Fin Fin, the 1996 Voice-Activated Virtual Pet for PCs
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- Опубліковано 2 жов 2024
- An LGR retrospective about Fujitsu's Fin Fin on Teo the Magic Planet, a (sort of) voice-controlled virtual pet for Windows PCs from 1996! Specifically the 1997 US Deluxe Edition that came with a plastic bird whistle and its own microphone. The press were enamored with FinFin for a time but it seems to have disappeared almost entirely from the public consciousness in the years since. So let's befriend this weird alien dolphin bird from the 90s!
● LGR links:
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● Music courtesy of:
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#LGR #Retro #Gaming
For more about Fin Fin, I recommend Emge's FinFIn Homepage. Not only is it an information goldmine but it's that classic style of website that's a pleasure to browse!
www.finfin.de/index_e.htm
And of course, the Fin Fin club mix:
ua-cam.com/video/MufddrsUxC0/v-deo.html
Allright, I'm gonna need that "Dolphin bird" sound bit!
Damn! that website looks so cool!
Holy 56k friendly website batman !
If only I could write something on the guestbook...
Was super not expecting the website's last update to be 2019
Is that how I make friend? by making random noises until they get used to it?
Yes !
Yup, that's pretty much it
speaking from experience its how i got my current bf
It's also how one grows a successful UA-cam channel over time.
That's my fiancé and I in a nutshell
Fin Fin is peak 90's A E S T H E T I C
Fin Fin and Teo are pure vaporwave material
@@kazuhiramiller2121for real, I can’t believe we didn’t plunder this for material back in the early 2010s
"FINFIN IS WATCHING YOU"
That's... *a* marketing catch-phrase, I guess. O_o
Reminds me of Ceiling Cat.
Well, we’ve just met but I would die for FinFin
OK then. 😬
I've only had FinFin for a day and a half, but if anything happened to him, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself.
@@wilkgr Plot twist: There's only you in the room.
@@FlyboyHelosim I mean...it's just a reference to a popular TV show. There's not much more to it.
@@wilkgr OK, and I was just using a popular meme.
Banana Deer has been my favorite Pokémon since Toe Version.
Yeah, Metapod is no longer my favorite Pokémon. Banana Deer is the new king... banana... deer...
search kickboxing banana
Love him and Believe him. Always and Forever. He's your best friend.
Here's hoping Banana Deer becomes as iconic on this channel as Cool Crab.
I would die for banana deer
OMG yes
Banana Deer t-shirts when
Still can't beat rib-bit
Finally someone is finally bringing this super obscure gem of a game into the spotlight.
Thank You LGR.
400,000 copies and all that merch suggests it's not that obscure
finally
So, Fin Fin will never gonna give you up, let you down, run around and desert you? AND never make you cry, say goodbye, and tell a lie and hurt you? Sounds great to me.
😂 thats a new way of rickrolling I haven’t yet seen before. 👍
My brothers and I had Catz and Dogz at the time, but I would imagine that if we had this, we would have recorded fart sounds and other inappropriate sounds in place of the defaults.
I remember when we realized we could record audio and play it backwards on our computer, we started saying "cuff" and "tish" lol
@@Jordan-zk2wd I did the same thing but tried reading the lyrics that supposedly were backwards masked, trying to uncover the crazy satanic stuff that they supposedly said.
There's some vaporwave potential here.
Indeed
It'd be a cool idea to have an LGR Blerb when your birthday comes up just so we can see Fin-Fin sing it's birthday song. That sounds really cool.
fin fin come and see him
Holy shit, I still have a copy of this somewhere with the whistle!
I love that whistle, it's loud as fuck.Still use it to annoy people from time to time :)
Send me the game files? Pretty please? I can't find this game anywhere.
