It's no secret I'm a big fan of oldschool RPGs. I consider Secret of Evermore and Live A Live some of my very favorite games and I've played Seiken Densetsu 3 to completion about a dozen times.
As I'm growing more and more disillusioned about the trends in modern gaming (as well as the anguish of 70 dollar games, plus 30 dollar DLCs, plus live-service elements), I find myself seeking out more and more older titles I may have overlooked, experiencing them the way they're intended to: emulated on a PC.

Combine these two factors and I'm looking into obscure SNES-era RPGs. How do I search? Why the most obvious way of course: I look through everything that has entries on The Spriters Resource, until I find something that catches my eye.
You'd be surprised how many strange things you might find there. One game I found was a Japan-only RPG called Idea no Hi, which has a fantranslation that's in-progress as of the writing of this article.
Another that stood out was a game called Treasure of the Rudras, the last game Squaresoft produced for the SNES, with a bizarre magic system where you could type in words that would become the spells you can use in battle.

Treasure of the Rudras satisfied my lust for a proper old-school title that I got to experience blind for the first time. I streamed the entirety of it to friends in the privacy of our Discord servers. When I was done my thoughts were that I liked it, but thought its story was a bit basic considering a lot I could find on it online likened it to Live A Live. It being released afterwards, as well as being after both Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger, I expected a bit more.
I still overall liked it and continued my search for obscure RPGs of yesteryear. Treasure of the Rudras was fantranslated by Aeon Genesis, so I decided to check out their site for interesting obscure games to try out.
There, I stumbled upon a little title called Metal Max Returns. This would evidently be a turning point in my life.

If you had told me about a year ago that one of my favorite games of all times would be about driving around in tanks and hunting outlaws, I probably would have laughed it off as some sort of joke. The military (and by extension, tanks) are about as unappealing as can be to me. But that's not what the Metal Max series is about.

At the first glance Metal Max Returns seems like a very stereotypical RPG. You start as a blank-slate protagonist who aspires to be a great hero in a small town. You are directed to a nearby cave with the promise of treasure. You can leave the town to fight some monsters and the battle system is just about what you'd expect from any RPG of the era. The post-apocalypse/wild west themed setting is novel, but hardly anything that makes this stand out against the RPG giants of the SNES.
Then you obtain your first tank.

Suddenly, the perspective shifts and Metal Max Returns defies your expectations. Tanks function completely different from human characters! They operate on ammo systems, various exchangeable weapons, armor plating and do not gain experience. You can dismount your tank mid-battle to use your human skills, adding new depth to fights. Some areas are inaccessible to tanks altogether. You find new weapons to mount onto your tank and your options expand. You find new party members and new vehicles for them to drive. You come across tank modding in a later town, which exponentially expands the options you have in terms of tank customization.
Now, the game is no longer a generic RPG, but an RPG where you can customize your "characters" into functioning exactly how YOU want them to function. Everything about how you play the game is dictated by YOU, the player!

On top of that freedom, the game gives you very little immediate direction. It is an open world game. Not one of those modern ones like Skyrim or Breath of the Wild, but one that dates back all the way to before I was even born, in 1991 on the Famicom (Metal Max Returns is a remake of that title that was released in 1995 on the Super Famicom)!

However, while the game doesn't enforce any direction on you, it encourages you to explore via one of its main mechanics: Outlaws. As you wander the wastes, you'll come across wanted posters of various dangerous monsters, out-of-control machines and violent rogues, each with a large sum of money on their heads. Hunting down these outlaws means you have the funds to customize your tanks further, which in turn allows you to explore progressively dangerous areas.

Hunting outlaws is worth it for the boss theme - WANTED! - alone, which is an iconic staple of every Metal Max title.

Exploration is also rewarded in another manner: the games story. Metal Max Returns is not a character-driven drama you'd find in a Final Fantasy title and appears extremely light on story initially. However it story isn't about its characters, but rather its world. You commonly explore dilapidated, abandoned buildings from before what the game calls the "Great Destruction". Via the environment you slowly get an idea what these places must have been a long time ago. You're never given the full picture, or a detailed recounting, but rather a glimpse into what used to be.

