There are quite a few hacks that I'd like to see done for games in the Monster Rancher series. I don't have any idea how easy any of them would be, but here's some glitches and odd behavior that's been documented at Monster Rancher Metropolis (
www.monster-rancher.com) that I'd like to see fixed.
- In the original Monster Rancher for the PS1 when you take your monster to town (or maybe it happens when you return to the ranch) your monster gets a 5 point loyalty boost, your raising style moves more towards strict, and your monster's stress increases. Considering this is the equivalent of changing menus and later games don't have this functionality, I'd like to see it hacked out.
- In the same game, there is a monster called Disk that is supposed to be a sort of joke; instead of reading the disk to get the monster, the monster is the Disk. And ironically enough, the game was programmed to never generate a pure Disk monster from disks, you have to obtain one by combining. On the other hand, there is a monster called Doodle that is a unlockable monster. Unlike other unlockable monsters, Doodle can be made from CDs. It's commonly thought that the data for these got mixed up in the disk reading function and I would like to see a hack that corrects this.
- If memory serves, there are some ridiculous typos in this game. "Mosnter" being a reccuring one. If found, it would be nice if these were corrected.
- In Monster Rancher 2 for the PS1, there's been some research done about how stress is calculated when going on an expedition. It's a bit complex, but essentially at the end your monster becomes loses twice as much lifespan due to stress as is expected due to the game checking stress level and calculating how much lifespan to remove twice. This is probably a programming error and I'd like to see it hacked out.
- Another programming oversight is the so called "swim bug" present in the game. When your monster goes to the swim drill, instead of earning stat points proportional to your monster's defensive gains, which is what is expected since it is a defense drill, it gives you stat gains proportional to your life gains. It would be nice if this was fixed.
- Multiple items were also dummied out of this game. In particular, the item cigarette was removed presumably as ordinary censorship, and various DNA capsules for obtaining rare monsters were only obtainable through the Pocketstation which wasn't released outside Japan. I think these should be hacked so they can be obtained through normal play.
- Kato's Oil Flame move, despite having working data in the game for it, is not learnable for some reason. I'd like a hack to enable learning this.
- In Monster Rancher Advance 2 for the GBA, there is a monster that you should be able to unlock after winning a battle. It's called Octochrome and the password given to regenerate it after the battle is MAC_OCT. However, this is gives the incorrect monster and Octochrome is unobtainable through any other method. Fixing this would make the game actually completable which would be wonderful.
- There's a bug so that saving and reloading the game will give you the benefits of items that are only supposed to give benefits at the start of the week. Abusing this makes it possible to raise a monster without ever resting it. While a fun exploit, it's clearly not the intended behavior and I think should be fixed.
- There's a possibility that your monster may ask to eat plot critical items, in particular the Flare Orb. If you let this happen the game becomes unwinnable and you have no choice but to reset. This should be removed.
- After a long while, coaches you have set up for your drills will retire, but sometimes despite this they still run the drills they were assigned to, only now free of charge. They can be replaced and if they are they're gone for good, but they should be removed from the drills automatically.
- There are some other, minor bugs such as using your monster's name instead of yours in conversation or random crashes detailed on Monster Rancher Metropolis and these would be great if they were fixed too.
And there are probably more bizarre little glitches and typos and whatnot spread across these 3 games, not to mention any of the other games in the series. But in particular I'd like to see these games get some love and work a bit more professionally and properly. If anyone does work on these, I'd also like to request that each feature being altered gets its own individual patch. While I wouldn't mind so much having a blanket bug fix patch, others depend on certain glitches I've listed as part of their monster raising strategy while other glitches are irrelevant and they might want corrected.
Topic: Hack ideas: for those without the skill but with all the ideas. (Read 2259666 times)