Holy smokes! Been following this channel for over 12 years now but this has to be one of the most nostalgic videos. Of course I had both CATZ and DOGZ when I couldn't get a real pet as a kid. And I (now) vividly remember looking at the box of Fin Fin several times as a kid, hoping my parents would buy it for me one day. I had forgotten that it even existed up until I saw that thumbnail just now. Thanks for bringing back some childhood memories, Clint!
go and fuckin buy it
Oh god I’m getting memories of the cats doing it with the giant love heart appearing. The look in their weird eyes beforehand LMAO
l i f e i s d i s a p p o i n t m e n t
@@MessiahProphylaxis oddly enough i was very rarely disappointed as a kid most things were better than expected, now as an adult things usually turn out worse than expected
I would be SO into this if I was a kid in the 90s. I find Fin Fin oddly cute lol
Fin Fin has a beautiful voice !
I want to be cryogenically frozen until science has found a way to make Banana Deer real
I have already frozen my arm and spleen. I don´t have much money so have to do it bit by bit.
"hey get over here jerk" 😅😅
DOLPHIN BIRD!
Hey Fin,Fin
♪♪♪ Hush little baby don't say a word. Daddy's gonna buy you an animated dolphinbird. And if that Dolphinbird won't sing. Daddy's gonna give Fujitu's support line a ring. (Free interpretation) :D
I thought I was the only one in the world who remembered Fin Fin
10:50
"He cuts down trees, he eat his lunch
He goes to the lavatory
On Wednesdays he goes shopping and has buttered scones for tea"
“he sleeps all night and he works all day”
Heeeee's a lumberjack and that's okay, he sleeps all night and he works all day
“I cut down trees, I wear high heels, suspenders and a bra. I wish I'd been a girlie, just like my dear Papa!”
@@JDevine687 "He cuts down trees, he- ...SUSPENDERS?!"
What is this reference?
They actually went through the pain of animating his tongue when he sings.
this is the most vaporwave shit i've ever seen
I think, with modern advancements in AI and voice recognition I'd like to see what could be done with Finfin nowadays
Well, the GPT-3 Ai is pretty capable for writing, and is able to pull off a good level of conversation compared to many others. Give it a few years, and with access to an unrestricted model, virtual conversations could be possible.
@@trulyinfamous Thanks - I'll take a look at gpt-3
Like a VR version for the Vive, Odyssey, etc with up to date graphics, a world you can walk in and take scientific samples of plants and such in, and a main story focus on Finfin. Responds to voice and movements, you could train him, change ecosystem populations of other plants and creatures, try to track and study his lifestyle and travels, find and attract other Finfins, save or destroy the species depending on how you handle things.
@@youngdeku6634 you have nailed it, great concept
I find the world of TEO a very interesting concept. Wish they'd bring it back in some sort of way.
It's like Pandora in Avatar! Oh what i miss playing finfin. So beautiful and mysterious!
I was expecting LGR to call Him Fart Balls halfway through
I can say I do like how Fin Fin sings there is just something lovely about it.
same
A little story bout "Marty and the rouble with cheese" My first real experience with a11y design. I assume you are familiar with Marty and how it works. I was working at Maxis in the late 90's when a woman called and was absolutely furious that Marty had insulted her son. See, Marty had a predetermined script to say after saying your name. If the software couldn't match the sound to a know name, Marty would say something alone the lines of "That's a silly name" This is all fun and games until someone with a with a disability that impairs speech tries to interact with Marty. Being told "That's a silly name" no mater how hard you try to say your name was obviously a bad choice in hindsight.
You missed the best part about FinFin: He was able to find a girlfriend and even start a family! Watching baby FinFin grow up was such a nice experience back then.
FinFin wasn't that much of a game: Your computer simply became a window to another world, in which you could check up on that cute dolphin bird every once in a while. :)
Yes!! I imagine it'd be hard to truly capture what made this game special because so much of it involves being willing to perch yourself in front of your computer during random moments in during the day and throughout the year to potentially see the changes. It was a friendly bird watching simulator for sure, and a bit of a comfort game because of that. :) The fact LGR picked that up even in the short time frame says a lot.
I would love to see someone track all the major events in the game (and its time stamp) one day.
