These days when talking about the developer Monolith Soft, it's usually thought of as a Nintendo-focused company being that all of its most recent and arguably most popular titles from the Xenoblade Chronicles series have been talked about among gamers for generations of consoles now, especially as the original game came out in 2010 or indeed 2011 for Europe thankfully, partly because of the "Operation Rainfall" fan campaign which helped to garner much interest in the high profile title which otherwise might not have got a release over here; which seems unthinkable now looking back.

Established on October 1st 1999; 19 years ago in Tokyo, Japan. Monolith Soft was founded by Tetsuya Takahashi who had previously worked as a developer at Nihon Falcom and at Square later on, he worked on many titles with his wife Kaori Tanaka, they ended up contributing towards development of many titles in the Final Fantasy series, then when Xenogears was released Takahashi became dissatified with Square's business approach at the time and to cut a long story short, Monolith Soft was formed from a team of very experienced developers who had previously worked at Square and other studios, going on to create some of the most beloved RPG series in their own right.

During the Namco era the Xenosaga series was created, it was a spiritual successor to Xenogears and arguably became even bigger, it was three episodes long spanning three games on the PS2 but sadly in the West we only got the second episode, so it was a case of import or miss out in those days. Around the same time, Nintendo GameCube owners were treated to the original Baten Kaitos game which was an RPG with a card-based battle system unrelated to any previous "Xeno-verse" games, it also got a sequel which we didn't get here in PAL regions but it did make it as far as getting an NTSC release.

Shortly before the Bandai-Namco merger, things started to change again and Monolith Soft didn't have the creative freedom that it once did, so forming closer ties with Nintendo seemed to be a more natural fit due to the companies similar design philosophies, it wasn't long before Nintendo would acquire the developer and indeed it seems this another thing we have the late Satoru Iwata to thank for because he was instrumental in this decision; the rest is relatively recent history and Monolith Soft have worked on more games than you might think, even helping out with the Super Smash Bros. series amongst other projects.

You can read up on their entire history at various places but I thought it would be nice to cover their history in an abridged form but on the subject of Monolith Soft's 20th Anniversary, at N-Europe we'd like to take the chance to wish the company many happy returns on this monomental occasion and if you want to check out some special wallpapers like the one used in the banner above then you can do so over at the Monolith Soft Official Website.

Personally, although I own many Monolith Soft titles across various platforms, I've yet to properly complete any of them but I have played enough of them in part to know that I like the company's attitude and style and in the words of a certain famous protagonist from their games, I'd just like to say that "I'm really feeling it!" and will endeavour to return to some of these glorious titles in celebration of this event.

Do you have any memories of playing any Monolith Soft titles over the past two decades? Are you looking forward to playing Xenoblade Chronicles on the Switch either for the first or perhaps third time? What is your favourite game series that the company has created to date?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments section or join in with the discussion on our forum.