Background and origins Monster Max was designed and programmed by
Jon Ritman with graphics by Bernie Drummond, both having established themselves in the video games industry by developing isometric 8-bit video games for
Ocean Software, including
Batman (1986) and
Head over Heels (1987). Following
Match Day II (1987), Ritman and Drummond moved to
Rare, owned by the founders of
Ultimate Play the Game, the developer and publisher of what launched the isometric game trend,
Knight Lore (1984). His reasoning was how short the development process would be for a complete game on a hand-held device. When Ritman called Drummond about a potential Game Boy project, the artist's latest drawing was a half-reptilian/half-skeleton guitarist that became the titular playable character. The chip did not have the ease of conversion to other consoles the actual Z80 had, making the project Game Boy-exclusive. Aspects of the Game Boy's memory complicated the coding and design, such as low resolution, constant
memory paging and the differences in
character encoding between the bottom third and top two thirds of the screen. The hardware limitations also meant keeping the detail of isometric graphics while the screen scrolled was impossible. The development kit was on the
Nintendo Entertainment System, which the controller's
directional pad was more prone to accidental direction switches than the same of the Game Boy. Thus, an alternative control option for the NES controller was added for testing. The lack of other play testers was another reason
Monster Maxs development differed from that of Ritman's other isometric games. Ritman conceived the structure of most rooms spontaneously and during programming. In rare instances, such as rooms with multiple cases, the levels were planned and pencil-drawn on paper. Drummond had a similar process, drawing "whatever looked good" for Ritman to create a narrative out of. For communication purposes, the two categorized the size of blocks under terms like "blocks" and "sweets." Although there are three levels within a floor, Ritman chose to only require the player to complete two. This was inspired by the players he noticed not advancing very far into
Batman, and the desire to give the player more choice: "it's good to say there's an alternative." This and a password system came out of Ritman's thought process of designing a game for a mobile device. The final cartridge packs twice the memory of
Head Over Heels: two
megabytes, one for the 630 rooms, and another for menus, text data for five languages, and an advert for an unreleased Titus game,
Blues Brothers Pinball.
Commodore 64 and
Amstrad CPC versions of Ritman and Drummond's previous work were referenced, and some concepts were borrowed, easing the development process. For example, the concept of pockets to hold objects was taken from
Batman. The Game Boy's increased memory allowed Ritman to improve upon the genre, with larger rooms and floors with different themes and room designs. In a departure from Ritman's previous titles,
Monster Max limited its collectible abilities to two at a time, to match the number of buttons on the Game Boy. This design decision also pressured him to focus on the order of rooms to avoid situations where the player accidentally drops an item in an area he can not return to. The "working sprite" for
Monster Max was "Prehistoric Jon", which was Ritman wearing a loin-cloth. For the Nintendo Seal of Approval, Ritman recorded a six-hour gameplay session, played on a NES. In a situation rare in his career due to his attention to detail to problems, he was required to fix a bug that occurred in the seventh level, where an icon flashed on screen for around three seconds. The name for the "Deadly Spell" was changed to "Magic Spell". Another six-hour playthrough had to be filmed with the problems fixed. According to Ritman, an unspecified
Titus France staff member wanted to "change every single exploding block" following completion, but "considering there are over a thousand blocks, it was out of the question." == Release ==