Where is my AOL CD?
Boy the PlayStation era sure was a weird time for experimentation. I loved it. The Pokemon craze was in full force at the time and several companies attempted to capitalize on the phenomenon. Probably the most memorable for me was Monster Rancher. A seemingly simple game where players collected monsters and bred them for battle. The catch was that to create them, players would insert a CD into the system to randomly generate their creation. This had me grabbing every music CD I had as well as a host of free online internet discs. Yes kids, the internet used to come on a disc. The magic came from what happened when the spin stopped and my creation arose from the simple animation. It sure was a weird time.
Fast forward 25 years and KOEI Tecmo is bringing back the series for Switch. However the biggest red flag out of the gate is, this machine doesn’t even have a disc drive. So how do we create monsters? The answer is that the developers have added a catalog of old and new albums to a database that players can search to summon monsters at their leisure. This kind of defeats the purpose of finding that special CD that unlocked a massively powerful creation, but let’s be fair in this day and age there would already be one of those databases online showcasing the best choices. So in other words the internet has killed a lot of the magic of surprise.
MSRP: $29.99
Platforms: Switch
Price I’d Pay: $19.99
What separates Monster Rancher from Pokemon is just about everything. Outside of the collecting aspect these games are more akin to management simulations than adventure games. Once I had my monsters I would spend time setting up a training schedule to develop their stats and moves. In addition I also had to track their food intake and schedule. This becomes even more evident in the second game where the simulation aspects are turned up substantially from the first game. How I raised my monsters determined how they performed in tournaments. It is a cycle of training and preparation then tournaments to earn gold to go back and train more.
These games are mostly grind and preparation. The battles themselves play out more like turn-based affairs where players select moves from a menu-driven system and lots of behind the scenes numbers are calculated. It can be addicting. Think of a monster management sim and you get the idea. I found myself entrenched in the process of obtaining monsters, raising them properly, and slowly dominating tournaments. It is all played out in simple menu driven systems so the pazazz of more colorful games in the genre this is not.
Speaking of the visuals they are definitely a mix of bland design and palette. No screenshot of this game screams interesting. There are lots of menus and bland design, but it works. The game is a byproduct of the PSOne era after all, which means the polygons are in full effect. Still it has its own charm and upon diving in I was immediately whisked back to that era and started looking for my AOL CDs to generate some creatures.
Monster Rancher was a product of its time and it has aged better than some. For those wanting a Pokemon equivalent, this game is not for you. This is more aimed at hardcore simulation fans who carry a nostalgia from that era of gaming. It is cool to have these games available again, but without the CD functionality it feels like a hollow gesture. I wish we could have used QR codes or something to that effect, that is what made Monster Rancher unique, and now it is just a really deep simulation with a nostalgic wrapper.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.