Capcom started building Monster Hunter Rise on the 3DS due to the lack of Switch dev kits

Monster Hunter Rise has been a big hit for Capcom, selling over 11 million units since launch. The Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak expansion is also doing extremely well, having moved 4+ million units in just over 2 months. It’s safe to say that Capcom’s idea to bring Monster Hunter Rise as a console-exclusive to Switch was one well warranted!

Capcom certainly has plenty of experience building Monster Hunter titles that play well to portable strengths, so Monster Hunter Rise wasn’t too much of a stretch for their dev team. That said, the early days of Monster Hunter Rise did present one unique hiccup for the company. The arrangement Capcom had with Nintendo was to create a new Monster Hunter game for Switch, but Capcom didn’t have a Switch dev kit to work on.

What did Capcom do to get the ball rolling? Nintendo Dream spoke to Monster Hunter Rise director Yasunori Ichinose to find out, and the answer is pretty surprising.

We had no development hardware at the time, but that was the arrangement we had with Nintendo. Generations Ultimate development was in full swing, so at first there were only three people in the team: myself, the main planner, and a programmer. We didn’t have a development kit, and instead used a 3DS. We tested Wirebugs and mechanics that had been in the works since the project’s inception by making modifications to Generations Ultimate.

[Monster Hunter Rise director Yasunori Ichinose]

While it might seem wild that Monster Hunter Rise began life on the 3DS, there are definitely elements that make sense. Capcom already knew how to work on the 3DS at this point, and they had experience with the Monster Hunter franchise on that platform as well. Most importantly, they had all the 3DS dev kits that they needed!

With all that being the case, using Nintendo’s previous portable system to build out a new Monster Hunter for Nintendo’s upcoming portable seems like quite a smart move!