Volume 5: My First RPG Maker Games. From Weekly Famitsu Magazine Issue #1788

Ever since me and my brothers were little we always thought about how we wanted to make games. For example when we would go church on Sundays our parents would give us some paper to draw on so that we would sit down and behave ourselves. I would often draw new stage layouts for Megaman X. I was only five at the time so Megaman X 3 had only just been released and I was a realistic child so I wrote "Megaman X 7" not "Megaman X 4" at the top of the page. I thought that Capcom would use my design for 7...

One day when I came back from elementary school I heard some big news from my older brothers. They found a way to turn our drawings into real games. That way was through the RPG maker series which allowed you to turn anything you wanted into a turn based RPG.

So with that my brothers and I started making games such as Toby's Adventure, Toby's Quest, Toby's Adventure 2... but for one reason or another all my games got stuck somewhere in the middle of development and I never finished them.

Our eldest brother's game, New Genesis, in comparison sounded almost professional to the rest of us at the time. We waited in anticipation for new areas of the game to be completed. It had serious and comedic elements that were blended together perfectly. There was a comedic character named Roth who I was fond of. He says a lot of nonsense but actually has a serious and tragic backstory. He comes from a futuristic society and is very skilled with ancient technology, basically he was the best and pretty badass. There was also a martial arts character you could meet in an Asia-like area named "Dan" who would use moves with names I couldn't place like Koryuken or Gaudaoken or something.

Oh right, right! I also appeared in that game as a character. I was a pirate with a green coat who only showed up in a few side quests and would also join the party for a little bit. The character's animation was extremely fast, and it accurately portrayed the real me who is always restless and never calm. This "Green Mage Toby", has the ability to put enemies in an "irritated state" during battles, which also shows my younger brother-like personality. Additionally, the name of the main character (who just used the default player sprite) was named Ralse. Later, I took the name "Ralsei" from this character, and used it in another game I created.

But even that game my older brother made was never finished. In total it had around 3 or 4 hours of content, it was going to be a long game and took years to make. As a result, I lost confidence in my work and ended up quitting game development altogether too. In the end, only one of my older brothers was able to complete his own game. On the day we all watched "Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz" on TOONAMI, my brother was completely inspired and created a game called "Endless Opera." However, he misspelled the name and it became "Endless Oprah." Like Oprah Winfrey the famous talk show host.

It was a parody that combined everything he could think of. It was really silly. The protagonist is an elf girl who starts off locked up in a prison by an evil force. Five seconds later, a MIDI version of a certain pop song about joining the US Navy starts playing, and a foul-mouthed little rabbit kicks the guards aside and rescues the protagonist. The rabbit becomes a party member and the two of them head to a nearby orphanage, where the caretaker becomes the third party member. However, the caretaker looks exactly like Sailor Moon (since they used all sorts of sprites as a base...). Entering the orphanage is also incredibly difficult... The screen outside the building is very long vertically, and about 50 identical looking boy NPCs roam around. They are all set to chase the protagonist at maximum speed and swarm towards her, shouting things like "Wow! We have a guest!" and "Wow! We have a guest!" so she can't move. The music was an 8-second WAV file of a certain high-tension American rock song with vocals, looped twice as fast. The swarming boys were too hyper due to eating too many sweets, and if the player triggered the "anti-sugar bomb" along the way, their movement speed would decrease and the music playback speed would also drop to half.

It's really filled with a lot of stuff so here's just a quick list.

*My brother also appeared as an enemy. At first glance he's just a typical townsperson but his body parts become individual targets, and you have to knock down his head, torso, both arms, and both legs one by one.

*A villain that combines Pikachu and an evil dictator through science and technology also appears.

*The area where the strongest enemies roam is the M&M Island. All the enemies that randomly appear here are M&M-related. When you encounter them, you get beaten up.

In short, it's a collection of jokes that popped into his head. Because of this format, it seemed like the game would go on forever, like an "endless opera." However, one day, my brother suddenly decided to bring it to a conclusion. All the ally characters were instantly powered up to the maximum level (Level 50). Then, they proceeded to face the final trial. Even so, they were able to properly reach the final area, face the final boss, and there was an ending.

The completion of the silly game that my brother and I were making was the first time any of us had ever finished anything like that. It was shorter than what our oldest brother had made, but at that moment, I realized something: we were still just kids. If we wanted to complete a game, we had to make something that was feasible for us! Since then, that thought has always been with me. At that time, all those using RPG Maker were trying to make their own version of something like Final Fantasy. The sort of epic game where you had to level up your character to 50, battle with every enemy in the enemy list, and if you really completed it, it would take about 20 hours to play.

However, after seeing the game our oldest brother made, I realized that something like that would be impossible for me. From then on, I made sure to keep the scale of the games I made small and to develop solid development plans. By understanding my own abilities and not exceeding the limits of my mind and body, I was able to complete a decent number of games. So, everyone, you can make games right now too! Just maybe don't try to make Final Fantasy.

So, what was the point of all this? Well, I wanted to say to Capcom, If you're going to make Mega Man X7, my brother and I have some great ideas... Wait, what? You already made X7?!?!

Do any of you have any experiences of trying to create silly games when you were younger that you never finished? Particularly ones that involved you, your friends, or your family as characters? If you do, please share them!

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