The ‘90s and early ‘00s saw the collectible companion boom. Bizarre creatures packaged as virtual pets saw fame in the form of Pokemon, Tamagotchi, and Neopets – all serving their own little corner of fandom in unique ways. Plenty of others flourished in the tailwinds of titans – Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and, later on, Yokai Watch, found some degree of success as the genre took off. While we’ve seen plenty of these fade into the shadow of a behemoth like Pokemon, most have at least stuck around in some capacity. Unfortunately, it’s Monster Rancher that seems to have mostly disappeared into obscurity, a flash in the pan compared to its competition.
Related: What I Learned About Death And Loss From Monster Rancher 2 As A Child
Like the rest, Monster Rancher checked all of the same boxes it needed to fuel merchandise-driven television shows. Its anime enjoyed a western release, and the show saw a series of collectible toys, plushies, and cards launch alongside it. While Pokemon led the charge, and Digimon enjoyed its major successes, Monster Rancher never really saw mainstream wins in the same way.
It’s a damn shame, too. While I enjoyed both the Pokemon and Digimon series as a kid, it’s Monster Rancher that absolutely captivated me. The simple loops of Monster Rancher’s early PS1 games appealed more to my little girl self than RPGs like Pokemon. The barrier of entry for Pokemon always felt a little high for a child to enjoy back then, and I always found myself stuck at Mt. Moon, surrounded by Zubats. And then there was Monster Rancher, a game that opened up a world of choices within minutes.
To clarify, I think Pokemon and Digimon alike were plenty of fun, but to a small child with very little patience, the appeal didn’t last for me. I need options from the get-go, and if I were playing anything other than Pokemon Stadium, it felt like that was something the more popular series wasn’t prepared to offer me. So, I became my elementary school’s weird Monster Rancher aficionado, eschewing the more popular series for most of my earlier years.
If you’re unfamiliar, Monster Rancher’s entire gimmick revolved around this mystery disc system where you would use special stone tablets to unlock monsters in-game. In the animated series, it was something the young protagonist, Genki, found during his travels in Monster Rancher’s digital world. If you were a six-year-old living in Mississippi, it was your older cousin’s collection of Hanson and Britney Spears CDs. My family could never afford many CDs, but as I got more into Monster Rancher 2, my mom would go to garage sales and buy stacks of CDs for a few dollars, providing me hours of entertainment.
Monster Rancher’s weird little systems gave me freedoms Pokemon couldn’t offer. I spent hours curled up with mountains of albums, opening my PS1, dropping the disc in, and waiting to see what monster would unlock at the summoning altar. I would then take those companions into battle or combine them with other creatures at the lab to make something new. While the later games added more story-driven components on the PS2, I was still never without my ability to summon, customize, and battle. Future games just got better, while I grew bored with Pokemon and Digimon only expanding their rosters, but never really changing the formula.
With time, Monster Rancher saw its shelf space crumble, and the series saw its last major western release back in 2006 on the PS2 – unless you want to count that awful DS launch back in 2010. Regardless, it’s been well over a decade, and the series is now relegated to a couple of Japan-only Nintendo Switch ports of the first and second games.
Perhaps it really was because Monster Rancher just doesn’t quite fit in among the rest. Its whole gimmick requires some extra layers that clearly didn’t resonate in the way Pokemon, or even others like Digimon or Yu-gi-oh, did. The last financial report I could find put the series around 4 million in sales, and while that’s nothing to sneeze at, Digimon and Pokemon are obviously far better off. While it’s been long gone, in the advent of games like TemTem and Palworld, Monster Rancher feels like it deserves its second coming. It always deserved its Pokemon moment.
