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Monster Rancher Games Get Ultra Kaiju Spinoff on Switch This Year
posted on by Rafael Antonio Pineda
Bandai Namco Entertainment and Koei Tecmo Games announced on Wednesday that they are developing a new spinoff game for the Monster Rancher series titled Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher. The Nintendo Switch game tasks players with taking care of kaiju monsters from the Ultraman series. The game will ship this year in Japan and in Asia with English subtitles.
Players are able to collect a variety of kaiju from the Ultraman series, and do various activities with them to raise them, including feeding, training, studying, and adventuring. Players are able to send their kaiju into tournament battles, and also fuse different kaiju for unique results, with around 200 kaiju in the game (including fusions).
Koei Tecmo Games and LINE Corporation is also releasing a Monster Rancher smartphone game this year.
The first game in the Monster Rancher series debuted for the PlayStation console in 1997. The game tasks players with raising a variety of monsters to fight in tournaments, with players deciding how to raise the monster, which then determines how the monsters fight. A notable feature of many games in the series is the ability to generate a random monster dependent upon discs that players provide for the game to read.
Monster Rancher 2 initially debuted for PlayStation in Japan in February 1999. The game then launched in North America in August 1999 and in Europe in October 2000.
Koei Tecmo released a port of the original Monster Rancher game in Japan for iOS and Android devices in November 2019 and for Switch in December 2019. The company released a port of Monster Rancher 2 on iOS and Android devices and for Switch in Japan in September 2020. Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX, an updated version of the franchise's first two games, launched in December 2021 for Switch and PC via Steam in Japan, and for Switch, PC via Steam, and iOS devices in the West.
Update: Typo fixed. Thanks, Triltaison.
Source: Bandai Namco Entertainment Southeast Asia YouTube channel via Gematsu
Disclosure: Bandai Namco Filmworks Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Bandai Namco Holdings Inc., is a non-controlling, minority shareholder in Anime News Network Inc.
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