vMigo: A 10-Year-Old's Hands-on Review

Brenda writes that she bought handheld vMigo units for her 10-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son and wanted to know what my 10-year-old thinks of the vMigo docking console that allows the virtual pet's world to appear on the TV screen and their "owners" to play games with them via a controller. We gave it to her for Christmas to buy more time before getting a real dog.

I would like to know more about how your daughter is liking her virtual dog, she writes. I would much rather have my kids involved with a virtual pet than gameboy-type systems.

The short answer, Brenda, is she loves it. But, luckily, when my daughter is given the floor to express her views on just about anything, there is rarely a short answer.

What she likes about vMigo: She prefers the docking station to just playing with the handheld. "It's way better. It's bigger, it's in color, and you can do a lot more things. You can travel around by walking around and you can swim there."

You can't do as much on the handheld, which has a small black and white screen, similar to a Tamagotchi, and offers fewer games. Two of the console games she plays the most are Disc Catch, where you move the dog to catch frisbees, and River Bounce, where balls fall from the sky and you move the dog to hit them with his head before they hit the water.

And she likes that it's all about taking care of and playing with a pet, not designing rooms in the dog's house, which is big on the web site, Webkinz. "It's a dog and it's a realistic dog. You have to give it water and feed it and it gets hungry a lot," she says. "It's 100 percent about taking care of the dog and that's what I like about it."

What I like: I, too, prefer the docking station, which projects her dog and town on the TV screen, because I've never been a big fan of handheld games that induce kids to hunch over and shut out everyone and everything around them. This is more social because she plays with it with friends, and the screen is nice and big. (The console with one handheld costs $49.99 and individual handheld units are $29.99.)

Mostly, I like that she likes it. She loves video games and dogs, so it was the right pick for her age and interests.