HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHARIZARD1246! |
My oldest Neopet's birthdate is May 16th 2002!
He is 21 as of 2023! I'm making a page for him to celebrate!
Birth and life of Charizard1246I started going online in the late 90s, but it wasn't very often or seeing a full scope of what's available (mostly looking at Yoshi websites under heavy dial-up). The PC I had was later sold, so I didn't have consistent internet access again until I moved out of the city in the early 00s. I found and binge-read a Pokemon fansite, and it had a disclaimer from the webmaster saying they don't care about Pokemon much anymore and listed a referral link to Neopets... I really liked this website and wanted to see what this person was doing next, so I clicked it...
Charizard1246 is technically not my first Neopet; My first account was made on May 12th, but he was made on the 16th. I don't remember who or what my first Neopet was, but Charizard1246 was the one I made after. I remember seeing the Shoyru and thinking it was so cute... I immediately thought that it looked like a Charizard. Hence, Charizard1246, since 1245 people considered that as a name before I did. (Fun fact, he was created at 4pm, likely after coming home from elementary school...)
Charizard1246 was born a red (duh) Shoyru, and I don't know what my plans for him to become were. However, I was a dumb 10 (later 11) year old, so I got scammed a few times. I fell for a prank that playing with a Magical Meerca Plush and eating a certain item would turn your pet into a Starry Meerca, so I took the bait. Well, it didn't. Charizard1246 turned into a Meerca! That's not very Charizard-like, is it?
I wasn't good at making Neopoints...at all...so I would flop between buying cheap morphing potions to change his species. Charizard1246 was so upset! He just wants to be a Shoyru again like he's supposed to be! Why I wasted so much instead of saving up, I can't tell you, but I finally got to morphing him into a mutant Shoyru. It's not the prettiest look, but it's better than nothing.
Coming backI later on self-froze my first (and a few other side accounts) account with Charizard1246 and his siblings on it. I had so many frustrating experiences with Neopets and online in general, so it just wasn't "cool" to me anymore... (even though I came crawling back on new accounts on-and-off for the next 20 years LOL). Neopets used to be prone to "purging" usernames on inactive/frozen accounts so new users could claim them, but when I played Neopets on-and-off again over the years, I noticed the names of my first account and Charizard1246 still showed up in search.
In 2022 I decided to send a ticket to Alice of TNT to get my account back, a few weeks before Charizard1246 turned 20! He was still a mutant...which is fine...but on my new main Neopets account I made in 2011 (ACK! 12 years?!), I became a millionaire by accident and it later piled up into several million... It was an inverse of how bad I was at making Neopoints as a child, so I gave him a makeover right before his 20th.
To be honest... I don't like the new look. It's different and has some good ideas, but I feel limited by the post-conversion options and how the best items are paywalled to Neocash.
The big dayI requested time off work for his birthday. The reason I gave was "family visiting"...lol. I never play the actual Neopets.com anymore, but I logged into my account to get the bonus.
I also went ahead and recreated him on Moderneopets. He'll be painted and get an overlay at one point. (And a petpet. Apparently I never gave him one???)
He's 21 now... what does that mean?Well, in America, he is old enough to drink. I let him have a sip on his 20th, but I think he's old enough for me to pull out the big guns.
I think it fits! Very much like his namesake. Bottoms up!
(commissioned from anon artist)
(gift from strawberryreverie!)
Reconversion
I ended up not having much time to play both "retail" Neopets and Moderneo after Charizard1246's birthday. But I kept getting emails from The Neopets Team about new changes coming by Neopet's 25th birthday (probably to win back the 30-40+ crowd...). Lo and behold, on January 23rd, 2024, Neopets brought back the option to turn your pets into UCs (unconverted) again. You can read more about it here. Since Charizard1246 is an old man in Neopets standards, he got a cute little trophy for being born before Year 9 (2007).
Unsurprisingly, this option is Neocash but I had a ton of freebie NC I earned over the last decade. I took the plunge. I figured all of these options fit him, so I was okay with it being randomized in this case.
It appears Charizard1246 new look is... Grey? Well, I guess it fits him. TNT is desperately perfoming CPR on Neopets to fit into modern internet standards and win back the crowd who left it for those exact reasons, his mother was a deadbeat for 20 years (I was in middle school, give me a break), and all his lost years are catching up to him. Aw, come on. Why couldn't he have been Darigan instead? Now he's making me sad too. I think I have inspiration for his Moderneopets design now.
