rings or swap their position on the board with another player. There are a variety of different spaces on the board. The most common spaces increase or subtract the player's ring count. Rings can be used to purchase power-ups in the form of "forcejewels" at special shop spaces. These stones can give the player numerous advantages, such as selecting more than one card in one turn or teleporting to other players' positions. Battle spaces pit the player that lands on the space in a short card game against an enemy. There is also always one space that harbors a Precioustone. When one of these is collected by a player, another one is placed on the board. The goal of each game is to collect the most Precioustones. Finally there are minigame spaces. These spaces will launch a random minigame with either all the players, or just the player that landed on the space. The solo minigames are story-like sequences where the player must answer a question to win rings or gems, or lose them if answered wrong. The minigames that involve all the players come in a wide variety. Some are free-for-all games, while others pit the players against each other in two-versus-two or one-versus-three situations. Development and release Sonic Shuffle was developed by Sega, with assistance from the Hudson Soft team behind Mario Party (1998), and supervision from Sonic Team. Most sources attributed Sega as the developer although some attributed the game to Sega's internal development team Smilebit. Smilebit had previously developed Jet Set Radio (2000) for the Dreamcast which was well regarded for its cel shaded visuals. Sega used the same cel shading techniques in Sonic Shuffle. Sega revealed that a Sonic Adventure spin-off was in development alongside Sonic Adventure 2 in October 1999. The game was revealed in the June 2000 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) with the tentative title Sonic Square, shortly before the E3 trade fair that year. Sega had planned to reveal information about Sonic Adventure 2 to EGM for the issue, but decided the game was not ready to be shown, and shared Sonic Square instead. Support for online multiplayer through SegaNet was planned, it was ultimately cut so the game could ship ahead of the 2000 holiday season. Sonic Shuffle was released for the Dreamcast in North America on November 14, 2000, in Japan on December 21, and in Europe on