Pokémon rip-off lands on Nintendo Switch in bumper free drop, and it’s my gaming guilty pleasure

The Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 have been inundated with classic games thanks to the Nintendo Switch Online subscription service.

NSO isn’t perfect by any means. I’d much rather own these games digitally rather than rent them, much like what was possible on the Nintendo Wii/Wii U.

Nevertheless I still aim to get my money’s worth for every annual subscription and it’s re-introduced me to some games I’d long-since forgotten, like Monster Rancher Advance.

Hear me out on this; Monster Rancher Advance rocks and it’s worth a go if you’re into Pokémon.

It’s a turn-based creature battling game from Tecmo and yet it does enough to distinguish itself from The Pokémon Company’s legendary IP.

For starters it’s not a full-scale RPG. The Game Boy Advance title has no expansive world to explore and you don’t add new creatures to your team by catching them. Instead you create them. You can even combine monsters later to form more powerful ones.

Monster Hunter Advance- Credit Tecmo

It’s also not the only game in the series. There are loads of games spanning several platforms, but this is the only one available via Nintendo Switch Online.

Monster Rancher Advance went down well with critics back in 2001, but I didn’t know that at the time. All I knew is it was one of the many games I’d play on road trips and when I was getting bored of the Nintendo GameCube.

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There were hundreds of monsters to play with and while I can’t recall many of their names off the top of my head, I remember naturally gravitating to the dragons and golems. You could combine these into some pretty cool hybrid monsters.

Like most kids once I played my first Pokemon game I rarely settled for anything less. The only exceptions were a Nintendo DS game based on the Dinosaur King TV series, and anything related to Bakugan: Battle Brawlers. I had a few games linked to that if I remember correctly.

After seeing Monster Rancher Advance land on Nintendo Switch Online I feel like the restaurant critic in Ratatouille having a flashback to his youth. Now I’m keen to track down some of the other games in the series and see what else I was missing out on.

What other games were added to Nintendo Switch Online this week

While Monster Rancher Advance was the game that stood out to me the most, it's worth shouting out the two games that have dropped alongside it.

Metal Slug Advance has joined the fray and is an excellent run-and-gun side-scroller if that’s your genre of choice. It looks great, sounds great and plays like a Metal Slug game should; what’s not to love?

The other game that has been added is more of a deep-cut; it’s called Kururin Paradise. I can’t say I know much about this title, but after looking at the gameplay it looks to be a pretty cute puzzle-game.

All three titles are available via the Game Boy Advance library, which requires Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pass to access.

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