Koei Tecmo will be releasing a digital port of the monster raising sim sometime later this year in celebration of its 20th anniversary. The IP seeing the light of day is surprising in itself, but the series official Twitter went live just a few months ago and has toted hashtags for both the first and second games in the series ever since. Of course, featuring handler assistants Holly and Colt.

The very first Monster Farm was released on July 24, 1997. And, this year it will return!

The original Monster Farm port will be available for release in 2019. Look forward to more updates!

The Monster Rancher series, titled Monster Farm in Japan, was best known as that odd-off PlayStation series that allowed players to summon monsters via disc. If you had a collection of music CDs or games, you had a whole world of monsters to bring to life in either title.

While this announcement is specifically for the original Monster Farm title, the tweet with the announcement still includes the hashtag for Monster Farm 2. It’s very possible an announcement regarding the much-improved sequel will be coming sometime around the release date.

All signs point to this port being a digital-only release, raising the question of how players will be able to summon in this disc-less modern age. We’ll find out eventually, but for now, fans of the classic series can take solace in the fact this announcement reached #1 trending on Twitter mobile in Japan as well as Yahoo! Japan (which is still quite relevant there), showing strong support for its return on modern platforms.

It looks like Monster Rancher really is rising again! Though whether it will get an international release is still yet to be seen.