@Sabishi1985 I'm not so sure about this. According to the old fansites I've found there is no offspring in Fin Fin Deluxe, the only other dolphinbird is Finnina: Fin Fin's wife. Players often mistook her for baby Fin Fin, something that this is cleared up in the FAQ section on finfin.de. And while she is mentioned in the manual, I didn't show Finnina in the video since she never appeared in my time playing.
To be sure, I actually left the computer on in the background running Fin Fin Deluxe for four days straight, capturing the entire time, and also artificially skipped the PC clock ahead each day to different months and seasons throughout 2021. What's seen in the video is the best stuff I captured! You must've REALLY needed a lot of patience over an even longer amount of time to see more than I got here :)
@@LGR If you look in the nest section of the finfin.de site, you'll find pictures of the other dolphinbirds such as Baby Finfin and Finnina so my guess is that the character exists in at least some versions. The FAQ only said the Baby couldn't be seen on a particular screen.
@@LGR LGR spittin finfin knowledge yo!
@@Vervexx That's another version of Fin Fin, not the US Fin Fin Deluxe release that I have and showed in the video.
Unfortunately, there really is no baby dolphinbird in this edition of the game that I can tell. You can't even visit the nest section at all in Deluxe!
Slightly disappointed Clint didn't call him with "farts".
Was expecting exactly this.
Although, "Hey get over here jerk" was a pretty good substitute 😅
Banana Deer is what I needed at 7:50 this morning. Thanks man
Clint you should do an exposition on the "Creatures" games. I'm pretty sure the first one came out the same year as this 1996. You could breed your creatures and interact with the environments along with other things but similar to this game, it only seemed to take me about an hour or so of playing to get bored. I haven't played Fin Fin but Creatures seems to have a lot more to do in-game and the map was slowly discoverable. Worth checking out if you haven't already!
Ah, virtual pets :-)
Нежданчик)
какие люди, категорически приветствую
"Слежу" за этим автором, по вашей "наводке"!...
Внезапный Дмитрий)
Yeah, exactly. WTF?!
Even though Fin-Fin does more stuff than my actual real-life cat.
But nowadays with all the Alexas and Siris, Roombas and Spots, this _will_ become a thing again. In this reality.
„M-Class planet“: *Star Trek Theme starts playing*
So Fin Fin at least has Roddenberries to eat.
Hopefully William Shatner for ham protien
That's a real scientific category star trek decided to use.
@@piroman85 Correct.
This turned out a lot less cursed than I had hoped for.
Long-time Fin Fin fan since childhood here, and I can't put into words how happy it makes me to see a large creator cover this absolute gem of a game.
As someone who's been along the entire ride, with everything from playing the german "4 worlds" release as a wee li'l kid, piping around on the whistle, my father getting me that plushie - one of my most treasured belongings to this day, spending hours on end on EMGE's website, getting to experience Lemo Valley after my father snatched the "5 worlds" US Deluxe Version from ebay, heck, I even dressed up as the turquoise dolphin-bird for Halloween once, all the way to when the community finally acquired the holy grail of a "6 worlds" version from Asia and patched it into german, allowing me to finally see the Nest and Fin Fin's family for the first time.
I've been playing this game almost daily for the last 2 decades and have almost religious dedication to everything surrounding it, so seriously, I cannot thank you enough for this.
And all hail Banana Deer.
have you seen his second recent revival with streamer wayneradiotv?
*Hearing a non-Digimon related channel acknowledge Digimon's virtual pet roots*
Oh yeah that's the good shit right there.
finfin has 99 meals left...
touch of death combo!!
Wow, this takes me back. I played Fin Fin as a kid and remember seeing a program about it on tv. When I finally got it and installed the game I was looking forward to interacting with him. Imagine my disappointment when he didn't see to respond to me. 😅 I was wondering if he understood english at all and wether I was doing anything wrong. He would get sick, hungry and happy at random moments and after a while I just stopped playing because it indeed started to deel like a dolphin screen saver. Still, its one of those games that I'll always remember for having such an original premise. Glad I got to experience it back then.
