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Monster Rancher 2 will appear at Combo Breaker: Live In-Person monster tournament! (media.kbin.social)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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That game where you popped your Music CDs into your PSX, generate a monster, then raise it and battle it? Yes, that game! Combo Breaker is one of the largest Fighting Game tournaments in the world, and MR2 will be there in under All In Together.

At Combo Breaker, this will be an In-Person Live event and you'll have complete control over your own monster

Historically Monster Rancher is a game that relied on the community to run tournaments with community vetted rules and entrants. I pioneered this in 1999 with the use of a DexDrive and emailing save files or even physical memory cards to host and broadcast tournaments (over dialup this was painful compared to today's available resources lol). "Recently", KoeiTecmo ran 1 official world-wide tournament when Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX (Deluxe remaster) was released and held in 2022, but KT hasn't held one since. Japan does have some in-person tournaments as well, but this is the first time a live and in-person event has will be held in the West!

MR Community member and content creator Nash (MooseBones) will be hosting this event at ComboBreaker. If you plan to attend ComboBreaker, and you like Monster Rancher this will be of interest.

Event Date:

  • Combo Breaker 2024, May 24th - 26th

Location:

  • Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center Hotel Marriott
  • 1551 Thoreau Dr N, Schaumburg, IL, 60173 USA

Event Links:

ComboBreaker MR Tournament Sign Up and Rules/Restrictions/Stat Caps - https://www.start.gg/tournament/all-in-together-2024-combo-breaker-community-tournaments/event/monster-rancher-2

Game Resources, tips, preparation:

Please contact @moosebones on Discord for any additional questions you may have regarding this event!

What is Monster Rancher?
If you'd never heard of Monster Rancher, you might have heard of the gimmick it was famous for... During game play, you could swap out the game CD and put in your favorite Music CD or Playstation game and a monster could be created from it.

Gimmick aside, however, It is basically a menu-driven virtual pet raising and breed simulator with fantasy monsters in a semi-roguelike environment where you keep your personal achievements and progress but it may take multiple raised monsters over time to fully complete the game. In-game progress is done by taking your raised creature and battling it out in tournaments with real-time strategy and resource management, gauging your situational awareness with your own monsters stats and attributes versus the in-game opponents. In the single-player game you have the option to outright over-raise your monster so that fights are a bit easier, but in PVP there are rules and Stat Caps/Weight divisions to consider for more equal footing.

I can't attend, but I'm interested in Online Tournaments, is that a thing?
Good news! the Monster Rancher Community regularly holds online tournaments for MR2DX and other games in the series, even the newer Switch-Only Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher, however due to limitations of the game, Online tournaments are not manually controlled. Instead, the meta is to engineer a monster within a given tourney's ruleset and stat caps to make as few bad choices as possible and let them have at it. Often best of 3, or 5, in Round Robin, Elimination, or Double Elim depending on the number of entrants.

Please share if you'd like. Monster Rancher is really niche and could always use more players :)

Knock-off pokemon has always been wild by MonsterFenrick in c/[email protected]
[-] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Monster Rancher is alive and kicking!

  • There's a remaster of the first 2 games (Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX) on Steam, Switch, iOS and release a couple years back.
  • MR2 has a huge competitive scene, with lots of community run tournaments. it's even going to be at Combo Breaker, a fairly large annual event/competition for fighting games!
  • There's a Spinoff/Crossover game "Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher" released just over a year ago, where instead of traditional monsters, you raise giant Kaiju from the Ultraman franchise. (Switch only)
  • There's a Japanese only mobile gacha game LINE:Monster Farm that's hugely popular atm
What are your favorite Monster raising/fighting games? by MonsterFenrick in c/[email protected]
[-] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Monster Rancher
I'll toss in another vote for Monster Rancher ;) A Pet Raising and Breeding simulator that got it's roots from an earlier 1996 game "Gallop Racer" which was a Horse racing and breeding sim. Monster Rancher replaces Horses with Fantasy monsters, and swaps out Races for Real Time battles.

