At last count, Capcom's Monster Hunter series has sold 8.5 million units worldwide - not bad for a series that only started five years ago and doesn't have much of a life outside of Japan!

Back in 2007, we gave you a review of the then-current Monster Hunter Freedom 2 - and today, we've got an update, as the series makes its "biggest-ever push into the West", with the release of the PSP-exclusive Monster Hunter Freedom Unite in June. To celebrate, we've got a brand new trailer to show off, and some details on the game better known as Monster Hunter Portable 2G.

Pertinent Points

• The biggest Monster Hunter title to date with over 500 hours of gameplay


• Huge variety of character customisations including 1500 weapons and 2000 armour sets


• Players can form a team of up to 4 players through Ad-Hoc play and experience the multiplayer social gaming phenomenon


• Media Install option where players can save the game to a memory stick, allowing the game to load from the memory stick and UMD simultaneously for faster loading times


• AI Felyne companion who will accompany players on quests and gather extra resources. With the ‘felyne casting’ feature players can share their companions with other players, transferring data using the PSP’s sleep mode.


• Fans of the series can transfer their data from Monster Hunter Freedom 2

It's already sold more than 3 million copies in Japan, and today, more than six months after it hit shelves, consumers are still snapping up more than 10,000 copies per week. Monster Hunter Portable 2G was the top-selling game of all platforms in Japan in 2008, knocking Wii Fit, Mario Kart and even Pokemon from the podium. Apparently, "Monster Hunter" receives more hits on Google than Final Fantasy or Nintendo's mascot.

And it's not just video games - there's a "large and varied" selection of Monster Hunter merchandise - figurines, clothing, comics, art books, play diaries, game guides and more than 120 books.


So - get ready for the balance of nature to shift when this social gaming phenomenon takes over the West, thanks to the release of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, coming out in June of this year and promising to make quite a splash.