I remember a motion sim rid being in Torquay UK, I went on it but can't remember much about it . And then you have likes of Gamesmaster Series 4 having that fancy CGI intro that was like a motion sim ride
Going well off topic here, but that GamesMaster intro was in fact made by Trix, a Belgian company with some Silicon Graphics workstations, and foremostly intended for use in motion theatres - like the one that was at Sega World Sydney. There were many others of this type, but the one that sticks out in terms of the UK is the Emaginator, found in the basement of the Trocadero circa SegaWorld London's opening. GamesMaster even briefly covered it not long after they first acquired their series 4 opening titles. These motion theatres are slightly different from the simulator pods discussed upthread. They often make use of multiple moving seats for each rider or two in front of a static screen, instead of several fixed to one platform alongside a projector. IMAX Ridefilm cinemas are cousins of these, albeit with only seats on one motion platform once more - and, surprise surprise, were also installed on the site of a few Sega facilities. Yokohama and Niigata Joypolis come to mind, as well as Sega City Mississauga, but there may well have been others. At the centre of all of this is Showscan, the process and company devised by, once again, Douglas Trumbull. With these and the "Power Imaginator" mentioned previously, Sega presumably must've got special treatment after he helped out with the AS-1?
The intro to GamesMaster looked amazing at the time, thanks for the info. I wish I could remember what the ride in Torquay was called, but I can't.
Ryoichi Hasegawa has posted a big old Twitter thread on that one bad Japanese video game history book getting continually slated by nearly everybody over there, effectively rebutting some of the more debatable things it tries to suggest about Sega in the second volume. From the looks of it all, Hasegawa's points seem to be mainly centred on criticising the book's narrative that they ignored casual gamers, despite the huge successes of UFO Catcher, Print Club, etc. He basically contends both that and the misunderstanding of Sega as one company with none of the segregation between the consumer, amusement, and toy sides it actually had as the author's biggest failings - SOA proposing to change certain things in the Saturn ports of AM2 games like Fighting Vipers is used as an example to disprove the latter. edit: There's also some noise towards the end about a "Cross Function Team", that apparently served as a bridge to smooth things over between the CS and AM divisions for the first time in the late 2000s. Miku and Puyo are cited as specific IP that it helped out on. This might warrant further investigation if possible (?).
Yeah, can someone share a link? I’m not sure I know of it considering the English title may be less literal (or if it’s a Japanese book which the thought of attempting to read scares me lol).
It's an actual Japanese book - GSK has a thread overseeing some of the fallout from it over there. Apparently others are even going as far as getting their own rebuttals printed, and I don't really blame them if the original book's publisher is already foisting it upon libraries, schools, etc.
Stuff like this will be the biggest loss from Twitter, as far as I'm concerned (someone bought Yosuke Okunari's new book, and dug out the old Sega department nameplates they saved during one of the headquarters moves)
Ohshima and Yas recently had a meet up: https://twitter.com/yasuharah/status/1676939531852079105?s=46&t=S0_YkQ8TRA2Bk54XvKgWfw I’m still holding out hope that Yas could work with Ohshima on a superstar sequel
I asked sound programmer/arranger Masayuki Nagao 10 questions about some of his more obscure works on Twitter. TLDR from his answers 1. He arranged "and damaged" the opening tune for Toki: Going Ape Spit 2. He was early on slated to arrange the music for Sonic 2, and Morihiko Akiyama was supposed to make the sound effects, but that would take too long so more people from SEGA Sound Team came in to help. 3. Haruyo "Lotty" Oguro is still friends with Nagao. She was talented with classical music while he had a nack for funk, jazz, rock, etc. 4. SHINOBI (OPENING) is the only song he composed for Shinobi III. The rest are by Murasaki and Akiyama, whereas he "(musically) produced" every track. 5. Morihiko Akiyama plays "PC KEYBOARDS" 6. Despite what his Wikipedia says about him working on Party Quiz MEGA Q, he's "not in", as in, he's "not in the credits". So, I'm actually still 100% sure if he worked on it or not. I've asked him a follow up question. EDIT: He meant he worked on it as manager of the sound team, seeing as his frequent co-worker at the time Hirofumi Murasaki is the sole composer. Didn't make any music for it. 7. He made music and programmed sound for both Jurassic Park and Sonic Chaos, but couldn't remember what he did for Taisen Mahjong: HAO・PAI 2 and Torarete Tamaruka!? 