Good news Monster Rancher fans: Worldwide re-releases of both Monster Rancher 1 and 2 are heading to Nintendo Switch, Steam, and iOS in December. The games will come bundled together under the title Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX.
The above announcement trailer also contains a few words from Monster Rancher series executive producer Kazumi Fujita. Apparently, he and his team have received an outpouring of requests from Monster Rancher fans outside of Japan hoping for a new release of the games (and rightly so!). He also says new features to the DX versions include the ability to play with players in Japan, as well as re-balanced monsters.
Also notable is the reworked CD system. The original games allowed you to pop audio CDs into your Playstation to generate monsters based on the individual CDs. This has been reworked for DX:
“The Monster Rancher series 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. Enjoy searching a vast database of songs from around the world and generating monsters based off of some of your favorite music!”
The Monster Rancher series is heading into its 25th anniversary. Monster Rancher 1 &2 DX will release on December 9, 2021.
Founder and editor-in-chief of Atomic Lagoon. Spends his time changing aquarium water, feeding cats, and watching old monster movies in 3D.
