MonsterFenrick

Monster Rancher 1 & 2 - Playstation CD Swap Mechanic on Emulation

I thought I would share an app for use with a fairly niche game in the Monster Taming/Sim/Raising genre, **Monster Rancher** on the Playstation (1). I don't expect many to know what this game is, but there might be a few that remember it. It frequently is called Pokemon ripoff or clone, but it's really a pet (monster) raising... #Emulation

https://kbin.social/m/Emulation/t/374131

Monster Rancher 1 & 2 - Playstation CD Swap Mechanic on Emulation - Emulation - kbin.social

I thought I would share an app for use with a fairly niche game in the Monster Taming/Sim/Raising genre, **Monster Rancher** on the Playstation (1). I don't expect many to know what this game is, but there might be a few that remember it. It frequently is called Pokemon ripoff or clone, but it's really a pet (monster) raising...

Aug 23, 2023 at 9:43pmWeb
Show threadivanafterallAug 23, 2023
Amazing! Has anyone figured out how many possible monsters could be created this way? I'm so happy this has been brought back to life.
Show threadMonsterFenrickAug 24, 2023

Well, the 1999 NTSC version of MR2 has 391 playable breeds (factoring in all mixed, pures and rares).

  • There's a very small handful of additional non-rare breeds that are hard coded, I can't recall off the top of my head but roughly 10.
  • There's 58 Rare breeds (Special skins) that have no offset adjustments
  • There's 333 monsters that can have born-with stat offsets and there's 60 offset ranges x 2 offset parameters to determine final born-with offset stats.

I think this means there's roughly 1,198,868 total variations of the 333 breeds that can have offsets plus the ~68 rares/special spawns that don't have offsets.
This may not be exact, but it's a close ballpark.

There's several other apps on LegendCup that are amazing for playing the original or the new DX version if you are into Monster Rancher, but those aren't really emulation specific, and didn't want to risk being off-topic discussing them.
However, the Make-A-Monster app is for the 1999 NTSC and PAL versions for original console or through Emulation, so I thought i'd risk posting about it :)

Glad even 1 person knows what Monster Rancher is tbh!

Show threadivanafterallAug 24, 2023
My sister was even more into it. We had Monster Rancher 2. But I remember thinking the disc swap feature was like black magic. It honestly still seems like it. Even then, I wished more games would do the same. Can you imagine?
Show threadMonsterFenrickAug 24, 2023

The newest game "Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher" on the Nintendo Switch (A cross over between Ultraman and the Monster Rancher franchise) has a feature for reading NFC (basically anything except amiibos -- probably a licensing thing).

I'm not sure how one would read NFCs using a Switch emulator, but that's kind of a next evolution of it I suppose.
There's also a Keyword system (type in any word in 2 input fields) to generate the monsters as well. The Keyword system has been fully cracked, and some mechanics of NFC has been cracked (for NTAG215 anyway).