Screenmates Shrine
Screenmates (a.k.a desktop pets, desktop mates, deskmates, desktop toys, virtual pets, cyberpets, desktop companions, virtual companions, screen buddies, desktop buddies, desktop mascots, screen crawlers, screen wanderers, window sitters, digital pets…) are cute critters that live on your screen. Some walk, fly, hop, jump, swim, etc. around your desktop, but others stay in one place on your screen and look cute, and you can drag them around. They can be different creatures, like cats, dogs, fictional characters, fish, frogs, penguins, ponies, humans, bugs, or cars! Some even follow your cursor, and you can pet some. Some can even talk to you, and some can interact with each other! Some need to be fed every day, but most don't need to be taken care of at all. They make your desktop more lively and add a bit of personality to your desktop, so I have a lot of 'em.
The most famous one is probably Neko, a cat who follows your cursor (there's even a web version of him!). Sheep, Orange and Pikachu are also mentioned often. So many obscure screenmates have been made that this page will probably become really long as I add more, but I'm going to list them anyway since that's the whole point of this site :P
One of the newest ones is Desktop Mascot Engine, which isn't really fleshed out but has potential, although you can't create your own screenmates with it and it hasn't been updated since 2018.
Shimeji are a great type of screenmate that's still being used to this day! :D They're screenmates that climb on your windows, sit on them, and jump from window to window. It's only for Windows though.
Ukagakas are another type of screenmate that's still being used nowadays! :D They're almost certainly the best type of screenmate. They don't move around on their own usually, unlike other screenmate types, but they can talk to you and with each other, and set reminders, change your clock, check your e-mail, and empty your recycle bin for you! They can be petted, and actually work in Linux also with Wine, although the extra features don't work (except setting reminders?), they still talk to you and to each other and can be petted. A little more about SSP (the most popular Ukagaka program) below… ;)
Neko is great. There are many versions of it. The version I like the most is Neko 4.0 for Win98 and above, since you can customize Neko's look and sounds and turn him into, say, a dog, or a tentacle from Day of the Tentacle.
Wind-Up Bird is so cute! He walks across the screen after you wind him up. After searching for him for so many years, I finally found him on a site in the Wayback Machine. Woohoo! I've reuploaded him on MEGA. You can find him on the Downloads page. :D I found a picture of his head on this page.
There is also a cute Rockhopper Penguin who follows your cursor by moving his head, but he doesn't work in Windows 10! :O At least on Arch Linux, he seems to work! :D Just run the self-extracting installer, and it'll extract to the same folder it's in. Then click on PENPEN.EXE and it should run! :D Whoopee!
Puppy, Dino, and Desktop Bird are the best screenmates ever made. :D
Puppy is a cute yellow pup, and his animations are adorable! He fetches the newspaper and loves to run. He's made by Screenmates.com and AdTools Inc., but don't worry about your usage statistics being collected by them, since they're gone now.
Dino is the pet dinosaur from Flintstones. He barks, unlike Puppy. :P
Desktop Bird is a beautiful kingfisher who flies around your screen and catches fish! The menu is in Japanese, so here's the explanation of the Options menu (you click, not right-click, on the kingfisher icon to open the menu, and the bottom option exits and the top opens the Options menu): Either the first or second checkbox mute the bird's chirp, and the section with the radio buttons is fun. The first one makes the kingfisher act like normal… the second one makes the kingfisher act like a top and spin all over the desktop, the third one makes the kingfisher act like a pendulum, and the fourth one turns the kingfisher into a dart which you can throw all around your desktop! Wow. You can also have multiple instances of it open, so you can have a kingfisher party! Yay! A funny quirk is, if the kingfisher has a fish and tries to land in the bottom right corner of the screen, they get stuck in an infinite loop. Just lift them out to solve this problem. This can happen with multiple kingfishers at once, so… ;) All three work on Linux with Wine.
Pingus is both a game and a screenmate. Pingus the game is a Lemmings clone for Linux. XPenguins the screenmate is penguins with Pingus sprites waddling on your screen, who also explode upon being dropped if you turn on that option.
Mr. Bean's head is also a screenmate :P Mr. Bean is well-loved and enjoyed by all, but this screenmate has only so much you can do with him before it gets old. His eyes also follow your cursor…
Felix the cat is a popular one. There's three versions; Felix I which is simply Felix walking around your screen, Felix II, which is Felix I but with add-ons like a kitten and various toys, for Windows 95 to XP, and one without add-ons for newer ones (called MyFelix, for Win7 and above). I love them all, but I prefer Felix II due to it taking up less memory, even with all add-ons (which I have).