Damn, I’m still vaguely feeling nostalgic for the entire virtual pet craze... almost a shame it doesn’t seem to have really carried over to the smartphone era, at least not that I’m aware. It seems like the perfect fit, but it seems the entire idea just isn’t as interesting to people anymore.
On the contrary, your smartphone is your new virtual pet. It chirps and vibrates when it wants your attention. It lives on your attention, and farms you for your ability to detect quality and detect what humans find interesting by clicking Like and Follow. And you have to keep the battery charged to keep your virtual pet alive. It even wakes you up in the morning with an alarm, and will give you directions as you travel. Love your new virtual pet!
Ok but for real if anyone knows of a nice virtual pet app please share
@@flisie they're mostly browser based freemium models, the modern ones that are still going.
It's not quite like a virtual pet game, but "Cats are Cute" is lovely.
You build up a little town of adorable cats, and they all live in different houses and have different jobs (though to be honest, they mostly just lay about or walk around the town... which is accurate, I suppose).
Sometimes they'll demand your attention to tell you something, get pets, play hide-and-seek or rock, paper, scissors (you can always win, the cats can't do scissors), or just to get you to admire them for a bit.
The descriptions and interactions with the cats are all very sweet, and while you can pay money for bonuses, it's absolutely not necessary. Very good as a relaxing casual game you check in with a couple times a day.
i mean, there's poo.. (app)
In my German package, back in the Day. There was a stuffed animal of Fin Fin and omg, that bird whistle punished my ears but much more that of the people around me XD.
but it was cute as hell xD
I still have that stuffed animal.
Ich habe das auch gehabt… 😅
Fin Fin's songs and the colourful backdrops make me think of prog-rock albums from the 70s. The screen with mountain in the backgtround is giving me Rodney Matthews vibes.
Funny you posted this because this morning I read an article about a prehistoric winged shark!
A creature like Fin Fin probably existed lol.
i still have it, this and Mindscape`s Creatures are some of my best childhood memories.
Creatures is definitely worth taking another look at. Especially the third one.
It's honestly fascinating just how deceptively deep and complicated the game is, or at least feels.
@@yostoyou been meaning to go back and explore those games had them as a kid and only really played the second one
I /still/ enjoy playing Creatures!
ngl this game is basically my vibe and I want it now
The full version is actually available on the website linked in the pinned comment! Granted, you might have to dig a bit to find it.
It comes with all 6 "worlds" (notice that greyed out small pebble on the map in the video here? That's the Nest and only ever was released in Taiwan and Japan), with a german patch, and with a bit of fiddling around with compatibility options, works all the way up to Windows 10.
"Hey Fin-Fin. Why don't you come over here and get some better footage."
This might be the greatest line you've ever said. Spat tea everywhere.
Man, I'm so happy to see a video about Fin Fin. I remember loving this game when I was 3 but completely forgot what it was like. Thanks for the walk down memory lane!
actually, he is really the most life like pet. I never realy understood, how did my other virtual pets can just die without me giving them food for a day or two. I owned cats back in the day, and when I managed to not give them meal for a day, because I had to go to the hospital, the little buggers just went and hunt. I know because I found hedghog and mouse parts in their little house.
4:34 "Fin Fin is watching you."
Bruh, that probably sounded better in Japanese
Fin Fin is secretly horrifying. You can abuse him as much as you want and he'll keep coming back.
It's like the unkillable Mickey Mouse that would eat any recipe in his PS1 cooking game
Like the electorate in the UK.
Then just don't abuse him?!? It's only "horrifying" if you choose to make cruel decisions :/
Sort of like American voters.
@IllegalsInMyYard i know it's a joke, i just don't care because it wasn't very funny :P pretending lighthearted media is actually something ~~way darker oo~~ is a lame, edgy cliche at this point. there's enough cruelty in the world as is, surely we can leave poor Fin Fin out of the cycle of violence?
also im sorry but who the hell still says r/woosh 💀
I loved this game, together with Creatures. Creatures was way more in depth, but much more complex. Fin Fin was more relaxed like an interactive screensaver
I remember my step dad randomly buying this game somewhere and giving it to me. This was almost 20 years ago and til this day I think about this game all the time. I played it frequently and I was so enamored with his world. Very bizarre game but I found the graphics to be SO stunning as a child. His planet looked like somewhere I wanted to be lol
My neighbour had this game, we were young and had no idea what we were doing (don’t think her mic was configured correctly). This brought back great memories.
