A year and a bit later - Sega World Amazing Square. Progress! https://archive.org/details/Amusement-Sangyo-1992-7/Amusement Industry 1992 07/page/n82/mode/1up I almost missed it.
The 1992 opening date is a surprise as it feels more like a late 80s location e.g. Joy Square (which I still need to get round to adding a page for). Looks like it was where the last Sega Super Circuit setup was quietly put out to pasture?
Just want you to take some time to appreciate this noise: https://archive.org/details/gamewalker-1995-11/page/141/mode/1up This November 1995 issue of Game Walker came through the other day, and lists a game center we didn't know about: Hi-Tech Sega Shibuya. Not to be confused with Hi-Tech Land Sega Shibuya, which would have been operating at the same time. It makes you wonder how many other arcades have been lost to time because of a single, four letter word. Either way you'll struggle to find evidence of its existence - since December 1999 the address has been for the flagship store of Tsutaya, a book retail chain. Last Bronx credits Hi-Tech Sega Shibuya. Maybe it had its location test there. (the other venue in that scan is Hi-Tech Sega Prime which we already knew about)
For a rather recently closed one (2017), the cars from the Dubai version of IDAS4 Limited is currently at Dezerland in Orlando (/r/initiald thread 1, /r/initiald thread 2). One of the /r/initiald thread also mentions that Keisuke's yellow FD RX-7 from the Tokyo version (Dubai one has Nakazato's R32 GT-R instead) is damaged. Footage of the ride when it was operation: Now I wonder what happened to Joypolis' Sega Rally/STCC cars.
Dezerland clearly have some association with Sega Republic that's seen some of the big deluxe stuff offloaded there after it closed, as there was also a couple of rare House of the Dead 4/Let's Go Jungle Special units around at their arcade until very recently. There's even some word on the street that they're trying to get a Storm-G setup from there working again - could be interesting to see. Rally/Touring Car Special are probably long gone. Would love to be proven wrong on that but there's a good reason we're only seeing this kind of thing resurface from the UAE moneypit location and not the Japan flagship.
Sega seemingly had locations as far back as 1995-ish in mainland China; 95% sure I must've linked this before but there's a brief Game Machine piece on at least one of those. This article also leaves some clues, and talks about some apparent issues they had in setting up the later "Player's Arena" in Shanghai (i.e. Shanghai Joypolis nearly 10 years beforehand).
As mentioned in the other topic, I tried to come up with a solution for automating events which Sega people appeared at. First on the list, (H.)'s first appearance, a Crackin' DJ Part 2 event which took place at Tokyo Joypolis. Turns out it wasn't technically [H.] that appeared, and nowhere on the wiki do we explain that Joypolis had a stage. Turns out, they have (at least) two permanent stages, and one of them was right in front of your face when you entered the venue: Tokyo Joypolis has three floors, labeled 3F, 4F and 5F. In 1996 you'd see this structure - the entrance to Time Fall on 3F, the "V-Stage" on 4F and... something you probably couldn't access on 5F. Any fancy events until at least 2000 would take place on this "V-Stage", like... the Sakura Taisen 3 reveal. You should be able to work out why this wasn't the best of plans - there's no space, and as it's located above the audience, they'd have to look up to see what was happening. Don't know what "V" stands for here - "vertical"? Anyway they ditched this in one of the renovations, and now the stage sits on 3F, with the Time Fall entrance being removed as well (I assume you have to go around to reach whatever's back there now?) But there's also a more intimate stage on 5F: the "Multi-Stage". Which seems to be where the Crackin' DJ thing too place. You know when I first saw Toyko Joypolis explained online, it was said to be "like SegaWorld (London), but still open". They lied - yes some of the rides were the same, but Tokyo Joypolis is a lot less "game" related - I can see why Sega aren't fully committed to it these days.
Through the magic of "having a map" I've managed to work out where most of the things were in Tokyo Joypolis. Although a fair bit wasn't archived properly on the Wayback machine, and there are limits to how willing I am to spend time on this. One thing I do know is that Joypolis is weird. RE: V-Stage. What do you do with a (usually) empty stage front and centre of your indoor theme park? Well apparently every couple of hours you have a "mechanical puppet show". You also have regular interruptions from a character called "Joypolis Jack", a forgotten mascot character thing. Pre-rendered CG in 1996 - there's a good chance Sega people were behind it. Also strange: in addition to three floors there was a "casino & cafe" area that had a window. I think was on the third floor, but Sega won't tell me - they wanted to treat it as something else. I think(?) that might have become the Multi-Stage... but don't quote me on that.
The "mechanical puppet show" is briefly seen around the 7 minute mark at in this (brilliant) video, alongside several other things: Judging from some of their members, AM5 acquired their very own CG animation team somewhere along the way (1994/95ish?) after initially relying on AM3 or Graphics Technologies for works like the AS-1 ride films and some other odds and ends. Unless it was outsourced (like Aqua Nova's film still seemingly was), they're probably the ones who made all the "Joypolis Jack" stuff. Of course, the modern equivalent to it would be this: And the location is still used for video game events from time to time too - last year it hosted a Sonic birthday party (feat. rarely seen concept artwork) again, and I know they've done a few things with Puyo Puyo eSports and Mushiking in recent years too. (There are decades worth of events held at the place though. Many moons ago I tried further expanding its dedicated magazine articles page, which like many other things was put on the backburner for how massive it was getting because of all the reporting on Virtua Fighter tournaments, special stage shows for Burning Rangers + Zen Nihon Pro Wrestling Featuring Virtua, etc)
Because it made sense at the time, we've been treating medium and large-scale attractions as "games", and while granted, some genuinely are games, it's difficult to argue that these things were "released" in the same way a game on cartridge or disc was. There's only (at most) a handful of installations*, all of them (probably) subtly different, and most importantly, they have closing dates. So for example, Aqua Nova - we know of ten installations, the page has release dates for four, and we're not mentioning when each was closed. Likewise it's not going to have RRPs or product codes because you couldn't "buy" an Aqua Nova. It's like having a release date for a bathroom - the current template just isn't suitable for this style of product. Also Aqua Nova was surrounded by things that weren't "games", like restaurants or shops. These had opening and closing dates too - we barely have coverage of this at all (though to be fair, we didn't know a lot of this existed until comparatively recently), but it's the same sort-of thing. If you take Fukuoka Joypolis as an example - we're claiming there were 6 "old" attractions and 7 "new" ones (13 in total) But this leaflet names 15 at a single point in time. Sega classes the non-rides as equals, so we ought to too (though admittedly "amusement zone" might be tricky). We've also given third-party attractions a wide birth, but in my mind, a third-party putting an attraction in a Sega park is no different to a third-party releasing a game on a Sega console. So while it's true that that big Aliens attraction was more of a 20th Century Fox thing than a Sega, one, Sega still facilitates its existence, so it should probably have a page. And I mean who else is going to cover it? Anyway my vague plan is a new template that goes Code (Text): LOCATION | OPEN | CLOSED ---------------+------------+----------- Tokyo Joypolis | 1996-xx-xx | 200x-xx-xx and then from that, automate all the lists. I haven't thought very long about this though. Weird quirk to this - the McDonalds in SegaWorld London might now be in scope. *one of the few exceptions to this rule might be the AS-1, because that's small enough to move around. I don't know how to handle that.
Because the world is just like that, I managed to find one of our articles detailing Sega's bathrooms that have an interactive urinal. The Toylet manages to just graze by as a bespoke "attraction" with its own games, meaning it has its own template. This manages to tie into one of our active Sega Worlds; It says earlier in the article that these machines were installed in all of the regions sans Shikoku. Sadly, it seems Sega Matsuyama missed out on the fun before the GiGO rebrand. ...alright, in all seriousness, I absolutely do understand the struggle and the infrastructure we have in place definitely wasn't expecting the kinds of questions we've had to ask here. After picrel and the mobile template being pushed to its limits, I think there might have to be some sort of "template cobbler" article in SR itself where PoCs for templates are put on the table and then made to reality depending on how feasible it is.