8. He doesn't know Janshin Densetsu, so I have no idea what happened with MEGABEAT's sound getting on there. 9. The Masayuki Nagao who playtested Alone in the Dark 3 (Japanese Version) is definitely him. 10. The song I think is famous from Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine (I've seen the names Stages 1-4 for Mega Drive and Scenario for Game Gear) as well as the similar-sounding match_up from Space Invaders Evolution. are probably his, at least, they sound like what's typical for him. EDIT: I asked him more questions later, about a lot more post-SEGA works. The TLDR for those. 11 Not that it was an interesting question, but I pointed UTAUTA-UH's similarities to Space Channel 5, and we agreed it was a coincidence that 2 kinda similar rhythm games came out so close to each other. 12 He designed every new feature in Space Invaders: Evolution, including the rhythm-based Beat Attack, while the other people credited for additional game design helped out with the details make it more fun. 13 One of his best friends Tomoo Yamaguchi is a freelance programmer/guitarist who used to work with Opus Corp., and their name was spelled Tomowo Yamaguchi in Rainbow Islands: Evolution. 14 Another best friend, Hiroya Someno, also plays guitar (he taught me about the reason guitars are so commonly played by Japanese people) and was also a project manager for Space Invaders: Evolution and Bubble Bobble: Evolutuon. 15 The entire Bubble Bobble: Evolution story was Nagao's first time writing a story. 16 It might look like, in Zoo Resort 3D, that he's an employee of Vanilla Inc., but he was asked by them that one time to work with them. 17 In 1993 at least, when Masayuki Nagao was part of the department, CS3 Sound worked on all the internally-developed OSTs for Mega Drive and Game Gear titles.
Former SEGA sound designer IPPO wrote a thread about some of her work on Ghouls 'n Ghosts. She says that she rewrote CAPCOM's sound driver for the game, programming it in assembly with the help of consumer programmer Mr. S (I assume COM BLUE). She didn't know much about Assembly, so they had to very patient with her. A senior sound engineer (I assume Kazuhiko Nagai since he lists the game with "Capcom/SEGA hybrid driver, SE" on his website) did a checkup to fix some mistakes. There was one big problem she overlooked, and the director got very angry with her for it, but she decided to not reveal what it was. Obviously, the Mega Drive and Arcade versions have a different number of tones, so she had to spend a lot of time picking which ones to cut. A sound senior (I'm very sure about Nagai in this case) created the sound effects to ease the load, and she misremembered them being credited in the game (there is no staff roll actually) As for the Master System version of Ghouls 'n Ghosts, she didn't handle the sound driver for that. Forgotten Worlds came after, but the process was different and didn't involve changing the sound driver (I know from her Kotaku interview that she and a programmer developed a tool "which converted Capcom’s sound data to a more Mega Drive-friendly format." She was going to do the port of Strider after that too, but she'd done a port right before Ghouls 'n Ghosts (which was unreleased) and her boss Mr. N (I assume Yuji Naka) told her 4 ports in a row would be too much, so that job was handed over to Tadahiko Inoue aka XOR.
It's been a very long time since I looked at the manual for Ghouls 'N' Ghosts, but I wonder if the Sega staff credits are in there. Fun to read about this. Thanks for asking and sharing!
According to Shinichi Ogasawara, we have Hayao Nakayama to thank for Virtual On seeing a release in the UK - he apparently loved the game so much that he pushed it from the top, with four units even going on site at SegaWorld London. And we already knew that last part was definitely true from this clip, filmed by Escape: When their income wasn't all that great, Paul Williams is supposed to have thought something to the effect of that whole "10 years too early" thing about them. Shame that the west still isn't getting these games widely even now though.
I think Virtual-On's problem is that it looks complicated. Virtua Fighter is recognisable as a fighting game, Daytona USA is clearly a racing game, but Virtual-On is a third-person shooter, versus fighter, almost-platformer thing with flashing lights - it makes sense when you start playing, but when put up against games that are instantly understandable, it's going to struggle. Although the only genuinely confusing thing is the sexualisation of Fei-Yen. The massive robot that looks like a robot.
To be honest I didn't see VF2 or VF3 in many Arcades In the UK. I was amazed when Cardiff had a VF3 unit (I even remember sadly being such a nerd for filming the game and then comparing it to the DC version ) the only other place I saw a VF3 unit (not in a SEGAworld) was again in Blackpool. Blackpool was pie-hot for Arcade games back in the day.
