 Monster Rancher for Sony Playstation
Recently, the world has been beset by a plague of things best termed
"electronic pets." First, we got the Tamagotchi, a LCD-rendered little
beastie that lived in a keyring. You had to monitor his progress, feed
him, rest him, and so on, in an attempt to keep him happy and well until
he eventually kicked the bucket. Then the "it" toy was the
Furby, a Gremlin rip-off filled with gears and microchips that spoke its
own language and English (eventually), and would respond to its
surroundings. Finding the Tamagotchi completely uninteresting, and
hesitant due to talk of the Furby's ravenous appetite for batteries and
tendency to wear out quickly, I jumped into neither fad. But then I came across a
quirky little game that seemed to take the principle of the Tamagotchi
and expound upon it in a most intriguing way. That game is Monster Rancher.
The principle of Monster Rancher is pretty simple – you get a monster,
raise him, train him, work him, and enter him in tournaments against
other monsters. But, it's HOW you get the monster that is the greatest
part of Monster Rancher's addictive appeal. The game will generate a
monster from any compact disc you own, be it music, PC CD-ROM, or even
another Playstation game. For a person like me that owns in the
neighborhood of 300 music CDs (a boast which will no doubt cause fits
of condescending laughter from the omnivorous Loud Bassoon record review staffers), this is
quite an irresistible proposition. Apparently
there are in excess of 200 unique monsters to be found.
The game begins with a seemingly interminable introduction in which you
are informed you have "aced" the breeder's test to join FIMBA (the
something-or-other Monster Breeder's Association) and that you are ready
to be assigned an assistant. Your assistant is chosen for you, and it's
always the same person, an anime' schoolgirl type named Holly.
Eventually, Holly takes you to town, which is where you do business. In
town you can visit the market, the lab or the shrine. At the market, you
can either rid yourself of an unwanted monster, or buy a new one. It
seems like you should be able to sell your monsters, but I suppose you
can't so cheesy gamers don't just create monster after monster off CD to
sell them for free money. Buying monsters at the market is pretty
useless, as they are lame. At the lab, you can freeze a monster (you can
have as many as ten monsters, but only one active at a time) or revive
one, and you can combine two monsters to get a completely new one. Often
you can take two good monsters and combine them to get one even better
monster.
The real fun is at the shrine, though. This is where you go to create
monsters off of your CDs. Once there, you remove the game CD and insert
any other CD you want. A couple more buttons pressed, back to the game
CD, and voila, a brand new monster. It's unknown exactly what data the
game reads to generate the monster, but it is fixed, as a given CD will
always generate the same monster. Somehow, though, there is logic to
it. A Monster Rancher web page I found indicates that two
different CDs, Mariah Carey Christmas and Christmas with The
Chipmunks both produce a monster called "Santa," while INXS Kick
produces a disc-shaped monster named "Gooaall!" that is colored like a
soccer ball. This one I verified myself, though at this point I think I
lose credibility for still having that CD, but maybe I gain a bit back
since it had not seen laser light in several years.
After you get a monster you like, you take him to the ranch. This is
where you raise and train him to increase his attributes and turn him
into the ultimate fighting machine. There are two main ways to increase
his attributes, either through work or training. You can give him simple
tasks, like hunting or guard duty. These tasks raise one attribute
slightly and award you money. Or you can give him a slightly more
complex task (as opposed to just giving him a complex, which you can
also sort of do if you raise him too strictly), like mining or building,
which will increase one attribute significantly, one attribute slightly,
and decrease one slightly. You also receive more money. Training will
last longer and costs you money, but if your monster does well, the
attribute you choose to train will increase significantly.
After a time on the ranch, you will be asked to send your monster on an
expedition. The point of the expeditions is a bit unclear, but it mostly
serves as another method to make money with your monster, and careful
exploration can lead to discovery of rare special items. Some items can
be used when combining to give the resulting monster extra attributes,
or to produce a specific type of monster.
The point of all this is to enter your monster in battles, and to win
them. There are six classes to go through, starting with the E-class,
going on up to the A-class, and then to the S-class. Once you reach
S-class, you will be invited to four special tournaments. The ultimate
goal is to win all four tournaments, after which, well, from what I have
read, the game just goes on. You can retire your special monster, just
keep on kicking ass, or I suppose get a new monster and start all over
again. The main attraction after that, I suppose, would be to try and
find as many of the different monsters as possible. By using a memory
card, it's also possible to take your monsters to a friend's house and
do battle with his or her monsters.
I'd say that upon playing it a bit this is unequivocally one of the most
Japanese games I have ever played. The theme itself, the execution, and
the characters especially are utterly Japanese in style. I suppose that
merely adds to its charm, however, because it's an oddly enjoyable (and
enjoyably odd?) little game that I'm looking forward to spending a lot
more time with. I've finally gotten me a monster that I think will take
me all the way to the top, so now I just have to invest the time and
effort into doing so. Oh, if only I hadn't gotten rid of my copy of REM's
Monster as it also is reported to produce a special monster named
"Apocolis." (No, I don't have any idea what the hell that means,
either.) If only I had ever bought a copy of Fred Schneider's solo album
with the song "Monster" on it … I bet it gives you a monster named
"Flamer." Hey, stop throwing tomatoes at me!!! Stop it!!! No, not the
mangos!!! NOT THE MANGOS!!!!
Review by ICE |