In recent weeks, I've been doing a lot of research into RPGs that never left Japan. I haven't covered a game that never came to the U.S. in quite a while, so I figured now is as good a time as any.
There are always going to be games that get stuck in Japan or only get ported to PAL regions, whether its for financial, cultural or other reasons. But during the 5th generation, it was extremely common for games to stay on the mothership, especially when it came to RPGs. Simply put, the genre just wasn't as popular in the west and it was often not worth the time and effort to localize them. I talked a little bit about this with Sweet Home (though that stood zero chance of ever being released here) and Terranigma (which was not released in North America for more business related weirdness), but it still amazes me how many games never made their way to the West and how many of them I had never heard of until much later. When I started GOTBP, I kind of made it a point to not focus too much on these kinds of games as it felt a little too pretentious. However, there are quite a few interesting titles that have come on my radar over the years that I've wanted to give a shot and that's become easier as I learn which of these games have English patches. It may not have been the top game on my list, but something about Metal Max Returns for the SNES/Super Famicom piqued my interest.
Published by Data East and initially released in 1995, Metal Max Returns is actually a remake of an NES/Famicom, simply titled Metal Max. It received a fan translation in 2007, which is the version of the game I played. I feel that's important to qualify, because it may have some level of impact on how I felt about the games story. I don't know exactly how well the translation matches the original, though it seems to be quite well done. I'm sure there were some liberties taken, in fact I know there are based on the use of a certain word that starts with 'F,' but that's often true of official translations as well. If anything, the fact that it's a fan translation will lead me to give it more leeway. I tip my proverbial hat to anyone that takes their own personal time to translate an entire video game and gives so many of us the opportunity to experience a game we otherwise wouldn't have been able to.
Regardless of whether it was an official or fan translation, Metal Max Returns had a variety of elements that were extremely ahead of their time. It didn't follow a strict story progression and was very open ended, making it a fairly early example of an open world console game. It featured a post-apocalyptic setting, something that was very uncommon in RPGs of the day. It featured both on foot and vehicle combat, although its largely the same mechanically. The game is largely driven by a mission and bounty system, making it far more structurally similar to an open world adventure from 2025 than a JRPG from 1995. In many ways, it's more western than a lot of the RPGs that did actually make it to the west. All of that is great and I certainly appreciate the innovation, but I still kind of found MMR a somewhat lacking experience. Maybe it's just this structure that I don't like, I guess it would explain my general ennui towards open world games. I wouldn't call it bad by any means, but MMR was certainly far from the best RPG of its era, even if it was one of the most unique.
MMR puts you in control of a character that you name, typically just called the Hunter. He dreams of being a monster hunter, a position of high honor in the post-apocalyptic village of Leorad. His father, the town mechanic, does not share his enthusiasm for adventure. In fact, the game starts with your character being kicked out of his house after a fight between the two. Undeterred, the Hunter decides now is as good a time as ever to live out his dream. First, he's going to need a tank and rumor has it a decommissioned one has been spotted inside the nearby Southern Caves. Our hero delves deep into the caverns to finds those rumors to be true...and almost gets himself killed by monsters. He is bailed out at the last minute by the legendary hunter Red Wolf, who wants to claim the tank for himself. After he decides restoring the old piece of junk isn't worth it, he leaves the Hunter to fend for himself. He may have backed into it, but our hero finally has his tank and is ready to start bringing down monsters. But it's not going to be easy work. He must explore the world, battling fearsome foes and scraping supplies together from the remaining human settlements. He will also meet some friends along the way, a Mechanic who dreams of studying unique vehicles the world over and a soldier who wants nothing more than to defeat the aforementioned Red Wolf in battle (side note, these characters have procedurally generated names each time you play and in my playthrough the game gave them the same names as my kids, which was weird). While there is no story per se, you will eventually learn how the world ended and what happened to bring it to the state that its currently in.
Exploration is probably the best part of MMR, the world isn't large by today's standards, but it is a fairly significant map that has a lot of things to do. There are five essential tasks that you need to complete to open up various sections of the map, but outside of that you pretty much have free reign to explore. I think the post-apocalyptic theme here is done okay, I definitely like that they didn't go with a world that was only recently post collapse like most media with that setting does. The world of MMR has had some time to rebuild, it's fairly well populated and the various towns have substantial populations that are starting to thrive, building tanks for hunters and growing crops for their denizens. The game almost doesn't feel serious enough for its setting, I think its largely down to the somewhat cutesy graphics and good but unfitting music, but I still like it. The dungeons tend to be short and fairly straightforward, but they are well designed. The random encounter rate is a little ridiculous, but no more so than in any other 90's RPG. If the exploration wasn't the biggest positive here, the tank customization would be. Each tank can be equipped with a unique chassis, auxiliary weapon, main weapon and C-Unit to fit they gameplay style you want. Some configurations allow for more armor, others for more firepower, but it's always fun to try different combinations to see what works. Unfortunately, this is somewhat tempered by the fact that you are always broke and can't afford parts (it is a 90's JRPG after all) but it's a fun system.