Dipsy from the Teletubbies, Paranoid Homer, and Bart and Maggie Simpson are cool fictional character screenmates. Dipsy works on Linux; haven't tested out the Simpsons yet.
There are also promotional screenmates (like Finding Nemo, Piglet's Big Movie, Stitch! The Movie, Looney Tunes: Back In Action, The Lion King, and The Lion King 1½). I've always loved them, especially since they came with Desktop Themes (which don't have much cursors, oh well).
MessageMates are nice and play funny animations.
Black Cat and Lazy Cat, made by AnimalMates and AdTools Inc., are cute, but they only have a small amount of animations. At least they have a nice purring sound. A funny note: the usage statistics can be turned off, but as soon as you close and reopen the program, they turn back on.
Desktop Ponies is a way to get all your favourite MLP characters on your desktop. Only for Windows, but there's a Linux version called qt-ponies (pronounced cute-ponies).
Microsoft Agent is not exactly a screenmate, but it's an awesome interactive agent program which has characters that talk to you. If you want to make your own characters, download the Microsoft Agent Character Editor, and download the unofficial Microsoft Agent Scripting Helper if you want to control what they say to you. You can use it to make cartoons with the Agents, which is cool. I've made some over the years starring Peedy and FinFin, which I plan to put online at some point.
Bonzi Buddy is funny.
The best fully-fledged virtual pets are Petz and Creatures, and the best online virtual pet sites are Flight Rising, Poppy Seed Pets, Psypets, Terrepets, Goatlings, and Neopets.
Ukagaka / Ghosts
Those are the terms for screenmates made with SSP. Here's a guide to downloading ghosts. SSP can be a little finicky, but if you can work with it, you can do some really cool stuff with it, such as telling interactive stories, adding relationship levels with the user, or even make the ghost move around on their own! Here's an awesome ghost-making guide by Zarla made back when there weren't many ghosts around. There's also a Discord for ghost makers :D
Here's a cool video that's an intro to the ukagaka scene :D There's a cameo at the end from my MLP ghost ;)
I made my own ghosts! Download Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash and their balloon, as well as The Narrator, at my Petz site.
Links
About desktop pets & virtual companions-discussing the inhabitants that fill the void of our digital spaces --- An awesome article by Alienmelon; go check out their amazing art!
Official Shimeji download page.
Neko Fanpage with working downloads.
Download page for Puppy, Kingfisher, Dino, Felix (old), Sheep, and Orange.
Download page for Felix (old), Black Cat and Lazy Cat.
Misc. screenmates. Mario, Sonic, etc.
Official MessageMates site! Downloads work. :D There's also multiple huge collections of MessageMates on Archive.org.
Check the Downloads page for Part 1 of my huge collection of screenmates! :D Part 2 coming at some point, hopefully soon...
Created on Wed, Oct 7, 2020, and updated with more screenmates on Thu, Oct 8, 2020, and Fri, Oct 9, 2020. Added guide to installing ghosts on Sun, Oct 11, 2020. Updated Pinkie and Dashie ghost on Sat, Dec 12, 2020 to Version 1 (minor fixes, and some new lines). Older version found here. Updated the ghost once again to Version 1.1, with cool new features to discover for yourself ;) and nothing removed, on Sun, Dec 13, 2020. Updated the ghost on Dec 20, 2020, and on Jan 2, 2021 (moved the newest link to it to the Downloads page on that date as well). Updated page on Thu, May 19, 2022 (added Linux fix for PenPen :D ). Updated again on Tue, Sep 20, 2022 (finally found the Wind-Up Bird screenmate! :D Changed the WUB description, ;) and various other edits). Updated once more on Tuesday, Jan 31, 2023 (mentioned a great video about Ukagakas :D ). Updated again on Thu, Mar 9, 2023 (added mention of The Narrator screenmate). Updated once again on Sun, Jan 14, 2024 (added some more info and removed DesktopDude as the site is gone! While it is on Wayback, downloading doesn't work as the zip files are corrupt). Updated again on Tue, Sep 3, 2024 (Laura's Celebration and Cat Screen Mates pages are gone after a very long time of being up ;) Replaced with Wayback Machine links where most of the downloads work).