I would like to learn Japanese, and am asking for recommendations on a good method to do so. I am specifically interested in something that I can listen to while driving to help me learn the spoken language. I am also interested in recommendations on learning how to read Japanese as well. I am looking to reach a level where I could hold a conversation in Japanese and understand Japanese movies and TV shows. I would also like to be able to read at a level where I could play some of the Japanese RPGs that never got translated into English. Thank you everyone for any recommendations you may have 
Well when I was living in Japan (for about a month) I would do Rosetta stone on the train to and from work.
The recommended method is to be born in Japan to a Japanese couple and be raised speaking Japanese.
Failing that, well, I don’t want to discourage you, but the task ahead is not easy. I took Japanese for two years at the college level, and I still never felt that I got to the point of holding a casual conversation. Because Japanese is not a Latin-based language, the structure and vocabulary are pretty well wholly alien to someone who grew up speaking a Latin-based language, so it’s basically pure memorization. Reading presents its own challenges; there are multiple Japanese “alphabets” for different purposes, with Kanji reigning supreme, and to achieve even passable literacy, you’ll need to learn several thousand characters. I learned maybe one or two hundred.
That’s not to say it’s impossible. For the reading, you can squeak by in most situations if you know katakana and hiragana. For the spoken language, it really helps to have someone to practice with, though, and there are little cultural things you can learn in a classroom you might not pick up otherwise. So, my recommendation is for exactly what you didn’t want: a formal class.
Get into a couple of J Dramas to get a sense of speaking and listening to the language. Iirc, the U of Hawaii published an excellent set of texts.
Im betting that Japanese games are gonna use a lot of slang.
The OP never mentioned reading (although that might be necessary for RPG’s, I don’t know). Some corrections/clarifications: a reasonably well-educated person in Japan who graduates high school will know about 2100 kanji. The other “alphabets” are actually parallel syllabaries (i.e. “ma” is one syllable and one simple character). These are as easy to learn as any alphabet and you can write anything in Japanese using only these syllabaries (called “kana” - hiragana for native Japanese words, katakana for imported or special words). One good source for reading, I’m told, once you have learned the kana, is manga comics, which always have the kana pronunciation written above the printed kanji. Note that Japanese is not a tonal language, so I think that makes it much easier to learn than Chinese, for example.
As for spoken Japanese, I don’t have any real recommendations. However I will say it’s easier if all you want to do is listen and understand, and don’t intend to speak yourself. You can pick up a lot from context and body language and so on. Also any movies or programs that you can find with subtitles could help. But you will need a base to build on, and something more formal is probably required for that, such as a program like Rosetta Stone. It’s my opinion that Japanese is no harder to learn to understand than, say, Russian or Greek. Pronunciation is straightforward (unlike English) but or listening, men are harder to understand than women because they tend to talk faster and use more verbal shortcuts.
