MonsterFenrick

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

haha, yeah.

I started the Fan Site back in 1999, and even got Tecmo's blessing in writing, and I've also got IMDB/game credits in two of the games in the franchise from before the KoeiTecmo merger . It's been a hobby/obsession for over 2 decades that all started... mostly because My wife had beat the 1st game before me in '97, just waiting for me to get home from work to show me.

The Monster Rancher community is much smaller and overshadowed by other communities by comparison. MR's genre is pretty niche and hard to spread the word because of it, so I try :)

The remaster of MR1&2DX (Steam/Switch/iOS) does have a random button in addition to a searchable internal database of Albums, Song titles, and games.

For whatever reason, the Random button in Ultra Kaiju is absent from the North American version, so you just either have to enter in some random letters/words in the Keywords field, or use NFC. The Japanese and Southeast Asia versions of Ultra Kaiju have a CDDB and Random button, though the "CDDB" is a bit misleading because it actually uses the keywords lookup to generate the Kaiju from the CDDB entries. In this regard, at least, the North American version is superior since the Keywords aren't locked to a pre-defined list.

Why did JP and SEA get a Song List and NA got Keywords for UKMR? Maybe copyright or licensing, though it's honestly anyone's guess.

But it still would have been nice for them to keep the Random button :)

Most people don't actually use the NFC, It's just not as highly accessible in North America as it is in other places (Also, very specifically, Amiibos will not work, and this is an in-game notification as well. No idea if this was a licensing thing or what). It's an interesting gimmick to replace how Swapping out CDs worked for the original Playstation game, but most people use the Keyword generation in the North American version.

Thankfully, we solved how keywords worked. After scripting out auto-solving more than 2 million keywords, and filtering out duplicates, we have published options for every baseline, and every variant (stuff that has different stat gains, starting stats, starting techs, or faster guts regeneration from the baselines).

• Keyword Solver for manual entry of any keywords you want, to see what it will produce
• Curated list of Keywords: Pick a Kaiju main, then Kaiju sub. Below the choice will be a scrollable table of all the Script-found Kaiju and fan-submitted Kaiju

NTAG scanning and Bus Passes are solved too.
The bus passes are fun/interesting because the remaining balance of Yen on them is what determines what it makes. Many of the numbers are references to Ultraman or Monster Rancher lore. If you're curious about that, check out: https://legendcup.com/faq-ukmrnfc.php

I realize this is a bit late, but... I did end up making a tutorial video, showcasing how to use the app and extra features, and "Disc Swap" mechanic with Emulation of Monster Rancher 2, with no optical drive.

https://youtu.be/bhI02o8UAsw

Links to MR2 tutorial (mostly the same with a couple extra things) and links to the app
https://kbin.social/m/MonsterRancher/t/496208

Small, but huge correction. I forgot to include (omit) replacements in my napkin math above. There are 60 indices and two index fields that are summed to the offset result. so index 0 & 5 produce the same result as index 5 & 0 etc.

• Offsets can be a combination of 60 indices. Each breed with offsets is a choice of 2 indices from a set of 60 with replacement (1 & 5, and 5 & 1 are the same result), so (60-1+2)!/((60-1)!x2!) = 61x60/2 = 1,830
• 1,830 x 333 (breeds that offsets can be applied to) = 609,390 spawns total
• There are 60 ??? spawns in NTSC and 19 special spawns that aren't ???
• There are 70 ??? spawns on PAL and 19 special spawns that aren't ???
• There are 6 different monsters in the market and those spawn with base stats
• 609,390 + 60 + 19 + 6 = 609,475 total monster spawns on NTSC
• 609,390 + 70 + 19 + 6 = 609,485 total monster spawns on PAL

In MR2DX, the Indices work almost the same, except each index value has a range that it is randomly rolled, so if 2 same indices are together they can still be different. I'm not even sure how to math the possible value range for those but since the original game are static indices, it's much easier.

The newest game "Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher" on the Nintendo Switch (A cross over between Ultraman and the Monster Rancher franchise) has a feature for reading NFC (basically anything except amiibos -- probably a licensing thing).

I'm not sure how one would read NFCs using a Switch emulator, but that's kind of a next evolution of it I suppose.
There's also a Keyword system (type in any word in 2 input fields) to generate the monsters as well. The Keyword system has been fully cracked, and some mechanics of NFC has been cracked (for NTAG215 anyway).

Well, the 1999 NTSC version of MR2 has 391 playable breeds (factoring in all mixed, pures and rares).

• There's a very small handful of additional non-rare breeds that are hard coded, I can't recall off the top of my head but roughly 10.
• There's 58 Rare breeds (Special skins) that have no offset adjustments
• There's 333 monsters that can have born-with stat offsets and there's 60 offset ranges x 2 offset parameters to determine final born-with offset stats.

I think this means there's roughly 1,198,868 total variations of the 333 breeds that can have offsets plus the ~68 rares/special spawns that don't have offsets.
This may not be exact, but it's a close ballpark.

There's several other apps on LegendCup that are amazing for playing the original or the new DX version if you are into Monster Rancher, but those aren't really emulation specific, and didn't want to risk being off-topic discussing them.
However, the Make-A-Monster app is for the 1999 NTSC and PAL versions for original console or through Emulation, so I thought i'd risk posting about it :)

Glad even 1 person knows what Monster Rancher is tbh!