In 1997 the Monster Rancher series debuted in Japan as Monster Farm thanks to Koei Tecmo – so it just turned 24 years old.
While things have been relatively quiet for Monster Rancher fans in recent years, it looks like Koei Tecmo is now making preparations for the franchise’s big 25th anniversary!
Koei Tecmo’s official Monster Farm Japanese Twitter announced various projects are now in the works to celebrate the series’ 25th anniversary next year. While the company has not shared any information about what these projects will be, it asked fans to keep their eye out for more news in the future.
【MF公式】：
「モンスターファーム」は1997年7月24日に発売されました。モンスターファームは、ついに25年目に突入🦖
これから1年、25周年の記念日に向けて様々なプロジェクトが始動するよ👀
要注目だ‼️‼️#モンスターファーム #モンスターファーム2 #MF pic.twitter.com/fQAQE9njJv— モンスターファーム【公式】 (@MonsterFarm_KT) July 23, 2021
Koei Tecmo’s announcement roughly translated;
Monster Farm was released on July 24, 1997. The Monster Farm series will finally enter its 25th year. In the next year, various projects will start for the 25th anniversary. Pay attention!
To date, Koei Tecmo released enhanced ports of Monster Farm and Monster Farm 2 on Nintendo Switch in Japan. However, there have been no plans till this date for English localizations of these enhanced ports.
About Monster Rancher
The premise of Monster Rancher is simple. Picture that old Barcode Battler toy merged with a Tamagotchi, except instead of cutting out and saving barcodes to generate monsters, Monster Rancher reads a small segment of any CD and uses the data to generate a fighting monster.
Some CDs will yield giant golems or dragons, while others will give you palsy little eye creatures and other not-so-impressive beasts. After creating a monster, you must train it to fight in the ring. You control every aspect of the monster’s training from diet to what stats it will be striving to increase. Monsters can be frozen for later use, or even combined with other monsters to form hybrid beasts with multiple powers.
The point of the game is to become the greatest monster breeder around, and there are rankings and other stats that will clue you in as to how well you’re doing.
Most of Monster Rancher is menu-based, with the exception of the fights themselves. There are two different options for fighting, each with its own benefits. Beginning players will want to let the monster fight all by himself, with no input from the player. This makes the game more stat-based, with a liberal amount of luck sprinkled on. If you choose to control the monster, fighting can be very difficult, but it’s also possible to win fights against higher-class monsters, if you get good at it.
