Sega people say Sega things on Twitter

Some interesting stuff has been coming out of the shadows since the release of the Michael Jackson thing:

This was all found at a warehouse by Tomokazu Honma (same guy?), who appears to still work under attraction development at CA Sega Joypolis, the amusement operations company that Sega didn't sell all of their shares in this year. He seems to have been last seen adjusting the R360Zs and making these wonderful ride-on Pui Pui Molcars.

Even what little can be gleaned from the booklet spines here is intriguing. One all but confirms that AS-1s supported the Showscan ride films Space Race and Cosmic Pinball, which I had previously suspected from vague descriptions of later installations (Sega did also have the "Power Imaginator" showing these Showscan films at Osaka ATC Galbo).

Not so sure what to make of the one that implies CCD Cart used the Model 1, AS-1 the Model 2B CRX, and VR-1 the 2C - my first impression was that they were in development too early to have ever used any of those boards - but I have also read that the last of those did at least use some form of the Model 2 hardware on release in 1994 (likely 2A?).

And apparently not only Honma remains working for Joypolis to this day:

which going off Scramble Training's credits could mean any of these people:

almost none of whom are well documented, and similiar to Honma, there may have even been more than one Nobuyuki Takano judging by how vastly different his other credits listed on Retro are.

All of this would at least explain why we still get the odd new Joypolis attraction appearing to this day, but I had no idea so many veteran AM5 developers remained at that company. Nor so much of the old documentation - which I'd love to but will probably never see more of in my lifetime. This article on the VR-1 has a fascinating glimpse though.

 

Kenji Sasaki's been good value on Twitter in the wake of all this again, but now he's only gone and got Shinichi Ogasawara to do a translation of a few tweets he made on Scramble Training's development:

edit: Sasaki has since added this, which I've done a quick Deepl translation on:

Fascinating to know that Sasaki and only two others did the main bulk of the graphics before the AM3 subdivision even existed, with them then copied in once Jackson was involved - from the amount of names credited under CG I was initially wondering whether some of them were under his Graphics Technologies independent, and had simply moved to Sega afterward. Shame that the pre-show remains missing though.

I can't speak for Sega's own titles, but this happened to the one originally from Sega World Sydney:

Moved to Luna Park in Melbourne, renamed the "Holodeck", and running whatever this is:

This apparently lasted a fairly long time there as well. Current thinking suggests it was only removed in 2021ish.

There is also the case of Muggo!, the film that Sega got Douglas Trumbull and his mates to make before they had Scramble Training or Megalopolis completed. I'm not sure how many 'permanent' AS-1 setups this was installed in, but it was certainly prominent at event appearances in 1992, and seems to have since made it out into other motion simulators (e.g. the Venturer S2 - which is still running at some bowling alleys here).

I have seen it suggested a few times that the VR-1 went the route of using two Model 2 boards at once per player eye, just so it could generate even more polygons in its virtual software - christ knows how they were able to keep it all synchronised, then working simultaneously between 32 users. Considering the release timeline I'd be very surprised if its games ran on the 2C-CRX or even 2B-CRX, but perhaps there were cancelled plans for an upgrade?

 

Our current understanding of the release timeframes with most of these does muddy things - VR-1 debuted with Space Mission in July 1994 at Yokohama Joypolis, not long after the first Daytona and Desert Tank machines using the original Model 2 had been released. I wouldn't be surprised if VR-1 used 2A-CRX but who knows.

The following year, most installations of it in Japan get upgraded to run Planet Adventure in July. But again, with so little documentation it can't be said for sure whether that was upgraded to the 2B-CRX, which started to appear around that time in stuff like Virtua Striker, Rail Chase 2, and Indy 500 before Fighting Vipers came along.

Then the 2C-CRX comes around the following year, by which time Net Merc has had its near-nonexistent release to only a few locations worldwide and Sega have likely stopped thinking about using the Mega Visor Display much more (Mechatro's old blog on VR-1's development goes over a few issues they had faced with it - user complaints about the weight etc). Nothing I've seen so far has given any indication that VR-1 ever got another experience installed.

However, we do know that Spielberg wore an MVD on his visit to the R&D headquarters in early 1996, and that the original Yokohama Joypolis installation of VR-1 lasted until its closure at the end of February 2001. I am also aware that the overseas installations at SegaWorld London and Sydney were removed much earlier due to technical issues and a lack of fixes, so perhaps Sega decided to keep it running in Japan out of ease with upgraded parts?

The only explanation I can think of with the AS-1 is that later, upgraded installations may have used the 2B-CRX for the attendant controls and any imagery whilst the laserdisc ride films weren't running - at the very least we are aware that some of them had the System 32 Multi, thanks to the one AS-1 ROM that has been dumped so far.

Model 1 underneath CCD Cart is even more confusing though, as 1. the latter only appeared at the end of 1990 and 2. doesn't even seem to have made use of a computer-generated aspect. I'm not even sure if it was still operating anywhere by 1992 and Virtua Racing - even Sega World Shizuoka appears to have swapped it for a Cyber Dome.

 

I'm not sure how big it is, but Honma has also posted about finding the remains of parts from an ex-Murder Lodge setup in presumably the same storage area - if it's large enough to also store both that and more of the assorted equipment you can see in the surroundings, I can imagine it being more an actual warehouse and less of a closet.

Should additionally mention that I've seen Honma's posts shared around elsewhere with the suggestion that we should try and get more out of him, but we shouldn't forget that he still works for CA Sega Joypolis. Sasaki has probably only spoken so much about Scramble Training and various other things on Twitter because he left years ago (though has occasionally collaborated with Sega again since).

Plus at the end of the day most of this stuff is official documentation that we aren't really supposed to see, and he's said as such too.