While images on-screen showed ancient relics swirling to life, I was using another tiny, Cheeto-dust-covered finger to swap the game disc with albums from my mother’s Bon Jovi collection-holding no regard for their safety. In the game, you’d travel to a shrine and ask to begin the ritual of unlocking companions from their Stone Disc prisons. In order to replicate the feeling of finding and summoning monsters from Disc Stones, Monster Rancher asked kids around the world to raid their parents’ CD collections and drag them to their PlayStations. It’s all awfully petty, but we’ll roll with it because the actual simulation of finding these stones and unlocking them was brilliant. Those Disc Stones were created by a god, who at some point just got so pissed off at us for causing so much trouble that the entity wound up locking away creatures in said stones. The game’s setup has you chasing down Disc Stones to unlock monsters for training, battling, and companionship-yes, kind of like Pokemon. If you missed Monster Rancher’s late ‘90s and early ‘00s installments, then perhaps you’re unfamiliar with the whole gimmick. Related: What I Learned About Death And Loss From Monster Rancher 2 Spending hours at its summoning shrine is one of my fondest childhood memories, and it’s why I’m feeling a little disappointed over the new collection's lost mechanic. It may not have been the original intent of their production, but I used those endless stacks of songs to unlock secret companions in Monster Rancher 2. All I needed was for these discs to read on my PlayStation. The artists were almost always unfamiliar, but I didn’t care-that wasn’t the point of my purchase. Constantly searching for ways to spoil me on a tight budget, my mom would oblige and drive me to sales where I’d buy used CDs in bulk with saved up quarters and dollar bills. As just a tiny thing, I understood my mom couldn’t afford new albums, so I’d shuffle outside for a newspaper and look up garage sale listings. For months after getting Monster Rancher 2 for Christmas, I had a Saturday morning ritual.