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Monster Rancher came out of nowhere from Tecmo back in 1997 and introduced us to something which was a mix of Pokemon and Tamagotchi a bit Harvest Moon and a very unique feature in the form that it was possible to find Monsters through all kinds of CD’s. Be it other Playstation Games, Music or Software CD’s even Saturn or PC Games would give you one of the around 200 monsters in this game.

Unlike Pokemon where the battles are more like in JRPG’s, the system in Monster Rancher was more something between that and fighting games if the player choose to control the monsters directly.

Personally I had over hundred hours of fun with this game and loved to train strong monsters and let it fight against the monster of a friend with both monster CPU controlled.

We had even bets on them for a bit money lol. Thanks a lot @ Fischhead for coming up with an illustration for this overlooked Gem!

Monster Rancher got a couple of sequels for the Playstation, Playstation 2 and Game Boy Advance but did not make it to the PS3 ..it has been years since the last game was released.

Monster Rule by Fischhead

“During the late 90’s Pokemon craze, I was the only one of my friends who didn’t have a Game Boy. After a few years of owning an N64, I wanted a break from Nintendo in general, so I bought a Playstation and got hooked on Monster Rancher instead. The idea of collecting monsters from the CDs I had lying around the house really intrigued me, but unfortunately this concept makes playing a bit harder these days unless you’re using cheats.

Monster Rancher’s “eye-conic” mascot is the Suezo, a big, yellow, tadpole-like cyclops that hops around on it’s tail and uses it’s tongue for attacking. Although it sought to ride the success of Pokemon, Monster Rancher was also more about caring for a virtual pet. The training process could get you quite attached to that special little critter you resurrected from some random CD… er, I mean, “Disc Stone.”

My idea for this piece was to recreate the Monster Rancher box art which was bad even by 1997 CG standards. I thought about sizing this artwork for a jewel case and having Suezo smashed against the plastic like in the original, but it didn’t work well with the drawings so I omitted the effect. The Disc Stone, Dino, and Golem are all fully colored, but most of their detail is lost with them being trapped inside the CD.”