The first Monster Hunter was developed because Capcom wanted to take advantage of the PS2 online capabilities
Speaking of Ryozo Tsujimioto, in the same interview with Game Informer, titled “10 Years Hunting Monsters,” he revealed that Capcom originally created Monster Hunter to take advantage of the PS2’s online capabilities. Along with Monster Hunter, Capcom also released a racing title called Auto Modellista and an RE title called Resident Evil Outbreak, which on a side note, had zombie elephants.
Tsujimoto, who was working on Auto Modellista at the time, noted that “Monster Hunter was designed based on the concept of a ‘multi-action online game that anyone can join and play’, and we made full use of Capcom’s best action game talent.”
Monster Hunter 1 turned out to be a huge success in Japan and gamers continued to play it online until Capcom turned off the servers everywhere except Japan in 2007. The Red Bull site notes that Japanese servers actually remained till 2011.