While the Raising aspect is highly menu driven as you make constant adjustments to your strategies for raising stats, learning new attacks, or doing "side-quests" in the game to unlock even more monsters, the Battle is in real time where you control your monster moving between near and far ranges to use attacks that are unique to those ranges. The attacks themselves also have 2 primary types (Power or Intellect) and 5 sub-types (Heavy, Crit, Wither, Hit, and Special). Using attacks has an associated resource cost (Guts) and your monster's guts regeneration differs based on it's breed (or mixed breed).

Loads of variety of strong looking, silly, or fun monsters to pick and choose from.

  • in 2021 the original first two games games were re-released as remasters on Switch, Steam, and iOS as Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX. with upscaled graphics, some overhaul in the UI, and a lot of QoL features added in, but for the most part still looks and feels like the PSX game, just a lot smoother and zero load times.
  • in 2022 a new game exclusive to Switch released asa crossover with Ultraman where you raise Kaiju from that franchise but with Monster Rancher rules.
DF Weekly: Do we actually need The Last of Us Part 2 and Horizon Zero Dawn remasters? by MonsterFenrick in c/[email protected]
[-] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

There's been SOME activity in MR in the last couple years...
MR1&2DX is a remaster of the first 2 games with some QoL improvements, on Switch, Steam, iOS, released in 2021
Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher is a crossover, though only on Switch, released in 2022
LINE:Monster Farm is a JP only mobile gacha game released in 2023, but some folks hope it will come to the west... it has some amazing artwork.

There's also hope for MR3&4 "DX" release but those weren't very financially successful originally, so it's probably unlikely they'll be rereleased, but everyone's huffin' that hopium.

just doesn't have the same charm now by MonsterFenrick in c/[email protected]
[-] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Monster Rancher has made a return!, in a sense.
"MR1&2DX" a "Remaster" is on Steam, Switch, and iOS. This came out in 2021. (It's mostly the same game, just with a searchable CD Database/Song List instead of physical media, upscaling, both JP and English monsters in the same game, Enemy monsters raisable, extra freezer slots, fast forward, instant loads etc. a bunch of QoL stuff).

Also there's Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher (This one is on Switch only) that came out in 2022... a Crossover franchise of raising Ultraman Kaiju that plays like a mix of both MR1 and MR2

And LINE: Monster Farm, came out in 2023. A JP only gacha game, though there's some hopium that it will be released in the west eventually.

There's a huge Monster Rancher community and Discord that even holds public tournaments with varying formats and stat-cap limits. It's a lot of fun!

The Pokemon Company releases a statement regarding Palworld: Inquiries Regarding Other Companies’ Games by MonsterFenrick in c/[email protected]
[-] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

for the remaster, the CD reading system is replaced with a built in searchable Song List. This is how you can play it on Mobile, Switch, Steam etc. The Song List doesn't exactly equate to original CDs (the function is mechanically different) but there are a handful of entries that equate to their originals (this accounts for about 0.01% of entries within the 664,909 that create their original monsters.

The good news is, Everyone now has access to the entire game and can raise any monster they want to (once they're unlocked, of course), and the Song List is 100% solved and published. You can Random Button if you like the surprise, but if you want something specific, you can just view the published Song List, Pick your Monster Main/Sub, then pick the Title/Artist suggestion for the variant you want. :)

The Pokemon Company releases a statement regarding Palworld: Inquiries Regarding Other Companies’ Games by MonsterFenrick in c/[email protected]
[-] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX is also on Steam, Switch, and iOS!
It is a remastered per say. Not so much a new graphics engine or anything, but with bug fixes, item changes that function better, and GUI & other QoL improvements :)

Monster Rancher 1 and 2 by KOEI TECMO GAMES [Sale iPhone/iPad] by MonsterFenrick in c/[email protected]
[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

The great thing about the Song List on DX is that now everyone has access to every monster in the game, rather than being limited by a personal collection of CDs. (You still have to make your own unlock progress in-game of course).

The entire Song List for MR1&2DX has been solved too! LegendCup has an app to pick a Main breed and Sub breed and see every unique variant of every possible pure and mixed breed now as well. (Or you can use the "Random" button if you live for the thrill)

Mike Wazowski from wish.com by MonsterFenrick in c/[email protected]
[-] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Hey now... Monster Rancher is Legit and predates Monsters, Inc. by 4 years :)

MonsterFenrick

joined 1 year ago