You'll never have to worry about forgetting to feed him, or letting him die, or get sick, or hurt, or much of anything at all. No matter what, he'll never pass on, never go away entirely. He doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And he absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
That box cover for Fin Fin is going to give somebody a nightmare. 😆
While watching the video , with every passing minute I wondered more and more about having had that fin fin "game" once as a child. I don't really remember playing it per se. But I have faint memories of that dolphin, that mirophone and the whistle with the brown band.
In fact I prolly just took the whistle from the game and kept whistling all day instead of playing that game 😅
Finally, a virtual pet I can't accidently kill. LOL.
Do you remember Johnny Castaway? He was a weird screensaver I had as a kid, would be cool to see the history of that
Yeah! I had this screen saver on my first computer it was so much fun to see that castaway dying of boredom on that tiny island xD
Nostalgia Nerd did a video on Johnny but I don't think LGR has
ua-cam.com/video/E5lxiTJGqHw/v-deo.html
I remember this turning up at our local internet cafe - it was like a being visited by software from the future. even the management in the shop were stunned!
I wish to own that soundtrack CD and/or the mug
Almost 30, yet I am still eyeing a Digivice with a Digimon pet ❤
same xD
@@jonaszprzybycien6545 They will release a smartwatch that will be a Digivice, similar to what they did with Pokemon Go Plus... Is it our time? :O
I’ll be honest, I think this thing is adorable
It is maybe interesting to note that the current number 1 super computer in the world "Fungaku" is based on Fujitsu A64FX CPU
Fin Fin or whatever, 25 years later Fujitsu is today powering the strongest computer there is.
"You got Ecco in my Kolibri!"
"You got Kolibri in my Ecco!"
I had this version! I was absolutely enthralled by the concept of Fin Fin - like, emotions too big for my little body to contain. My recollections are kinda tinged with sadness, though? I was a little too young to really understand the simplistic the program was, as well as a little too excitable to exercise restraint with my volume. As a result, Fintan never really warmed up to me and I always felt like I was doing something wrong. (I mean, I WAS, mechanically. But I felt like I was being bad PERSONALLY.)
Still, I kept the whistle and stickers for years. The whistle always made me think of Finbar as I imagined he could be - my excellent alien companion.
Excellent video as per usual Clint!. P.S Read the edge of the do not open card, it's apparently got stuff in it.
I mean when I was a kid I was enthralled with Hey You Pikachu! and the mic on that didn't even work, so this is pretty amazing and I could definitely see being hooked back in the day if I knew about it.
Also imagine being me and thinking you're just watching a fun LGR video that definitely has nothing to do with your special interest in famous cartoonist Osamu Tezuka and then getting to the "oh yeah macoto was hired to work on this" part lmao
This strongly reminds me of Hey You, Pikachu! on the N64. And I suspect all of this ended up the same way.
This gives me creepy Hey You Pikachu vibes. I'm here for it.
I still have that game, and microphone, somewhere. I think the controller attachment broke on me at some point though.
My favorite virtual pet on PC was Creatures. I never played the sequels or spin-offs, but the first game was mind blowing. They’re on GOG if you’re interested. The best part was that it was fairly in depth and had actual gameplay of sorts, and an active mod scene.
My god! This came bundled with our fujitsu computer! 200mhz mmx machine around the year 2000. I had completely forgot about that.
Oh man.. one of my friends had this as an pre-installed software on a Fujitsu PC. Don’t remember much about it but it was cool af
Funny how I'm unboxing and testing my digimon vital bracelet right now
I remember getting a PC (a Fujitsu, too!) in 1999 and vaguely remembering this from the TV. Only for some reason I thought it was a sort of interactive screensaver that would be included with Windows. There was a Fin Fin wallpaper hidden away in the system directories, I wanted to give him evil eyes and a mustache in paint, but the picture was set to 256 colour mode, so the colours in paint didn't do what they were supposed to. I had no idea why at the time, so just scribbled "I MESS WIV KULLAZ" on the picture.
