Babyz - The Babyz Community

The Babyz Community

A Babyz Community started on the official site, which has since been shut down. The website offered adoptions and discussions. Soon after, people started forming their own forums and babyz websites with similar content. "Pageants" are where people enter pictures of their babyz posing and earning awards. In 2003, the The Babyz Community Rating System, loosely based on the Petz Community rankings, was created which allows people to register three or four of their babyz, and gain points whenever they win in a pageant.

Around the same time fan websites were going up, it was discovered that one could hex edit the babyz to introduce new hairstyles, eye colours, etc. These edited babyz ("hexies" or "hexed babyz") and custom clothes were often available on fan websites and unique babyz became highly preferred over the simple ones that the game first came with. Many fans tried to petition the game's creators for a Babyz 2, similar to the five sequels that were created for the Petz franchise, however nothing ever came of this. Today, user activity has continued to the point where many users testify that the dedicated hexers and custom content creators have banded together to essentially create their own "Babyz 2," despite the discontinued support from the original creators.

Babyz was originally made for the Windows 95/98 Platform, however with the creation of a patch by Nicholas Sherlock, the game can now be played in Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7; both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Sherlock's patch, called "Petza" as it was intended for both Petz and Babyz, also made the game run much smoother, with the ability to change the game speed, save babyz' pictures in a different format, and also control many aspects of the game that users originally could not. It also introduced sliders to view and change the levels of the babyz' hunger, energy, sickness, and age. The Petza patch can be found at Sherlock's website.

Although not produced any longer, Babyz can still be found at various online retail sites including DirtCheapSoftware.com, Babyz.com, and through various eBay Sellers. Most of these places offer information and limited support on applying the patch for newer versions of Microsoft Windows.