PlayStation's cursed Nintendogs rival should have stayed dead and buried, but here we are again

In 2014 PlayStation released a Nintendogs-like for PS Vita and, thanks to one Twitter user, it's doing the rounds online again - reminding everyone just how cursed it is.

If you weren't playing pet simulation games in the mid-2010s, you may have missed PlayStation Vita Pets. The sim had all the adorable aspects of Nintendogs and saw players adopt a puppy, dress it up, and care for it, whilst also taking it on an adventure to Castlewood Island (which has the same vibe as fellow Sony IP Uncharted) for some 3D platforming and puzzle solving fun.

One of the key differences between Nintendogs and PS Vita Pets though is that the dogs had full voice acting, which you can see in all its disturbing glory in the tweet below. The game's trailer from 2014 also gives a good idea of the kind of things your puppy will say to you throughout the game, with one self-conscious Dalmatian puppy asking the player: "Does my butt look big in this?"

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In the PS Vita Nintendogs ripoff all the dogs have voice acting and it's the worst fucking thing on the planet pic.twitter.com/XPbP7DHPMcApril 28, 2023

The creepiness doesn't quite stop there though, as the trailer shows, PS Vita Pets made full use of the PS Vita's features and would allow the virtual dogs to recognize their owner's face using the handheld's front-facing camera. I think I'll stick to shouting my puppy's name over and over again into the microphone in Nintendogs, thanks.

There is one person that's a fan of PS Vita Pets though, and it's none other than PlayStation president Jim Ryan. As another Twitter user highlights, Ryan did an interview with Metro around the time of the game's release where he defended it by saying: "My seven-year-old loves it, please don’t be disrespectful about PlayStation Pets."

Surprisingly - as someone who spent their childhood playing pet simulation games - I completely missed PS Vita Pets. Now that I've seen the tweet above though, I'm kind of glad I did. All jokes aside, the game actually looks like a lot of fun and is exactly what I'd imagine a PlayStation take on Nintendogs would be like. Here's hoping Jim Ryan is a big enough fan to bring the beloved, albeit cursed, sim to PS5 one day.

If you're looking for other games featuring four-legged friends, take a look at our best dog games list.

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training. My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.