Unfortunately, the combat doesn't really match up to the ambitious exploration and layout. You have two different options here, with the game starting with your characters on foot. This mode is fairly traditional, turn based RPG combat. You can attack, use items, defend or run away. You attack your enemy until you are victorious, die if you lose all your HP and gain experience when you win. It's a tale as old as time for RPG fans and by 1995, it felt like it was a little bare bones. You don't even have magic or an alternate way of attacking, all you can do is use your weapons. There are a few different weapon types and they all behave differently, but that doesn't change the fact that you are basically just pressing the A button until your enemy dies. A lot of RPG haters make this complaint about the genre and it definitely rings true here. Fortunately, things are a little bit better when you step into your vehicles. Each vehicle has both primary and secondary weapon slots, allowing for a little bit more attack variety. Vehicles also behave a little differently when it comes to taking damage. They have HP, or rather armor, but the battle is not over when it hits zero. Once your armor is gone, you will start taking damage to the other parts of your tank, including weapons, chassis, treads and operating system. If your tank is destroyed, you have to get out and fight the rest of the battle on foot. Then you are going to have to use your other vehicles to tow the tank back for a repair. It's still not the most interesting combat, but it's better than the on-foot battles.
But even beyond the general structure of the battles, the combat here is extremely problematic. I feel like a lot of attacks miss, both from you and from enemies. In addition to being incredibly frustrating, this makes battles drag on way longer than they have to. Missing attacks is a part of any RPG, but it was excessive here and I couldn't seem to figure out what, if any, stat it was tied to. It also felt like damage amounts were random, like I would do one damage with and attack and 80 with the next. To be fair, it cuts both ways, but it's still frustrating and prevents you from really making either offensive or defensive battle plans. Battles as a whole are kind of boring, there is a lot of visual dead space and it really felt like it could have been more stylistically interesting. There was a real opportunity for some truly outstanding enemy designs or attack animations and while there were some truly spectacular enemies, I feel like they could have been better. Some enemies appear in groups and you can't target individual enemies, just those groups. This would be okay if they also attacked as groups, but they each move individually. At the end of the day, the fights start to feel very formulaic and boring, which is a problem when you spend so much time in battle.
The inventory management is also a major issue, this may be the single worst inventory system I have ever seen in an RPG. I've said this before, but one of my pet peeves in these games is not being told what items do when you scroll over them. I've dinged some pretty incredible games for this issue, and MMR's system may be even worse than what's in those titles. You see, you CAN actually see what effect items have here...but not on the inventory screen. You see, if you want to determine what items do, you have to close your inventory screen, close the menu, open the BS-CON device that your character has, scroll over to items, then scroll, very slowly down a complete list of items in the game. This list isn't in any semblance of order, is incredibly long, cannot be searched, cannot be sorted and can only be scrolled one item at a time. Yeah, don' even bother. At least the stat boosts from equipment are clear. I am not even going to attempt to explain how the menus in this game work, there are so many button presses required to do anything it bogs the game down in the absolute worst way. You need to press different buttons to inspect items or talk to people, which is frustrating. The controls as a whole felt a little stiff, it's not as big a problem in RPGs as it is in other genres, but it's definitely noticeable here. Remember, this is a pretty late release for the Super Famicom, a lot of this stuff would have been acceptable for a console RPG in '89 or '90, but not here. By this point the PlayStation and Saturn are already out and there was an established standard for quality of life features in a JRPG. MMR didn't meet those standards in this regard.
While there is definitely more good than bad here, I found Metal Max Returns somewhat underwhelming. If this game was an early 4th generation game, I think a lot more of its problems would have been easy to overlook. But it came out so late in the Super Famicom's life cycle that it felt somewhat dated compared to the Final Fantasy VI's and Chrono Triggers of the world. I have to give them credit for trying, there were a lot of gameplay elements that were ahead of their time and the open world felt truly unique. The tank customization is fun and the unique world and atmosphere will help pull most players through the game. It's relatively short for an RPG, 20 to 25 hours should get you through, but that's kind of a positive here. MMR has great graphics and sound, but the gameplay is a little bit lacking and that's the biggest thing here. That said, it's not bad gameplay either and I think it's worth checking out for fans of the genre. I have to give credit to the translation here, it was a solid effort by people that could have chosen to do something else with their time other than translate an old video game for us all to play. But if you are looking to get into Japan-only games with available English patches (or other language patches), I would probably start elsewhere. If you've already played some of the bigger names though, you could certainly do worse than MMR. It's an interesting game with a lot of forward-looking design concepts.
6.75/10
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