Neon FM®: Dance Radio™ (2005)

Neon FM®: Dance Radio™ is a 5-panel arcade dance game designed to focus to North American musical tastes. The machine was engineered to use a revolutionary capacitive-sensing system which would use the player’s natural electrical field to activate the foot panels, resulting in a more natural dance experience and lowering the maintenance requirements of the machine dramatically.

Neon FM was picked up by Betson Enterprises (the largest manufacturer and distributor of arcade machines in the US) and the developer Pop’nKO M&E was signed to an exclusive distribution contract that was worth millions. Unfortunately, the project was sidelined when Betson decided to instead proceed with Konami on “DDR Supernova.”

I designed the game and arcade cabinet, provided most of the non-illustrated artwork including logos, wrote many of the note patterns (“stepcharts”) used, composed several music tracks, scripted animations, and directed marketing and sales. The software engine used was a heavily modified version of Stepmania 3.9, coded in C. Additional software includes TortoiseSVN, Illustrator, Photoshop, ACID Pro, and Reason.

Website:
Official website (neonfm.com)