I managed to automate it (honest): Tokyo Joypolis Basically you fill in these tables and the wiki should sort itself out: Aqua Nova#Locations I haven't verified every date, which is why we've got manual lists sitting underneath, but here's an opportunity to find references and work it out. Also I think Ghost Hunters needs splitting up, because while yes, the ride will be similar between all the iterations, Sega classed them as separate attractions and I think it'll end up being neater this way. A Western example might be Superstar Limo at Disney California Adventure, which was so bad that it was closed within the year. Disney then re-branded it as a Monsters Inc. ride, but the layout and a good chunk of the animatronics were recycled - it's kind-of the same thing, but not. Anyway things I learnt from this exercise (that you may already know but whatever): - Joypolis is a very different beast post-2001. Presumably because all of these things were unprofitable, most(?) of the attractions of the last remaining venue, Tokyo Joypolis, became about licensed properties, or saw Disney-style sponsorship, meaning it's less about Sega's wacky experiments and more about chasing popular culture. -- and we have very little documented about the attractions from this period up until the present day - we have very little documentation on the restaurants and shops. Which I already mentioned. But I'm going to mention it again. - Unlike the various Sega Worlds, many of these Joypolis-es (Joypoli?) really weren't interested in what we'd consider traditional arcade games. Yes they had dedicated zones for video, medal and "carnival" games, but these seem to have got smaller, if not out-right removed as the years went on. And you don't have things like UFO Catchers here. -- this is again a "Joypolis is not like SegaWorld London" situation, where the vast majority of content was arcade games. - A big part of Joypolis, even today, are the "walking" attractions. Literally just a decorated area that you walk through - sometimes scary, sometimes not. This is not something the Western parks ever bothered to devote floor space to. - There are a lot of "events" we're not covering, where they might have special performances or merchandise or even a temporary attraction or two. These are annoying things to document because all that remains are dark, low resolution photos from 25 years ago, but... we'll have to care one day. Also there's Entertainment STAGE net@ which makes no sense at all. what are you talking about
I actually don't see much difference, I guess there is not much new (but hey Spicy Taxi!)? Rather, they just updated the existing attractions. Sega Rally Special Stage > Initial D, Rail Chase Ride > HotD Scarlet Dawn Attraction, That halfpipe ride, Power Sled > Storm G, R360 with a Transformers game....
This all makes sense, but then the lines do seemingly blur on some 'proper' attractions - there's a site and a few other things which suggest Sega were trying to shop at least four of them (including Aqua Nova) around to others during the early 2000s, possibly as a means making at least some profit out of the whole venture. For a good instance, Wild River. This definitely ended up at a few locations other than Sega's despite not being a flatpack-able game machine as such. Never did get round to reflecting any of this on the wiki as didn't know where to stop, but it looks like Sega's locations usually had bigger 12 seater or 8 seater versions, with further scaled down versions of the latter briefly going out to other places like Mycal Otaru Dynalex and Rusutsu Resort. ... and yet, there's an apparent later iteration in South Korea at their massive Lotte World theme park, which for the past decade appears to have had a whole lavishly themed "Wild Tours" area licenced out for their basement on the quiet. It truly never ends: There's also smaller versions of Murder Lodge and Power Sled that went out to several non-theme park locations (including a mysterious supposed prototype of the latter that found its way to an American museum); again, lines blurring between mid-size and large on these. Even a pared-down version of the massive Halfpipe Canyon ended up elsewhere. Oh and re: licenced third party attractions - for the longest time, I thought covering those would be not too equidistant conceptually from making pages for all the arcade games made by other companies that Sega had at their smaller locations. But besides some of the ones by Human, which might've been small enough to be sold in a similar way as actual machines... they were on big chunks of property that Sega owned, at the end of the day, and aren't completely innumerable. Although I think some were outright operated by the licensors too, ditto a chunk of the food and drink outlets they've had. Either way, the most interesting story I once saw out of the whole post-2001 stage of Joypolis is still the fact that Yu Suzuki once designed a "I Can't Believe It's Yogurt!" outlet based around Beach Spikers and Virtua Fighter for it. That one is definitely something which needs documenting more. I'm not so sure about the arcade areas getting downsized either, besides the medal games disappearing. The two downscaled Japanese locations outside of Tokyo that remained into the 2010s, Umeda and Okayama, basically look like they were arcades with benefits right up to the end given how they got rid of the entry fees (plus some or most attractions), and the official Tokyo Joypolis website has kept an entire section dedicated to arcade games, including UFO Catchers with Sonic inside them. Granted, it hasn't been updated to reflect the newer versions of Maimai and Chunithm since around mid 2020, but still, they're there. Also... TIL that Spicy Taxi and a number of the other newer original Joypolis attractions introduced since 2010 were all co-designed by IDE-O - a company that chief Gunvalkyrie artist Yuichi Ide founded after he left Sega. Turns out, he and other Sega PC/Smilebit/Amusement Vision alumni like Tomokazu Honma (who still leads things at Joypolis internally) moved to this attraction development department during the mid 2000s, when the old AM5/Mirai R&D lineage started to focus more on their kids card games.
Oh wow interresting. We never figured about the whereabouts of Hisaoyshi Yoshida tough, he was pretty prominent as the level designer of Sonic 3 alongside Iizuka, and directing GunValkyrie...
