Here’s the truth: I’ve never heard of Monster Hunter. I’m usually up on this sort of thing, but somehow it slipped through the cracks. Maybe I assumed they had renamed Monster Rancher. I’d continue believing that if I hadn’t found out that Tecmo did “Rancher” and Capcom made “Hunter.” Knowing that it is an action RPG by Capcom certainly makes me want to play it now.

Now that we’ve got that all figured out, the actual news: Monster Hunter (not Rancher) 3 is going to be Wii exclusive (yay?) but a total revamp of the franchise to fit the specifications of the system (promising!).

The infinite replay value that comes with a good online multiplayer mode is the best reason to buy a game (worked for every first person shooter ever), and Monster Hunter is no exception. Monster Hunter’s online mode (form a group with real players, trot around, kill monsters) is similar to other RPGs like Final Fantasy XI or Phantasy Star Online, the main difference being you could play through the story offline (the lack of which being the sole reason I never bothered with FFXI or PSO), but the online version offered more content. We can certainly expect that tradition to hold, as the online mode features an entire section of the game’s city devoted to being a meeting area for players to meet up. And let’s not forget: a Wii-exclusive game with a good online multiplayer can only help the Wii’s sales.

The most interesting thing to me, however, is that they’re revamping the franchise for the Wii. Too often are there multi-platform games that just fail on the Wii due to it being a game that was just meant for the traditional game controller (though we can all agree that Resident Evil 4 was born to be played on the Wii before the Wii even existed, right?), so it’s nice to see a developer (originally it was on the PS2) make the most of their platform of choice instead of just forcing the Wiimote controls onto a game it wasn’t meant for.

Trailer: