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 :)

  • @otpEnglish
    1•2 months ago

    Thanks for that! I was aware of the Steam release. Does it still allow you to use real discs on PC?

    • MonsterFenrickOP
      3•2 months ago

      DX being cross platform with Mobile and Switch, the Shrine CD Reading process is completely overhauled and doesn’t work remotely in the same way it did for the Playstation. The built in CD Database/Song List totals 664,909 Title/Artists entries. This not only includes albums but individual songs as well as albums and games etc.

      One might think this is limiting since the original could use “all the CDs in the world” but the game is only built to give you a limited number of monsters based on meta data read from the Discs. DX provides much more than the original game is capable of doing, even with an finite number of entries.

      To compare:

      1. MR2 1999 has 391 playable Breeds (Pures/Mixes/Rares) plus a handful of roughly 10 variants of a few those breeds totaling 401 playable monsters. Even with 10 billion different and unique CDs you’ll never be able to acquire more than this.
      2. MR2DX has has 415 total playable breeds due to the inclusion of Japanese rares + Boss monsters onto the original roster of Pures/Mixes/Rares, and a whopping 803 variants on top of the primary baselines, totaling 1218 playable monsters.
      • What is a Variant? It’s a monster that has Stat gain patterns not typical of the normal breed, or starts with an extra attack they don’t normally start with, faster or slower guts regeneration, or otherwise has different core baseline than the standard of the breed.
      • What about different Starting Stats? Random starting stats aren’t the same as a variant, these are separate from the core baseline of a regular or variant breed. DX even has many monsters that have true starting stat randomization rather than the “Static” randomization that CDs provide.

      A few other bonus mentions for DX: There’s a FF (Fast Forward) toggle to speed up the game, it’s got upscaled resolution and textures, but it is still the base game underneath (not a 100% remaster, more like a light-remaster). 10 bonus freezer slots. Items now stack in your inventory (though the total number of inventory slots is the same based on your House size), Items can be bought or sold in bulk now, and load times are eliminated when going back and forth from ranch to town or entering a tournament. There’s also a handful of mods created by the MR community. It’s not a perfect remaster but it’s definitely my favorite version of the game now.

      • @otpEnglish
        2•2 months ago

        Thanks for all the info! It sucks that I can’t do the same thing (physically swapping the discs was fun), but I’ll definitely be picking up the Steam release!

        • MonsterFenrickOP
          3•2 months ago

          Awesome! :)
          Don’t forget to consider jumping into the Monster Rancher Discord if you want to hang out with other nerds that love this game. If you’re interested in what the Online Tournament scene looks like, we keep a Calendar of Tournaments & Events as well. These are posted in the Discord Events, but if you’re not keen on joining discord and would rather take a peek first you can find tourney hosts and times here.