The Lost Sega Worlds

Cheers, I get that about Twitter. Bookmarked countless interesting posts on there, some of which do probably deserve to be properly documented and taken note of, but the backlog I've built up is pretty big :P

Unless I'm mistaken I don't think there's a page for this one yet, seen in Beep's July 1993 issue:



Was located in the "Carnival House" building at the Hakkeijima Sea Paradise aquarium/theme park, Yokohama. If it looks familiar, then it's because there were (and still are) photos of it mislabelled as Sega World Bournemouth on the Dragon's Lair Fans forum, possibly down to how it too had an AS-1 and opened around the same time. Also, the B/W footage at around the 12:30 mark in this upload of that Russian Sonic TV show:



The arcade seems to be running to this very day, although is of course not a Sega World anymore. Looking back through their website and assorted Japanese travel blogs, Sega still seemed to be involved as late as 2009 but then weren't by 2011. Inconveniently enough there's no captures of Carnival House's dedicated page from 2010, so it might be hard to pinpoint exactly when they dropped out.

 

Thanks for the pointer - wasn't looking in the right place for it, although the stuff about it as a Sega World should still come in useful at some point.

EDIT: it's now led me to here

 

From Sega Saturn Magazine's December 95 issue:



Top pic is of course Yokohama Joypolis and bottom seems to be Ichikawa Galbo, which has almost no recorded info besides that it existed, so of course the text doesn't appear to reveal much more than some Christmas events going on at both venues.

The photo does make it clear it was in a shopping centre/mall of some sort though, and includes some of a Toys R Us beneath it, so thanks to that I think I've managed to trace back to where it was - Nikke Colton Plaza, a sizeable shopping centre in Ichikawa where a TRU outlet has been for a long time.

Sega must've vanished by 1999 or earlier, however, as no mention is made of it in the earliest capture of its website (including the history page). Posts on Japan Twitter and references to it on obscure webpages definitely corroborate its existence at the very least.

 

From a PlayStation Magazine report on Japan



Having checked each of their pages, I'm not sure which GIGO location this is myself, and unfortunately it isn't namechecked in the report, so it's anyone's guess to whether this is another venue or just a second entrance to one already on the wiki.

 

Did some digging on Facebook and found these guys - they seem to have been involved in designing/constructing numerous Sega venues over the years, and thanks to the search feature, here's good photos of all of them. Highlights include what looks like a Jurassic Sega World, eschewing the space-age aesthetic of their other locations:



Have had a look and I can't match most of the venues up to any pages on the wiki myself, so at least some of these may be new/the only known pics around - most of them seem to have been in Taiwan though, including Sega World Oe and Sega World Tiger City

 

Once possible I need to remind myself to add more on Sega's arcade presence in France - there's only a page for Sega Centre Paris, when there were at least three other venues there that have been mentioned before (with varying amounts of information available, from sod all to a little):

- Sega Centre, Amiens (also in a La Tête Dans Les Nuages branch, opened before Paris in September 1994)
- SegaFolies, Marseilles (located in a Virgin Megastore and opened around Spring 1993, surely one magazine properly covered this?)
- Euro Disney, Paris (presumably was there on opening day in 1992, actual name and location within the park still unknown with barely any information available, not surprising as it was not too important in the grand scheme of the place - perhaps was little more than an early test location for Sega)

and there may well have been one or two others (likely in another La Tête location), although judging from how even with research there appears to have been very few, and how none of them lasted longer than a few years at most, it seems the concept was much harder to get off the ground in France compared to the UK and Spain (and that's saying something).

 

From Player One, September 94 (the branding appears to have just been Sega, but it was definitely officially known as Centre Sega):



Apparently Amiens closed at the end of 1998, but the opening date there appears to be a couple of weeks off. Incidentally I can't seem to pinpoint when Sega dropped involvement with the Paris venue - the Micromania outlet that was a part of it is well documented, with numerous mentions in Joypad magazine and on old captures of its website, where for some reason they were still calling it "Micromania Sega Centre" until 2013 (likely when it closed).

I have also seen a few accounts of the venue at Euro Disney being on the outskirts of the park, as well as having an AS-1 - seeing as the ride started appearing in Sega venues as early as 1993, that likely makes it the first place in France to have had one, since Centre Sega Paris didn't open until April 1995. In fact this may well be footage of it (I had previously assumed it was filmed in La Tetê, but the Disney Club connection makes sense now):

 

"Centre Sega" from "Centre de jeux famillial" (FR) =Centro de Entretenimiento Familiar (ES), Family Leisure Centre (UK)... I guess you can just call it "Sega Park Amiens"... good job, mate ...

