You can then interact with the pet, such as reacting to a tickle, or scaring it when you make a loud clap. There are far cooler things you can do with it of course, such as drawing an object on a piece of paper, holding it up to the camera and having the pet draw a copy. If, for example, you draw the parts of a plane then a plane will appear and the pet will take off with a cackling laugh. You will then never see the pet again, and you will be about £50 out of pocket. Ok, the last part doesn’t happen but there are still plenty of things to keep your kids happy with. There will also be a wide range of customisable options; such as changing the colour of your pet’s fur, or dressing him up in cute little outfits.

Although I begged for one for months I never had a Furby, and I was always a bit sad that I missed out on that craze. Maybe I can relive my childhood fantasies with EyePet, even if it is just a virtual monkey thing on my TV screen.

Because I’m nice you can have one more video. This one is a developer giving a demo, so it actually shows how the game works and doesn’t just throw a cheesy promotional video at you.

(Image source)