Monster Rancher, or otherwise known in Japan as Monster Farm, is a simulation/RPG game from 1997, which had players breeding and raising a variety of monsters in order to enter them into fighting contests and win. The game managed to reach cult classic status on the PlayStation 1, and became popular enough to be followed by ten other entries and spinoffs. Over 22 years after the original game released, Koei Tecmo has announced that they will be porting Monster Rancher 1 to mobile devices and the Nintendo Switch later this year. According to Famitsu, this won't just be a straight port, and will feature a few new updates. The game will be releasing later this year in Japan, with no current localization announced at the time of writing.

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[eriol33]

I played MR 1 and 2 like to death. The games don't have any ending and the general goals are usually to make your monster to win all the tournament to the S level. The fun part is collecting the monsters itself by unlocking CDs, and there were some sense of achievement when your monsters won tournament, but that's it, rinse and repeaat.

at some point you will be tired playing it. It fun while it lasted though.

I played monster ranched 2 briefly in GBA, I think it's a very solid game, but there is a limit of playing a game without a real story.

I heard the anime is good though. has anyone watched it?

 

[Beerus]

loved the anime, never played it though, got to try it out

 

[raxadian]

Also most modern Smartphone can easily emulate the GBA so you can play Monster Rancher 2 GBA instead.

 

[xBleedingSoulx]

The anime was absolute rubbish but the games are some of my favourites.

 

[SS4]

Aside from the couple dozen or so Monsters that were only unlockable from very specific CD/DVDs was it ever confirmed what variables (Genre, Publication Date, Serial Number, Etc) are used to determine the type of monsters you would get from any given CD? There are just too many possible variables, there is no way they could have accounted for them all back then, unless the variables mean nothing and the monsters you get are randomly pulled from a drop table of sorts based on a certain criteria and the stats, level or whatever else (have not played the game yet but obviously am familiar with it) is determined by another set of data.

Well, CD are a bunch of 0 and 1 so it probably just read a certain area of the CD like the TOC and it creates a binary number of a certain length. So obviously some CD would generate the same binaries.
I could be wrong about the exact process but i guess i'm thinking of it because i use to play with the Barcode Battler with my cousin when we were young and it would scan the 0 and 1 from the barcodes we would get from cereal box and cans, or whatever lol, to generate monsters, items and heroes.

 

[H1B1Esquire]

I remember seeing about 3 episodes on tv as a kid, and that was it.

Oh, then see this
https://gbatemp.net/threads/lets-watch-stuff.546091/

How the heck are they gonna make the CD reading

Probably DLC, in-game items from exploring or minigames(?), maaaaaaybe QR scanning (PLZPLZPLZ be the next Pubic Nanja), UPC/ISBN from CDs, amiibo, or impure magic.
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and this happened:

 

[Deleted User]

Oh, then see this
https://gbatemp.net/threads/lets-watch-stuff.546091/



Probably DLC, in-game items from exploring or minigames(?), maaaaaaybe QR scanning (PLZPLZPLZ be the next Pubic Nanja), UPC/ISBN from CDs, amiibo, or impure magic.
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and this happened:

Dear christ all mighty. I'm 1 minute into it and I'm exhausted. That OP went on for what feels like an eternity.

 

[medoli900]

Aside from the couple dozen or so Monsters that were only unlockable from very specific CD/DVDs was it ever confirmed what variables (Genre, Publication Date, Serial Number, Etc) are used to determine the type of monsters you would get from any given CD? There are just too many possible variables, there is no way they could have accounted for them all back then, unless the variables mean nothing and the monsters you get are randomly pulled from a drop table of sorts based on a certain criteria and the stats, level or whatever else (have not played the game yet but obviously am familiar with it) is determined by another set of data.

Actually, blu-rays also works (I tried on the PS4 with Monster Rancher 4), and I'm pretty sure blu-rays weren't around in 2003 (I checked. Blu-ray discs came out in 2006), so who knows how they are generated.

 

[H1B1Esquire]

so who knows how they are generated.

Google, Tecmo, and a few others.


https://www.google.com/search?sourc...hUKEwigwrC1l5rkAhVEdt8KHR8TDIIQ4dUDCAc&uact=5

I think it's to do with the ISBN of the disc.....but it's just a thought.....or is it more?

 

[WiiHomebrew+Snes]

I read somewhere that the DS games could read from the GBA slot instead of CDs? maybe you could do cartridge swapping but that wouldn't work on mobile... I think it would be cool if they did something like using websites, and it could like take images it find on there to make textures or have special monsters for certain websites like they did with the CDs.

 

[Pluupy]

I loved Monster Rancher on the DS!

 

[FAST6191]

Don't think I ever played the PS1 version actually. The GBA version on the other hand you can probably find me gushing about in various places. Such things were even the game of the week at one point https://gbatemp.net/threads/gbatemp-game-of-the-week-46.324454/

How the heck are they gonna make the CD reading to get random monsters mechanic work? Freakin lootboxes?

I vote for wardriving. There was that DS game treasure world that did that and it was quite nice.

 

[SS4]

So it will apparently use CD names or artist instead of physical copy . . . I guess its nice they try to be fateful but typing a word isn't the same as having to get the actual CD like we used to . . .
https://kwconquerors.net/game-series-tecmo/monster-rancher/monster-rancher/monster-rancher-reboot/