 

This will taste like nothing... but I'm old... so here it goes:

Once upon a time in Braga, Portugal, there was a huge theme Park called "Bracalandia" which closed in 2007 (some Portuguese businessman bought it and moved it to Penafiel in 2011 ... it is currently called Magikland )... anyway ... in the 90s I visited that park a couple of times ... in one of those visits, a Sega Venue was being inaugurated in that day and it used the same kind of carpet used in every Sega Park at the time... George Paul Taylor a British man in charge of Sega Entertainment S.A. Spain has this information on his Linkedin profile:

"

• 
  Country Manager / Director of Operations for Spain and Portugal
  Sega Entertainment S.A. Spain/Portugal
  nov de 1995 - nov de 1997 2 years, 1 month
  
  Spain and Portugal
  
  As Director General I was responsible of the opening of the Urban SEGA PARKS entertainment centers in Spain and Portugal. I made several agreements with Spanish companies such as El Corte Ingles to incorporate the entertainment parks in their centers. IAAPA member.
  
  Como maximo responsable de la multinacional en España para la division de Centros de Ocio y Recreo SEGAPARK realice alianzas estrategicas con El Corte Ingles y otras empresas para el desarrollo de centros de entretanimiento…"

I can't remember the year, but this might be the only Sega Park Venue to ever open in Portugal... there's no photos of it... but it had only Sega Arcade machines and the same carpet.

 

Will have to look around a bit more for that Portugal venue, something could still pop up eventually.

Starting to suspect the Euro Disney place was located in a part of the park that was known at opening as Festival Disney (now Disney Village) - when digging for info on the numerous other generic arcades there in the chance that there was anything relevant in the slightest, I came across this thread with these photos:





Comparing the surroundings of the AS-1 in the video I posted to this, there are definite links, so this arcade is very likely to of been Sega's at one point. They may well have supplied machines to other rooms in the park under contract too - there seems to of been a surplus of them into the mid 2000s.

(and veering off-topic here, but there are also some interesting posts in that thread about Star Wars Trilogy Arcade - apparently it had a little known special model created exclusively for Disney parks, of which only five were ever made, and at least one of those is currently in the hands of a French arcade machine collector. Judging from the photos in there it appears to have been based off of the SDX Ocean Hunter cabinets?)

 

"From your lips to God's ears" ... it will not be easy... but I wish you good luck

 

A lack of any visible Sega/Sonic branding as well, despite them undoubtedly directly supplying all of those machines. It's looking more and more likely Euro Disney may have simply been a testing ground for them and not a place with its own distinct Sega venue within, even with the mentions of it being a thing from some sources - not sure if it would warrant its own page by this point?

 

^ Having taken a closer look, this is probably Shinsaibashi Gigo in its earliest incarnation - the four window panes above the first floor and the escalator are the main giveaways here.



Just to be certain, more early photos would be helpful here, though I imagine they'll be hard to come by.

 

Trying to do a bit of digging on Roppongi GiGO - if little else, there's this brief coverage of it in Beep! Mega Drive, Jacko and Megumi Hayashibara went there, and there's pictorial evidence of both:





I was at first confused as to why Google was throwing up numerous photos of it from the 2000s with its original entrance façade intact, yet nothing which indicated Sega were still involved - that would be because they seem to have stopped managing it around 1995.



At some point during that year the arcade gained new ownership and a new name of Vortex, but also kept most of the old decor in place (some parts even still called it GiGO). It finally closed at the end of December 2013 (this closing notice sign thanks customers for 18 years of service):

 

According to this article, Roppongi took up four floors of the building, not one, and was likely Sega's largest venue up to that point in time, considering its specific mention.



Wouldn't be surprised if it was the first of the GiGOs to open as well, with how early on in the 90s it was around

 

Some other bits and pieces on the Galbo venues I need to add at some point:

Flyer for Ichikawa

Features the rides, as well as, at top centre, what seems to be a conceptual backstory in the same vein of the one created for Osaka's. It too involves a "Dr. Kurono" character (except this time he's created some giant cyber-submarine whale called Moby Dick that the park is said to be housed inside of), so I assume all three of the centres were based on this premise.

Whoever came up with all of this pretty pointless but nonetheless neat lore for these places at Sega should be proud it's getting remembered by some westerners nearly 30 years after it was made. Also apparently Ichikawa closed in March 1999.

Remnants of Osaka after it closed:



And according to this, Yokkaichi, like Osaka, became a Sega World in the late 90s before closing. Ichikawa may have gone the very same way, although as information on it has been scarcer so far I haven't been able to verify that just yet