"Says do not open, so I won't" - I proceed to table flip and trash my room in a hissy fit... then he say "okay I'll open it..." - I put the table back and clean up the room...
Bro, you ain't lying.. I contemplated unsubbing!! :| lol
Avoid being loud to keep Fin Fin around
... this is how you keep me around, too.
You need to tap space bar to activate the rhythm music game at the flowers. 😉
I actually have FinFin since 1996 and he came as a toy as well and is stil sitting on my bed today 😁
Game still works, even on Linux via PlayOnLinux. From Emges page i even got the 6 worlds version some years ago, so there is the nest section active as well, with his wife and sometime later with their little kid. Really sweet simulation, still adore this today from time to time.
If you manage to feed him 5 Lemos of same color in a row, he will even change his color! And there are surprises for your birthday and Christmas. Spend the night at the tsubu woods and if you're lucky, you are in for another BIG surprise. Lots more to discover than you would think! 😉❤️
fin fin come and see him
Back in grade school (a good 25-ish years ago), we had a "computer class" where the teacher would have Fin Fin on the big screen. The sound of a bunch of 2nd graders yelling "Fin Fiiin, we love you Fin Fiiin" has been branded onto my primordial grey matter permanently.
"Teo: The Earth-like Otherworld"
There, I fixed it.
OMG thank you so much for this video. For years couldn't remember the name and I thought it was all a crazy fever dream from my childhood.
Oh my god! That's it! My parents bought me a fujitsu computer back in the 90s and it had this on it. Computer went wrong after a couple of months and required a full format reinstall. Never got this back and couldn't remember what it was called to track it down. Memories certainly unlocked.
I need to check out that club/dance music now.
Oh goodness. Nostalgia. Still have the disc for this.
Banana venison doesn't sound very good.
Oh, this sparks fond memories!
FinFin and my budgerigars talked for hours...
We love fin fin
Sometimes Clint mentions that he wants to start a museum someday. I don't know if he knows this, but his UA-cam channel already is one.
I still play Petz 4 from time to time. The pet AIs are still some of the best I've ever encountered. I lost scores of childhood hours to those weird looking little guys, and even more once I figured out how to mod the game with fan-made breeds and mate them together to create monstrosities....ah, good times.
PS: All praise be to Banana Deer!!!!!!
This game may not be anyones favorite but it looks great. The great openworld - like environment with loads and loads of minigames (and even some online games to play with other fin fin owners) are great for its time!
I actually had this as a kid and even though it was simple it was like camping on a fantasy planet and I loved catching rare photos of events and creatures you don't normally see, I think you would have really liked it too, I'm glad to know more about how it worked now that I'm an adult. I really miss that little guy!
It comforts my soul knowing you didn't open the pamphlet that told you not to open it. ..As it should be. I'm not even slightly curious and I hope noone ever finds out why you're not supposed to open it.
Dude! I've spent over 20 years trying to find the name of this thing! Nobody believed that it existed! Thank you, LGR. I was starting to think that they were right.
He made the close encounters of the third kind sound!
This feels like one of those creepy-pasta haunted games...
Beautiful Fin Fin.
@9:36 - "If you turn off the analytical side of your brain for a moment..."
I am sorry, Dave, I cannot do that.
Reminds me of the “hey you pikachu” game for the Nintendo 64
Love how the whistle looks like it was made by IBM. Now I need to see other miscellaneous objects on that style.
Forget Fin Fin, I just want the Banana Deer virtual pet game!
You should check out a game called "Creatures". Also released in 1996, it is an absolutely fantastic “virtual pet” AI game with so much more, to include an explorable side-scrolling world and ability to communicate with the AI via typing different commands. (And it also had a diverse biology and genetics system, especially in the sequel: Creatures 2).