Coupled with some of the nicest looking visuals you might find on the SNES, exploration is something I found to be a true joy in this game. At the end of the game your exploration leads to you uncovering the mystery of what lead to the Great Destruction. I will not spoil what it is, but it seems very topical these days.

Speaking of the visuals, I need to give special appreciation to the monster design. Enemies in Metal Max Returns generally come in three varieties: mutated wildlife thats half military-grade weapon, buff dude with a really stupid face and tricked-out tank. So many of its enemies are immediately striking and memorable. To me (as well as to a few friends who've seen me stream the game) enemies such as Wandering Polytank, Kamikaze Bomber or Black Carpet are as iconic as a Goomba or a Koopa.

Further I want to touch on how well the game makes you feel immersed in its world, something that's really important when it aims to tell its story through said world. Metal Max Returns does an excellent job driving home how run-down and rough its locations are, both in terms of its visuals and its storytelling. I'm particularly fond of the interface of the vending machines strewn throughout the world that you can buy various items from. The washed-out colors and the chipped paint go a long way in showing how harsh a world you find yourself in.

All in all Metal Max Returns is such a novel and interesting take on the RPG genre, I couldn't believe I've never heard of it before picking it up on a whim. This is the sort of game that should be held on a pedestal alongside other SNES RPG greats like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI. Its probably because the majority of the series never received official localizations, and the ones that did are considered the weakest entries.


So how does this bring us to the title of this article? I've always been interested in game development, but never had the patience to pursue it, nor a good idea for a game I'd feverishly want to make...
Until I played this game. As I was on vacation over the last winter holiday, Metal Max Returns never left my mind. Shortly before I started playing it I also had an idea for a story, but no idea of what I could ever make out of it. These two events happened to coalesce into an idea for a game I REALLY wanted to make.

Over the holidays I came up with the basic ideas and gameplay, as well as started to sketch up some designs. When I returned from the holidays I started playing the sequel to Metal Max Reloaded as a means of researching how the series evolved and what I liked and disliked about the gameplay.

The idea I came up with is a game where you play as an alien insect hivemind, besieged by human invaders slaughtering your people in pursuit of valuable resources found on your homeworld. Essentially reverse Starship Troopers.
Due to human meddling, the hivemind would get disconnected from its swarm and would have to evolve its way back to power by expanding its influence and gathering resources. It would grow warrior insects as soldiers to fight against its oppressors. And those insects will, from a gameplay standpoint, function similarly to the tanks in Metal Max! I want to create an RPG where there is no EXP, only a currency that is used to grow your characters, allowing you to customize them to your own desires, preferences and needs.

The above image is a mock-up I made of what the game might look like some day (but its likely to change).

In order to study game development, I've taken a free course to learn the basics of programming for the Godot game development engine. And, with the help of a friend who does programming on a professional level, I've already made my very first piece of software: a simple program that spits out a random word when you push a button. Currently, I am building a small auto-runner type game, again with the help of my friend. After that, hopefully I can pursue making this RPG I currently still just dream of. Perhaps you can look back on this article in a few years and things will be a bit different.

If there's one thing I can say about game development and programming, it's that it is an extremely difficult discipline to get into without formal schooling. I personally only have a background in various arts, so programming is something completely alien to me. I am immensely grateful to have a friend who both knows what he's doing on a professional level, as well as is selfless enough to dedicate his time to helping me out. I don't think I could ever succeed without him.

To bring things back to Metal Max as I wrap up this article, I've started to play through the entire series. After the completion of Metal Max Returns, I've decided to tackle Metal Max 2 Reloaded, a DS remake of the second title, originally on the SNES. Like Returns, it also has a fan-translation. Currently, I'm playing through Metal Saga on the PS2, one of the few titles in the series that received an official localization. While I like it, it definitely feels weaker than Returns and 2 Reloaded. I'm excited to dive into Metal Max 3 afterwards, and managed to get a hold of a copy of Metal Max Xeno Reborn during a Steam sale (and they say emulation doesn't lead to purchases).
The only title that eludes me is Metal Max 4, which had an in-progress fantranslation, but the team behind it just disappeared off the face of the earth one day. The game was said to be 80% translated as of the last update. Maybe one day it'll resurface...


Either way, I just wanted to write my thoughts about a game that has changed my life in a way.