SegaWorld Birmingham, Tamworth, Wolverhampton

Osaka Galbo

 

www.sonicgear.org has been documenting literally every piece of Sonic merchandise for years (frankly, I'm impressed that AzureBlaze is still keeping the site going). They also have archived photos, magazine scans, and information on literally anything Sonic-related, including promotional events and Sega-branded venues. It's a fun site to dig through.

Apparently, these shirts and the Sally Acorn pencil topper were originally from Sega VirtuaLandin the Luxor Las Vegas around 1995. The shirts were sold in the gift shop and the pencil topper came from some kind of prize-dispensing machine which contained a variety of Sonic themed things. It's really rare and unusual to see any Sally Acorn/SatAM related merchandise at all.







I'm interested in obscure Sega arcade venues as well, and I know of at least one franchise that isn't on the wiki yet:


Sega City@Playdium (yes, that was the legal name) was founded in Canada as a partnership between Sega GameWorks (the American arcade chain) and Playdium Entertainment Corporation. It was essentially going to be the Canadian GameWorks, with plans for over 40 locations across Canada (although only four were ever built, and only two were known to carry the Sega name). According to Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing;

The first, and flagship, Sega City@Playdium opened in Ontario in September 1996. It was a massive, 40,000 square foot indoor entertainment complex with over 200 arcade games, simulators, and other attractions. Demo Sega Saturn consoles were available to play inside each booth at Megabyte, the venue's restaurant. This venue had over one million visitors and took in six million dollars in revenue during its first year of operations. It actually still exists and still contains a lot of Sega games, but it's just called Playdium now because Sega GameWorks left the partnership at some point.

Another Sega City@Playdium location was built in downtown Toronto in 1999. I know that the Ontario venue dropped Sega from its name in 1999, but the architect who worked on the Toronto location refers to it as a Sega Playdium, despite its opening in 1999, so it's unclear when, exactly, Sega left the project.



Here's a scan of the Sega-era gameplay cards, called PlayCards:



And a photo of the flagship location (somewhat recent, but the decor hasn't changed since 1996):

 

I linked this on the Sega Retro Todo list for toys years ago:

https://myfigurecollection.net/browse.v4.php?mode=search&rootId=-1&status=-1&categoryId=-1&tags[]=sega&domainId=-1&noReleaseDate=0&releaseTypeId=0&ratingId=0&isCastoff=0&hasBootleg=0&tagId=0&noBarcode=0&clubId=0&isDraft=0&year=2018&month=12&acc=0&separator=0&sort=date&output=2&current=categoryId&order=asc&page=1

Edit: Huh. Well, just copy and paste the link then.

 

We're set to have 14 Sega Prize Zones in Superbowl UK centres by 2021, but the one in West Midland Safari Park will be taken over by the HB Leisure operators during that time. Southport Pleasureland's has also closed down/rebranded recently from the looks of things-

Apparently there was also a second, smaller Sega arcade in Birmingham at an ice rink during the 90's, good luck in finding anything about it though.

 

So I know this post is ancient, but being from Harlow that tallies up with my memory.

I was supposed to go on my birthday (23rd December) and didn't get to. Myself and a friend were playing Mega Drive games in my room, waiting for my mum and sister to get ready to go. I got my foot trapped behind my radiator (located at the end of my bed), pulled it out and tore the thing off the wall. We then had to wait in for the council's heating engineer to reattach it. I was super bummed out since I hadn't been yet, and that lines up with it having been opened very recently - we went into town pretty frequently, and I spent much of my youth hanging around in there.

Man, I remember the excitement when I saw Sonic go up on the boards that covered what had been a music shop. Amusingly, I'm pretty sure a guy I used to know called David was the first member of the public inside, because he had various developmental and behavioural issues, so he just ran in without permission when the shutters were up for loading before it officially opened.

 

An entrance sign for a Sega Park seems to have recently came up for sale in Germany on Ebay, but I can't access the listing- the translation on the image source roughly says that its been deleted.

Any idea which one this is from?

https://www.google.com/search?q=gro...xurjAhWLYsAKHW_ADEkQ_AUIESgB&biw=1422&bih=678

 

I managed to find the google cache:

Machine translated:

The cached link. I'd like to pull all the images if we can! Image archive here.

 

This is probably Tower Hill's Sega Park/Casino sign in 2009, though the post it is sourced from doesn't specify where.

 

This photo was uploaded here on foursquare.com on December 13, 2013 ... so these must be runned by them since the "Jurassic" period...

 

Some more high quality pictures of Colindale from back when it was a Sega Dome here:

http://www.avalondesign.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Segadome-Yaohan-Plaza-London.pdf



Had its own Sonic logo like Metropolis, Bournemouth and London, though I don't think there'll be any scanned versions of it out there.

 

No idea where this one is exactly, but was in the vicinity of London apparently- though that doesn't help much, considering how many venues there were around there.

https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=30918477383&id=791842383&set=a.30917917383