Awesome! :)
Don’t forget to consider jumping into the Monster Rancher Discord if you want to hang out with other nerds that love this game. If you’re interested in what the Online Tournament scene looks like, we keep a Calendar of Tournaments & Events as well. These are posted in the Discord Events, but if you’re not keen on joining discord and would rather take a peek first you can find tourney hosts and times here.

DX being cross platform with Mobile and Switch, the Shrine CD Reading process is completely overhauled and doesn’t work remotely in the same way it did for the Playstation. The built in CD Database/Song List totals 664,909 Title/Artists entries. This not only includes albums but individual songs as well as albums and games etc.

One might think this is limiting since the original could use “all the CDs in the world” but the game is only built to give you a limited number of monsters based on meta data read from the Discs. DX provides much more than the original game is capable of doing, even with an finite number of entries.

To compare:

1. MR2 1999 has 391 playable Breeds (Pures/Mixes/Rares) plus a handful of roughly 10 variants of a few those breeds totaling 401 playable monsters. Even with 10 billion different and unique CDs you’ll never be able to acquire more than this.
2. MR2DX has has 415 total playable breeds due to the inclusion of Japanese rares + Boss monsters onto the original roster of Pures/Mixes/Rares, and a whopping 803 variants on top of the primary baselines, totaling 1218 playable monsters.

• What is a Variant? It’s a monster that has Stat gain patterns not typical of the normal breed, or starts with an extra attack they don’t normally start with, faster or slower guts regeneration, or otherwise has different core baseline than the standard of the breed.
• What about different Starting Stats? Random starting stats aren’t the same as a variant, these are separate from the core baseline of a regular or variant breed. DX even has many monsters that have true starting stat randomization rather than the “Static” randomization that CDs provide.

A few other bonus mentions for DX: There’s a FF (Fast Forward) toggle to speed up the game, it’s got upscaled resolution and textures, but it is still the base game underneath (not a 100% remaster, more like a light-remaster). 10 bonus freezer slots. Items now stack in your inventory (though the total number of inventory slots is the same based on your House size), Items can be bought or sold in bulk now, and load times are eliminated when going back and forth from ranch to town or entering a tournament. There’s also a handful of mods created by the MR community. It’s not a perfect remaster but it’s definitely my favorite version of the game now.

If you have any questions about DX, please feel free to ask :)
I don’t know if it’s worth it to have a whole separate post about it or not but for now I guess i’ll keep it here.

Oh, if you have a Switch, there’s actually a whole new Monster Rancher game barely a year old. Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher … It’s a franchise crossover where you raise Kaiju monsters from Ultraman. The mechanics are basically the best features of MR1 and MR2 with new stuff because Kaiju. it’s familiar enough that you can jump right in, with enough new stuff to keep you on your toes

There is a newer version of the game Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX that’s on Steam, Switch, and iOS… this has a built in CD / Song database so you can access all monsters without being limited to what’s on hand. LegendCup.com is fully updated to include the DX changes in the game if you need current resources (Many of the old sites are gone, and many old guides have bits of out-dated info that’s been debunked or data-mined since then) and includes the Song Lists for EN and JP versions if you want to jump straight into raising a monster you’ve never seen or raised before.

Also, the DX remaster has both the JP and EN rares available in the same game, in addition to enemy/boss monsters legally obtainable and are unique playable monsters too! Most of the online tournaments use the newer DX version which is cross-platform and cross-region. However, the Combo Breaker tournament will be played on an emulated PSX version of the game due to logistics. DX needs reliable internet connection to access people’s uploaded monsters from around the world and heavily crowded conventions aren’t known for their internet reliability. Even if you don’t have the PSX version, MooseBones will be converting anyone’s qualifying submitted monster from DX into a monster on a PSX game save to be used locally at the tournament.

I’m happy to see even 1 response to this haha… It’s such a niche game/genre I was kind of expecting this to just be an empty echo into the Ether.

Monster Rancher has made a return!, in a sense.
“MR1&2DX” a “Remaster” is on Steam, Switch, and iOS. This came out in 2021. (It’s mostly the same game, just with a searchable CD Database/Song List instead of physical media, upscaling, both JP and English monsters in the same game, Enemy monsters raisable, extra freezer slots, fast forward, instant loads etc. a bunch of QoL stuff).

Also there’s Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher (This one is on Switch only) that came out in 2022… a Crossover franchise of raising Ultraman Kaiju that plays like a mix of both MR1 and MR2

And LINE: Monster Farm, came out in 2023. A JP only gacha game, though there’s some hopium that it will be released in the west eventually.

There’s a huge Monster Rancher community and Discord that even holds public tournaments with varying formats and stat-cap limits. It’s a lot of fun!

Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX is also on Steam, Switch, and iOS!
It is a remastered per say. Not so much a new graphics engine or anything, but with bug fixes, item changes that function better, and GUI & other QoL improvements :)

Hey now… Monster Rancher is Legit and predates Monsters, Inc. by 4 years :)