1st game in monster raising series launched for PSX in 1997

The official Twitter account for Koei Tecmo's Monster Rancher ( Monster Farm ) franchise revealed on Wednesday that Koei Tecmo will release a port of the first Monster Rancher game this year. The announcement did not reveal which platform will receive the port, but it used the Japanese term normally used for digital releases.

The first game in the series debuted for the PlayStation console in 1997. The game tasks players with raising a variety of monsters to fight in tournaments, with the game 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 the player provides for the game to read.

The latest entry in the series is My Monster Rancher , a smartphone game that debuted in 2011.

The game series inspired a 73-episode TV anime series that ran from 1999 to 2001.

Source: Monster Rancher's Twitter account and website