The Lost Sega Worlds

Fallen well and truly down the "this company really had their financial issues coming to them" rabbit hole again:

Sega World Seagaia - at first glance, its tiny page on the wiki wouldn't indicate it was of much note. But it was in fact on the site of a giant resort centred around the Ocean Dome, what was once one of the world's largest indoor waterparks built for no discernible reason other than "lol tourism". Going well outside of the remit of Retro here, but the television adverts even featured Sting.

Ocean Dome seems to have first opened with a golf course and a few other things, including said Sega World, in July 1993. As it goes this was apparently also quite big, spreading across two floors of the place + featuring an AS-1, though photo documentation looks very scarce (albeit not all that surprising, considering the entire complex went on to never actually turn a profit).

As far as one can currently tell, Sega closed their space in the midst of wider woes with Seagaia - a 2001 bankruptcy, subsequent buyout by an American private equity firm, and the waterpark complex finally closing down by 2007. But then...

In 2012, SegaSammy scooped up the remnants that were still running, and it became the first of their small collection of resort locations. This of course seemed like a fairly ridiculous acquisition at the time by the two companies previously best known for video games and pachinko. Indeed, upon news of it breaking, there were many jokes made about this at their expense, as well as some pointing out the naming similarity with Seagaia, and even a few remembering that this wasn't even Sega's first link to the place.

Ultimately a Sega World never came back, the abandoned waterpark dome was demolished outright in 2017 as part of extensive renovation efforts, and the resorts area of the conglomerate has remained stagnant since 2020. Who knows what may happen with it moving forward (?).

 

Going through my old SEGA Power mag's This is when the team went to Bournemouth

 

The research channel in the official Sega Forever server on Discord can bring things to light on occasion:

This video has a few stills of a Hi-Tech Sega in Miyazaki. It may have later been Sega World Miyazaki, not sure.

(edit: I know little about the area concerned here, but a quick search of "miyazaki MRT" also reveals that this place seems to have been found on the site of MRT micc, a commercial facility centred around Miyazaki Broadcasting's headquarters. Are television and radio station offices known to have been a Sega AM location before this?)

A shame that this is pretty much just a few low-quality slides set to Generic Royalty Free Track no. 65 as backing though - at least there is the odd upload featuring actual camcorder footage of a Sega World out there, of course.

 

I can imagine Sting cost a pretty penny. SEGA for sure was not frugal in the 80s-90s



Gosh London was beautiful

 

My apologies, noted, I should have looked for an edit button when posting

 

Accidentally came across a thing the other day, as one does:




If I'm reading this article from 2015 correctly, someone stumbled upon this completely deserted arcade in Hanoi, Vietnam, with everything besides a television switched off and just one employee around. They soon realised that pretty much all of the machines appeared to be not just bootlegs but conspicuously Sega-made, and lo and behold:


Sega World Hanoi (Thế Giới SEGA Hà Nội). Almost completely untraceable today of course, but a quick look back at annual reports does indeed reveal that there was once a "Amusement World of Vietnam Corporation". Somebody's Linkedin CV also says something, and there's one company directory listing. Like Sega's other arcade ventures in Asian countries outside of Japan (Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia) though, this too seems very poorly documented.

(and no, I do not know if it still exists now. Please don't blame me if you go to Vietnam looking for this place in an attempt to bang out a successful 'ABANDONED SEGA ARCADE!' video, but find absolutely nothing there)

 

Seeing this bums me out so much. Just imagine going in there and saving the EPROMS/CDs from disappearing! Those machines are probably long gone by now. Anyone know what happened to the machines at Tomioka post-teardown?

 

Short clip of the planned Trocadero Sega World in CGI.

 

With the added footage of Mega Drive adverts, Joypolis etc afterward, I think it's likely Live & Kicking's editorial team took that clip from the oft-used corporate video (a bunch of magazines also had stills of it)

John Robertson, the 3D modeller of the CGI runthrough, has uploaded it in full a few times:


Incidentally, L&K weren't the only ones to film at The Edge - it was also seen as the regular backdrop for the first series of The Computer Channel's spinoff of Games World, based around Big Boy Barry:

... which later used SegaWorld London itself instead...

 

Slow down there buddy, you might uncover a cursed archive.org artifact and you'll be timewarped *to* a Canadian arcade in 1988 that just so happens to have a old Sega machine, with no way of coming back outside of seeking refuge at the local San Francisco Gifts

 

Actually, we have Puente and possibly a few others... somewhat covered. I added them to the SegaVenuesUSA omni back in January, but the information I found placed most of these as Sega Centers. Disregarding that omni's need for an overhaul (needs more research), the name "Sega Kingdom of Oz" is the most intriguing here, as its a name I've never seen before.

As far as we understood it, the six purchased Oz locations were rebranded to Sega Centers. I can understand if this wasn't immediate, as theres already consumer recognition behind the Oz name, but was "Sega Kingdom of Oz" ever used? I wonder if Cash Box left out an apostrophe, and instead meant "Sega's Kingdom of Oz"? Even with the apostrophe, neither names turn up any information... unlike when the same thing was done with the acquisition of Time-Out.



Depending on how literally you want to take Cash Box's word, there's a whole new brand of Sega venues that needs adding now. Until we see the name turn up more, probably not.

 

The mall in Moreno Valley, CA had a Time-Out location near it's food plaza entrance since it opened. The logo looked exactly like that, but I can't find any pictures of it. It did have some Sega games, but it would be a very large stretch to call it "Sega-owned" (at least this specific location). They seemed to have a more Namco and SNK presence in its lifespan, but was nearly nothing but redemption by the end of it's life.

 

They did open a load of areas for stuff like Mushiking when that got big - it may have even been partly why the Fun Square thing died. And then there's "Kidpara", which might be the first Sega example and will be even harder to document.

"Mickey & Minnie Touch de Kids" may well be related to "Touch de Asobo" and "McDonalds no Touch de Asobo!". I do remember seeing that title once or twice but was much too preoccupied with thoughts of just how well it translated.