Monster Hunter World gets a wholesome birthday party from fans for its 5-year anniversary

Monster Hunter World celebrated its fifth anniversary earlier this week, bringing fans  around the world together in celebration.

Yesterday, January 26, marked exactly five years since Monster Hunter World debuted across PC, PS4, and Xbox One, and brought an entirely new generation of hunters to Capcom's long-running series. The official Monster Hunter Twitter account thanked players for taking part in hunts, just below, prompting an outpouring of reminiscence from followers.

Comments underneath the tweet fondly remember some of the weird and wonderful moments of Monster Hunter World. Some players recall the first time they encountered the fearsome Anjanath, for example, a central face of Monster Hunter World, while others point to post-launch additions like the classic Deviljho and the spice they added to the game. The game's dedicated subreddit has also seen plenty of fans share their favorite moments from the past five years, including some poor souls who are still – still! – farming for attack decorations. 

The Monster Hunter community are a talented bunch, and nowhere is that better evidenced than in the artwork celebrating the event, just like the one below. Nergigante is famed among World players for being a sort of God-killer, even felling the climactic Shara Ishvalda at the end of the game, and it's been immortalized here in incredible detail.

Another talented fan has put their skills to use with the original animation below, showing an Anjanath and an electrifying Tobi-Kadachi patiently awaiting some food. Monster Hunter's creatures don't typically consume one another – Deviljho's canon appetite notwithstanding – but it seems these two will make an exception when a steak looks that good.

Monster Hunter World took Capcom's franchise to undisputed new heights, resulting in 18.5 million sales for the game worldwide as of September 2022, the most sales of any Capcom-made game. Hell, even its DLC, Iceborne, has outsold the vast majority of Capcom games on its own, tallying nearly 10 million units sold, which for DLC is basically unheard of.

So good was Monster Hunter World's player retention that Capcom prepared years of post-launch content for it, the vast majority of which wasn't locked behind any paywall whatsoever. Five years later, World has brought a once niche series to a massive and global audience, and they're now hungry for anything else the series has to offer, like the Monster Hunter Rise Title Update 4 reveal stream coming on February 1. 

After launching on Switch in 2020, Monster Hunter Rise debuted on PlayStation and Xbox consoles earlier this month, bringing another excellent game to a brand new audience.