What was Monster Hunter Portable 3rd?

The fastest-selling PSP game in Japanese history, and the biggest Monster Hunter the West never officially got.

Monster Hunter Portable 3rd launched in Japan on December 1, 2010, and detonated: 2.58 million copies in two weeks, three million shipped in seventeen days, the fastest-selling PSP title Japan had ever seen and, at that moment, the fastest-selling game in Capcom’s history. PSP hardware sales spiked past 326,000 units in its launch week as Japan bought the machine to play it. Lifetime sales reached 4.9 million, almost entirely inside one country.

The game itself was a celebration: a new, Japanese-style hot-spring village, Yukumo; every weapon type restored after Tri’s cuts; and a new flagship, the thunder wolf Zinogre, one of the most beloved designs in the series. An HD remaster followed on PlayStation 3 in August 2011 as the first of Sony’s PSP Remasters. The West received neither version. Portable 3rd remains the great absence in the series’ Western library.