Neo Racer 2: Revenge of X

Summary
Neo Racer 2: Revenge of X (ネオレーサー2：xの復讐) was a game released for the NES and Famicom on December 17th, 1986. The game's lead designer was Nishimoto Gidayu (西本義太郎) and the game was developed by Ocean Games (海洋ゲーム) with the game being published by Nintendo (任天堂). This was the last Neo Racer game that Nintendo published until the release of Neo Racer: Tetra for the Wii U on December 10th, being a launch title for the system in Japan.

This game was largely ignored by the Neo Racer fans, as it was of lesser quality compared to many of the other Neo Racer games. Another reason for the ignoration was the fact that the game's designer wasn't Yoshioka Koizumi, but Nishimoto Gidayu, who was a new designer at the company.

Development
The game's development began on January 5th, just a couple of weeks after the companies last game, Spectrum Warfare (スペクトル戦) released to great responses. Ocean Games had had 3 hits in a row, each with new, young developers. This made the company higher-ups believe that if they continued with this ideal, they could continue to see the same success. So, the company chose their newest designer, Nishimoto Gidayu, to spearhead the newest game they were developing. This game just so happened to be the sequel to the companies biggest hit, Neo Racer.

The game wasn't originally going to be published by Nintendo. Nintendo heard about the development of the game, and they wanted it to be exclusively on their console, nowhere else. The game was already being developed for the Famicom and NES, however, the developers were also looking for a release on Nintendo's main console competitor, Sega (セガ). Sega had released a new console that launched a year before called the Master System (マスターシステム), known as the Sega Mark III (セガマーク3) in Japan. Ocean Games was looking to developing the game not only for the Famicom and NES but the Master System as well. However, the contract that the higher-ups at Ocean Games signed prohibited the company releasing the game on any other console besides Nintendo's. Nintendo wanted to see the game reach the same success that the original Neo Racer game had reached. Nintendo had a huge expectation for the game, hoping that it'd reach one million units sold within 6 months of release.

The game didn't have too many issues during development. However, one big issue was the fact that the company didn't have enough time to patch out all the bugs before the holiday season.

Launch
The game launched to negative reception with most critics citing the bad graphics and the innumerable amount of bugs and glitches. The game sold 20k units during the first week, very far below Nintendo's initial sales expectations. The games sales numbers grew to around 115k by the end of the year. Nintendo was very disappointed by the sales numbers, which brought them to not touch another Neo Racer game for the next 30 years.