is a strategy game

Strategy game

A strategy game or strategic game is a game in which the players' uncoerced, and often autonomous decision-making skills have a high significance in determining the outcome...

 for the Nintendo 64

Nintendo 64

The , often referred to as N64, was Nintendo′s third home video game console for the international market. Named for its 64-bit CPU, it was released in June 1996 in Japan, September 1996 in North America, March 1997 in Europe and Australia, September 1997 in France and December 1997 in Brazil...

. It was released only in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 in 1999. Originally dubbed a "Pokémon clone", it is in fact closer to games such as Digimon World

Digimon World

is a video game by Bandai on the PlayStation, released in 1999, about the Digimon virtual pets. It was followed by various sequels released for the PlayStation and other platforms....

or Monster Rancher

Monster Rancher

Monster Rancher, known in Japan as , is a series of life simulation role-playing video games created by Tecmo . The series currently consists of fourteen games across different video game platforms, and future titles are planned...

for the PlayStation

PlayStation

The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console first released by Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan on December 3, .The PlayStation was the first of the PlayStation series of consoles and handheld game devices. The PlayStation 2 was the console's successor in 2000...

.

Gameplay

The game is a 3D RPG in which the player character

Player character

A player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...

 is a child who starts a journey to become a monster breeder

Breeder

A breeder is a person who practices the vocation of mating carefully selected specimens of the same breed to reproduce specific, consistently replicable qualities and characteristics....

 on his tenth birthday. After receiving and hatching an egg

Egg (biology)

An egg is an organic vessel in which an embryo first begins to develop. In most birds, reptiles, insects, molluscs, fish, and monotremes, an egg is the zygote, resulting from fertilization of the ovum, which is expelled from the body and permitted to develop outside the body until the developing...

, the player walks around the world, completing requests from people and raising monsters. Requests are basic RPG quests—such as collecting an item for a non-playable character—and the monsters fight in Pokémon-style, turn-based battles. Unlike Pokémon, every monster in the game comes from the one baby that the player receives as their first monster. Depending on the food it is fed, the monster gains element points, which determine how it evolves. Monsters level up

Level Up

Level Up was a UK children's TV programme that was broadcast on CBBC. It was launched on the 3rd April 2006, replacing Xchange. The show was an hour long and during the school year broadcasting from 7:30am until 8:30am...

both through defeating other monsters and when walking around the town. Monsters hatch from eggs that can be bought at the local monster shop.