bosses in his path. He fights through 4 differently themed areas of the amusement park after which he is able to track down and confront Pinki. The final showdown with the Pinki gang sees Neo battle a giant mechanised ballerina robot. The Pinki gang are controlling the robot from the control centre in its head. When Neo defeats the ballerina, its body explodes and sends the head (still containing Pinki, Yasu and Gasu) flying into deep space. Development Super Magnetic Neo was developed by Genki and was released for the Dreamcast on February 3, 2000. Once the direction of the game had been determined, it took 1 year to create with 18-20 staff members working on it. The magnetic mechanics of the game were pioneered primarily by Nobuyuki Nakano, who also designed the challenge and training modes. The high difficulty of the game was an intentional decision by the team at Genki. They explained in an interview with Gamers' Republic magazine that "staff members spent long hours working on game balance". They also added that they had strong feelings around not adding in any notes or signs that told the player what to do. They then go on to explain that the "goal was to communicate, not through written words but through Neo's body movements. As the result, SMN became a very challenging game". The character design of Neo (NiuNiu) involved all members of the production team including programmers, producers and animators in addition to the designers. The main idea was to create a character that would "physically embody magnetic characteristics". However, designer Shunsuke Kabasawa was responsible for Neo's overall design. Maintaining 60fps was a high priority throughout the creation of the game and took considerable development time to ensure that there were little to no frame rate drops. The North American localization was published by Crave Entertainment and was released on June 15, 2000 and the European release was on August 4, 2000. To try to lessen the frustration over the difficulty of the game for the Western audience, Crave implemented power-ups that enabled Neo to take multiple hits before dying. Reception The game received above-average reviews according to the review aggregation website GameRankings. In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of 29 out of 40. The recurring view in reviews was that the game's strengths were in its visuals and unique concept of magnetism, and its weaknesses were