Monster Hunter Rise Ninjala Armor
Image: GungHo / Capcom

Update: The Monster Hunter x Ninjala collab is now live. As detailed below, it features new themed Avatar Costumes based on armour from the game, special emotes for grilling monster meat and sharpening your weapon, and Gum Utsusemi that lets you transform into a Palamute or a Palico.


Original Article (Thu 8th Apr, 2021 13:00 BST): GungHo's online arena brawler Ninjala launched in June last year as a free-to-play Switch exclusive and has been steadily building a solid fanbase in the months since. Back in January, GungHo celebrated six million downloads, so it's definitely doing something right. Across its five seasons (so far), the game has had several 'collabs' — limited-time crossovers with other game series — and the latest collaboration brings Monster Hunter Rise-themed avatars, items and more to the game.

Scheduled to begin at 7pm PT on 27th April, the collaboration will run for a month until 6:59 PT on 26th May, the developers put out a tweet as well as one of their regular developer diary videos which gives the full rundown of the themed items featured (see below).

Players will be able to don Monster Hunter Rise-themed armour, crack out Monster Hunter emotes (including "BBQ Success", "BBQ Fail" and the everyone's favourite "Weapon Sharpening"), and also get their hands on an IPPON decoration, stickers and assorted in-game goodies.

The juiciest of these collab items — the armour 'styles' — will be tied to a new feature: the onimously named 'Collab Gacha', a Gumball Machine that will presumably introduce an element of chance into which style you end up with.

Quite how expensive this collab will get for Monster Hunter fans is a little unclear at the moment. Previous Ninjala collabs featured the Puzzles & Dragons series and — perhaps most significantly — Sonic the Hedgehog and pals. That last one came with some truly eye-watering prices if you wanted the cosmetic Sonic skins — the amount of Jala (Ninjala's in-game currency) needed to grab all three available skins came to a whopping £48. Gulp!

We can but hope that this new gear is a little more affordable, but that seems unlikely, no? That word 'gacha' usually means the wallet is in for a beating.

Let us know if you're down for this Mon Hun collab (man, it just ain't fashionable to finish words these days). And if you've got no idea what this Ninjala thing is, our review might be of use.