Hunting & Co-op

The prehistory here is the Dreamcast. A console shipped with a modem as standard, and Phantasy Star Online (2000) made a full online RPG playable on a home console (not a world first: Meridian 59 and Ultima Online came earlier on the PC). In 2004, Monster Hunter on the PlayStation 2 was built around hunting together online, which the connections and infrastructure of the day made hard; development struggled, and the first game landed as a not-quite. The turn came with the PSP. Producer Ryozo Tsujimoto and director Kaname Fujioka have said they always felt how high the barrier to getting online was. So they used ad-hoc wireless: bring your machines together and you are playing. Across Portable (2005), 2nd (2007) and 2nd G (2008), a scene appeared all over Japan — lunch breaks and after school, PSPs pooled on a desk, a hunt underway. The problem was not solved with technology but by changing how the game was played. The genre name “hunting action” began in Capcom's own labeling and settled as God Eater (2010), Toukiden (2013) and Freedom Wars (2014) took it up. Then in 2018 Monster Hunter: World went out to the world's shelves on a policy of top quality on a home console and a simultaneous worldwide release. What was born on Japanese sidewalks — bring your machine, hunt together — is now a cross-play standard.