The player shakes the maracas in accord with the six indicators on-screen: upper-left, upper-right, left, right, lower-left, and lower-right. When the on-screen notes turn red, it's your cue to throttle that maraca as much as possible for extra points. Once every few bars, you're prompted to "Take a Pose", where you hold the maracas in a certain position. The quality of your performance is graded on a letter scale (so it is a Sonic Team game), and two players can rock & rattle at once. If both players put on a good enough show, the background explodes into color, and the monkeys go bananas...

   It got the thumbs-up from attendees of the fall '99 TGS, and a US release is being considered, depending entirely on the game's success in Japan. Unfortunately, a Dreamcast version is, to quote Naka-san himself, "hmm..." The maracas are understandably quite expensive to manufacture, and rely on costly sensors to determine whether the player is making the appropriate motions or not. So put some pants on and grab a handfull of quarters, you're gonna have to make a trip to the arcade if you want to monkey around with Samba de Amigo. Don't rush yourself, though...although originally scheduled to boogie into Japanese arcades in fall '99, it has been delayed to Q1 2000 due to a massive earthquake in Taiwan, where the special sensors used in the game are produced. Yo quiero, Taco Bell! (That makes no sense here, but I've been waiting the whole darn time to say it and the page is almost finished.)

This page is the result of too much time on the hands of Jared "Green Gibbon!" Matte. But make no mistake, NEO GHZ is a part of SonicNEXT. All Sonic related materials are copyright Sega Enterprises. SonicNEXT is created by Zifei Wu. Space provided by VGHQ.com. Lucy, you've got some 'splainin' to do...