Koei Tecmo has announced Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX for Switch, PC, and iOS. It will launch on December 9 worldwide.
If you grew up in the late 90s, I may remember Monster Rancher as one of the many creature collecting games trying to compete with Pokemon.
In celebration of the series’ 25th anniversary, Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX brings the cult classic simulation games to modern hardware. Here, players will raise their own monsters and train them to compete against other eccentric creatures in combat and tournaments. There are hundreds of different monster types, each with their own skills and abilities so every Rancher will be able to raise and train monsters that are a perfect fit for their personality and play style.
The special collection also includes content that was never originally featured in the original Western release, such as additional save slots, Freeze slots, and Monster Hall of Fame slots. New features have also been added to Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX, including a memo feature to use while raising monsters, rankings for random battles, and a high-speed mode to play through the game faster.
The Monster Rancher series was originally launched with a unique feature that allowed players to use physical CDs to generate monsters in the game, with each CD having a unique ID that would spawn a different monster. This feature has been re-worked in Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX, allowing players to search a database to find their desired CD and generate a monster from its data. This means players will be able to search a vast database of songs from around the world and generate monsters based on some of your favorite music.
It is worth noting that the two Monster Rancher games have already been released for the Switch and mobile devices via digital download. These DX versions however will feature quality of life improvements like a high-speed mode and additionally save files that these versions lack.
If you haven’t bought Monster Rancher yet, it sounds like this will be the definitive collection.
Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX will be released on the 9th of December worldwide for Switch, Steam and IOS.