Monster Rancher TCG

[Yorae]

I would be really really really happy if someone created this plugin based on the old PS1 game Battle Card Episode II was the latest one I think.

[uankaink]

its difficult to see someone create the plugin...
first, its not quite popular...
second, its only have a few card. not more than 200 in total i guess...
third, card image problem, no image sources except cropping ingame screenshot...

so i suggest to create the plugin by urself...
rather than waiting someone to do it...

[aardvark]

Monster Rancher! I loved that... and I have no idea why. I guess just the concept behind cd swapping was novel. I don't think that it would translate very well into an actual tcg. Unless you make all tcg cards available. I swap in Master Chief from Universalia! Take that Suezo! mwahahahaha!

*cough*

Er, so, yah. I'm interested to see what ideas anyone would have to make it work as a tcg.

[Axlotl]

Well, its been a CCG twice already. Once in real form, and once in video game form, with totally different rules.

I personally enjoyed the video game one, probably because the options for video game single player CCGs are extremely limited, and the sequel was actually a console game, not just an annoying hand-held game like Pokemon, Versus, or DBZ CCG.

I've played the real CCG only a little, my sister had bought some cards from a bookshop on clearance years ago. I found it to be an accurate representation of the game in the sense that you spend most of the time playing with yourself. Not a good thing for a CCG. (Although I do generally like the video game.) I also found the rules for triggering a battle to be fundamentally flawed. I probably wouldn't even remember enough of the physical game to actually play it any more though, just a few vague details I remembered. To long gone and to many other, much better, CCGs since then.

I've played a lot of CCGs.

[uankaink]

Yes, im also enjoyed playing Monster Rancher TCG in PSX several years ago...
its been the "real" TCG because u have to trade (ante) to get a new card...
not buying the card like nowadays TCG game.
well, u can create a card from CD too (thats their trademark anyway)

the system was unique and most creative on the era...
its a team monster battle, 3v3...
it use Guts system to perform attack card, u gain guts from discarding card at beginning of your main phase...
then the enemy can evade ur attack by using dodge card or whatever its called...
the system itself was very solid, easy to learn but hard to master...
i find the game also very balanced, its hard to describe which monster is strongest, they have their own strength and weakness...

[Ripplez]

can someone explain this cd swapping thing and why it matters when talking about the cards? id really apppreicate it, i think without it, some of this discusion loses context for me

[aardvark]

Oh! I missed out on that. I only played the crappines that was the gb version. Didn't care for it. I have a couple of version for the ps2 tho. So-so right there.

Ripz, the monster rancher series allowed you to "create" new monsters by taking out the game disc and putting in another type of disc. The console would read it and interpret it according to the game and voila! a new monster. It was a novel concept, at least to me, and kinda fun to see what monsters you could make with all of the discs you own.

[Yorae]

Yes, as it has been said above, it is a very solid card game in the Playstation version, which is why if people gave it a chance it can be a very fulfilling game to play. It is easily as tactical as any popular CCG and more unique than most. You defend your three chosen monsters from attack by using skill cards which cost guts. After the attack phase you are able to discard any number of cards from the hand in-order to gain more guts (one for each card discarded). Dodge and defense cards are available against attacks, however these also cost guts to use, generally. There are also a lot of card combos that can be used and many styles of deck. The main types of deck people used in the game: the fast attack (small weak attacks that cost fewer guts to use), decking (specialise in dodging all your attacks and making you discard cards) and power decks (high defense monsters with extremely powerful attacks, but cost loads of guts). Also you are right the person that made this would have to rip from game more than likely, unless there are sites out there which have already done this in-order to provide a walkthrough of each card for the game? But this can easily be done by using an emulator to run the game and then screen print to copy the game screen, with a bit of image editing there you have your card image.

[Howl]

Monster Rancher! I loved that... and I have no idea why. I guess just the concept behind cd swapping was novel. I don't think that it would translate very well into an actual tcg. Unless you make all tcg cards available. I swap in Master Chief from Universalia! Take that Suezo! mwahahahaha!

*cough*

Er, so, yah. I'm interested to see what ideas anyone would have to make it work as a tcg.

heh i think its time for a suezon card lol ..

[pkt-zer0]

I wouldn't mind making this plugin, actually. With a bit of hex editing, I managed to get all the cards without having to grind them out, which could be used to grab all the card images/text from the game. That will take quite some time if I have to do it all myself, though.

EDIT: Actually, that turned out to be less time-consuming than I thought. I've got all the card data and images now, but there seem to be a couple of errors in the images and descriptions. The descriptions are rather vague and/or poorly translated, so the exact effects of a card are unclear without testing.

EDIT2: Tested most of the unclear card mechanics, the initial version of the plugin is complete. Only the minor art problems on the card images need to be fixed now. Packaged plugin here (also includes the card data in OpenOffice spreadsheet format and TXT file explaining the terms I used to shorten descriptions), raw image files here.

[Zyguy]

I know this is an old topic and Im necro posting, but I have something that submits to this.

Before the GBC game to monster Rancher, they came up with a card game for it.
Pokemon killed off monster rancher among several other monster breeding games
(Such as Robopon, one of my old favorites.) and the TCG never flourished.
It would be rare to find such cards on the net unless you know where to look.

Attached to this post is the rule book or rule set to play the old TCG.
I have a few of my old cards, but it won't help out in creating the WHOLE Plugin.

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