Further to the above: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/筑紫野ベレッサ It appears the Sega World opened along with the building, "Chikushino Tokyu" (筑紫野とうきゅう). It was closed at the end of March 2006 (I think) and then re-opened in 2007 as "Chikushino Belleza". Apparently it was built to cater for some new housing in the area, but was squeezed by bigger/better rivals. This was the state just before closure - the Sega World would have been on the left, but I think they'd long gone at this point. Judging by the photos it looks like a horrible fever dream. Some Sega Worlds are true works of art, this one... not so much.
It's an obvious, literally front and centre observation, but this has what is probably one of the best cover arts of the bunch - Naoto Ohshima has notably shared his initial sketch of it on Twitter I believe it has been ascertained on here that someone else did the colouring for these, but their name escapes me right now. With it being the first issue of 1994, there unsurprisingly seems to be many brief pieces inside from virtually of all of Sega's directors and executives at that time, largely talking about the company's business prospects for the year. All not worth much to us without an accurate translation, but some of the more recognisable faces that I noticed were Shoichrio Irimajiri, Hideki Sato, and Hisashi Suzuki. Plus, more from the aforementioned Takenori Ogata: And then there's a whole host of others featured, many of which aren't documented at all. They should be one day.
Osamu Muto did the final airbrushed art. https://segaretro.org/Osamu_Muto Has anyone translated Ohshima's notes from that sketch?
Here you go, from top going down: オレンジ・黄色のサーチライト！！ Orange-yellow search lights!! 空はコバルトブルー（マリンブルー） しかし、昼で！！ 中央にあるのがラスベガスの様なネオンバリのSEGAワールド（未来のテーマパーク） （昼だけど、空とマリンブルーポクしてSEGAワールドは、夜のネオンにして） The sky is cobalt blue (marine blue) but it's daytime!! The center is a SEGA world with neon attached to it, like Las Vegas. (The theme park of the future.) (It's the middle of the day, but the make the sky a marine blue and the SEGA World lit up with neon like at night.) ？ (too cut off to be sure) オ湯？ コド？ Hot water (possibly comparing some part to an onsen?) kodo (no clue, too cut off) カッコヨクデザインして Make this a cool design.
Tangentially related to an earlier post about the free medal coupons and other paper work from Sega arcades: recently I've been expanding my old arcade medal collection, focusing on Sega ones. Some of the ones I bought came wrapped in plastic, in counts of 10, which made me wonder if they came from a Sega arcade like that, or if the previous owner had wrapped them. So I turned to JP twitter, and it turns out they were wrapped like that by the amusement center staff! https://twitter.com/Har7201/status/1526394910026346497
An outlier Isolated case, or one of several examples of this brand extending outside of the Joypolis/Galbo locations where it was meant to be confined to?
Hello friends! Apologies for being gone so long. I was stuck in the USA for nearly three months and just got back home to Osaka a couple weeks ago. Now that I'm back, I decided to splurge and purchased an A3 sized scanner, an Epson DS-50000. I gave it a go tonight scanning another Harmony, and it's such a dream to use compared to basic A4 sized scanners. It's also fast as hell, and scanning an entire issue took about a quarter of the time of the previous process. So, here we are, Harmony #113. Sorry it's out of order from the previous ones; I just grabbed the first one I saw and got started. There's more fun stuff coming soon too, now that I have a large format scanner!
The Sega World featured in that issue is Sega World Honmoku ASTY... which was pretty much undocumented. You'll not find it on Google street view since the building was demolished (although if you're desperate...). The Sega World has no cultural significance but the floor above did: Japan's very first Disney Store opened on the same day, in the same place. You can just about see Sonic and Tails in the window (and another venue, "Dr. Kids"). I say culturally significant - Disney celebrated its 30th anniversary in the territory last month, but I'm not sure who else cared Hurray capitalism. This Sega World seems to have housed a "Sonic Ball Pool" (were there others?), where a giant Sonic can look at you while you play with his balls. This genuinely might be the best picture - it's a hard thing to photograph.
Looks like Flicky on the left and Eggman on the right. I wonder if there were any characters on the back corners.
Game Machine did a two page report on it too. They generally tended to cover the more notable venue openings, hence the shoehorning in of the Disney Store there too, though higher quality colour photos are always welcome. There were at least a few more, and an issue of SegaJack seems to hold some answers.
Today on what is my life Miffy no Busy Fun (ミッフィーのビジーファン) is either exceedingly rare or wasn't released. Other Miffy-branded products were released by Sega (notably "Miffy no Busy Gym" (ミッフィーのビジージム) which has many, many, many, many variants) but not this thing. Not that I'm going to spend any more time looking at 30 year old baby toys, but hey, facts.
Hmm... Any information on what happened to the Disney Store? For the Sega Retro article: what in particular made you list 2002 as the earliest date the Sega World could have been demolished?
I don't have the archived link close to hand right now, but it was still on Sega's online venue database in 2002 - Todo/Venues referencing it was the only page to have any documentation of its existence on Retro, until now. Also: The ball pool made it onto Russian television, thanks to Sonic - Super Hedgehog and Hakkeijima Carnival House. Shame that there only seems to be a B&W off-air recording of this segment in circulation though.
Miffy no Busy Fun (ミッフィーのビジーファン) https://web.archive.org/web/19970215222610/http://www.sega.co.jp/sega/athome/toys/mi.html We have some images of those Miffy-branded products on Sega Retro (all made by a third party manufacturer and distributed by Sega because "Sega Toys" wasn't even a thing yet)... but I don't even know what to do with them:
