It has multiple mascots, actually! This heart-mouthed thing is the first thing you see when you go to the official Joypolis website. Don't know it's name, though.
Their finest 15 seconds is this advert. Not as good as this one though: The man could put Mitsuyoshi out of a job.
That is Joypoli-kun and apparently he appeared in the Nintendo 3DS game Hero Bank 2. I suspect there's a lot of weird Sega-related stuff in that game (it has Sonic and Shadow in it, for one)
I think the automation of this might already work - it's pushing/pulling from this database table. I did notice Tokyo Joypolis had two runs of Murder Lodge - my gut feeling is the second one will be different enough to warrant its own page... unless it really is a carbon copy of the 90s edition. Also worth noting: there are a lot of missing attractions. Copy-pasting from the TODO page: And that's not all of them - there's a fair number of movie tie-ins that only lasted six months. Also awkward stuff: "Sonic Carnival", because that's a thing, surely? Well... not really - it's a vague area in the middle of the second floor. And there's a metal cylindrical sign above it that says "SEGARENA". ...and "Segarena" has been there from the beginning. Sometimes it's called an attraction, other times it's a place which houses attractions. This the other interesting thing about Tokyo Joypolis - the rennovations were very often surface level. Some bits are broadly unchanged since 1996.
Initially I think "Segarena" was a slightly bigger arcade area than what we have now (see below pic from here), with Power Sled and Sonic Canball also bunged in from the start too. This was probably where Virtua Fighter 3 had its first location tests during July 1996. But then other mid-size attractions ended up there over time, and they shrewdly decided to focus it on Sonic a bit more in the late 2000s/early 2010s for all the tourists visiting?
Sonic Carnival is (I think) a 2012 addition - not sure what it was before then. The floor was originally called "SPORTS" but it was always a loose definition (which reminds me - there is a "Joypolis Sports" in Hong Kong that actually has sports in it - shocking!). There was a dedicated carnival area which seems to have moved around. Maybe that was half the point - big open spaces give them the flexibility to move things if one of their many special events needed more room.
It was Carnival Zone in 2011: https://web.archive.org/web/20111005145953/http://tokyo-joypolis.com/game/carnival.html To confuse things slightly, they changed the floor numbering at some point from 3/4/5 to 1/2/3.
I've got a stupid issue. Because Sega did this, I sub-divided the Tokyo Joypolis attractions into floors. Then I carried this through to Shinjuku Joypolis and Yokohama Joypolis - it's what the promotional material and the websites do, so hurray, vague organisation. (the M stands for "mezzanine") But for whatever reason, Sega only sometimes used this pattern for Umeda Joypolis. There's not much online, and we don't have many scans of maps... despite being the second longest running park in the set (and the information we do have is late-2000s, when new attractions were few and far between rather than ever six months). This means we've got all these attractions*, but only a few are being picked up by the templates, because we don't know where they were placed in the building. It's genuinely weird how little (non-Tokyo) Joypolis information there is online. Literally millions of people must have visited these places, but you'd never know. *btw I'm not sure where "mid-size" ends and "large" begins, so I've just been using the former for attractions with no photos. This might need changing.
Mid-size has the likes of the AS-1 and Virtua Formula as a general benchmark: bigger than your large arcade simulators, but not as big as most large attractions (e.g. Halfpipe Canyon and Rail Chase: The Ride, or something like VR-1, which used motion simulator bases, but several of them, and had a whole pre-show area, trial pods next to the entrance way and queue line etc). This is where the issue arises with certain examples though - some, like Wild River, did have more trappings at certain installations but didn't at others, which is why it turned up at some non-Sega places and smaller locations in Taiwan. I'm half of the opinion all of these haunted house-type "walking" attractions should get their own category since they don't fit neatly into either really.
I have brute-forced attractions. I's not absolutely everything (the cafes and restaurants are particularly spotty) but it's probably the most definitive list online. I'll let someone else find pretty pictures. if walk-through attractions are to be reclassified... well turns out there's a lot of them. Like, loads. also +1 Spawn +1 Terminator +2 Resident Evil +2 Assassin's Creed and a whole bunch of Japanese horror.
Getting dragged around the internet as I try and fill in gaps. I've done rides and walkthrough attractions, now it's apparently about "dedicated areas in venues". Or at least Studio Sega. I came across this before - it's a "girls only" area full of print club machines, because gender roles are cool. This is the peak of that fad - you could rent costumes and look like a loon. What I hadn't expected, was that Sega would open a dedicated Studio Sega venue: Studio Sega 109 Machida. So now the "area in a venue" is now a venue in and of itself. But then they pull stunts like these: "Oshare Majo Love and Berry Magical Station", a dedicated area within Studio Sega 109 Machida (and too many other places, including probably the photo above) for Love and Berry machines. So that's a "area in a venue based on an area in a venue". This story has fallen through the cracks and is unknown to science. But there may be a reason for some of this stuff: https://web.archive.org/web/20020802120256/http://210.224.171.181/ This is the website for the appallingly named "Sega Amusement Co." not to be confused with "Sega Amusements". It's a first for Sega Retro: their site didn't even have a domain name. Among their inventions: https://web.archive.org/web/20020806060258/http://210.224.171.181/vo4/ A dedicated area for Cyber Troopers: Virtual-On Force.
There's a later addendum to that story too Not content with just photo booths and dedicated areas of them for women in arcades, "MC Studio" also came into existence around 2005: at least two actual fully fledged photography studios aimed at families and children. Not only did Sega own and run these, the actual photo systems were developed by Sega themselves. Mentioned in this piece covering it is the "NS R&D Dept.", which I've brought up before for being shrouded in mystery besides a solitary credit for creating OutRun 2 SP SDX. Turns out they were responsible for making this too? It is fairly Google-proof unless you're specifically searching for it in relation to Sega (and even then it throws up a bunch of newer motion capture stuff), so there's a good chance the whole scheme wasn't particularly successful. Yet Sega just won't stop flirting with this concept - even after they sold off all their locations, they apparently had a three day long studio "event" at a place in Shibuya last year to promote their newest purikura machine. Technically we should care... but.
Okay so I think I hate Murder Lodge This is an attraction that Sega seemed to open... everywhere. It feels like Sega made a room where you sit around a table with headphones on, and kept using this concept (maybe with minimal changes) for other, usually licensed attractions. When the license ran out, it turned back into Murder Lodge - a "default mode" so to speak. So during the history of Tokyo, Umeda and Okayama Joypolis, you see Murder Lodge coming and going with little fanfare. For example, Umeda Joypolis: Here in April 1999 Gone by April 2000 Back by June 2001 In between the gap, The Ring: 3D Sound https://web.archive.org/web/2000051...co.jp/sega/atp/news/news994/jpnews990717.html original idea do not steal
Some of the strangest examples of those I caught were Juu Sanri Kyoufu no Bansan: featuring Morning Musume. and Shinrei Shashin no Nazo: featuring Morning Musume., the "Morning Musume" in question of course being the successful idol girl group. Because that's what first comes to mind when you think horror (?). There's even supposed to be a few promotional videos of said group at Tokyo Joypolis from around 2003. Never seen these in full, but they might be a rare source for footage of lesser-seen things like Bike Athlon in action - there's a bit of a gap between the early Joypolis years circa 1994-1996 where the attractions are better represented in the scans, TV shows and commercials we have, and the 2010s when they opened up their own YouTube channel with tons of clips (let alone those filmed by others).
okay so I'm now a Joypolis Master™. Though there are better masters. I have scavenged Sega's website(s) multiple times to create pages for about 98% of Joypolis attractions. This includes opening and closing dates, and which floor(s) of the buildings they were housed in. There are many blanks because the Wayback Machine didn't capture everything, and as said, some attractions were installed and removed without fanfare. What's missing? - Four or five attractions that I can't easily translate - The death and return of Murder Lodge. And I think this might happen with a couple of other attractions too. - Food and drink. We have some, but not all. - "Attractions" that weren't technically part of Joypolis, but were advertised in Joypolis because they were part of the same building. Okayama Joypolis is really bad at this. - Events. There are hundreds, and sometimes attractions can temporarily change to accommodate them. Sega spent a lot of time talking about ticket prices too. - I don't know what the difference between "Ghost Hunters" and "Ghost Hunters DX" is - The video/carnival/medal/prize/whatever areas which sometimes had dedicated names and branding, but are often "WE PUT AN ARCADE MACHINE HERE" - Attractions also turned up in Sega Worlds/Club Segas/GiGOs - there might be some missing on that front. And of course most meaningful details other than "THIS WAS AN ATTRACTION" are missing. I'm not sure how much further I can progress without more scans of things. I'm also biased towards Sega's 1990s efforts, because other than Tokyo Joypolis, most of these venues underwent 15-20 years of managed decline before closing (and other than token appearances by Sonic, Tokyo isn't very "Sega-y" either these days). Not that everyhing has to be Sega themed, but the idea of playing Sega Rally inside a car from Sega Rally* is always going to appeal more than "walk through a dark room, then go buy our misguided sequel to The Ring on DVD". *p.s. all the photos I've seen show Toyota Celicas - there were Lancias in there... right? Right?
Unless there was a super secret second setup that appeared outside of Shinjuku Joypolis with one... nope. None to be seen in the clips of it here and here at least. Sega Touring Car Championship Special had more of a variety though. Also: We still don't understand Joypolis in China very well. But of the more notable stuff, it looks like Transformers Human Alliance Special actually debuted over there just before Japan, and they even got an exclusive version of Initial D Arcade Stage 4 Limited which upgraded it to Initial D Arcade Stage 7 AAX, plus still seems to be in existence at a couple locations there (unlike Japan... in fact, Quingdao got the one from there after it closed, meaning it had two of these running different versions after 2019 until 2023). There's also some talk of both the newer Guangzhou Joypolis and "Joypolis Sports" in Hong Kong having massive Sonic areas for children - with their own new attractions, alongside the existing Sonic Athletics - which might need dedicated pages on here.
Finding the dates for things had me inspired - could I find more dates for things? ... no not really but hey This is Sega World Marine Festa. Turns out it's still possible to take a list of venues from an early 2000s game tournament, and convert that into undocumented Sega Worlds.
What a disaster. No really https://web.archive.org/web/20020222012846/http://sega.jp/attraction/develop/kyoto.html Sega made the "Bousai Virtual Corner" (防災バーチャルコーナー) section of the Kyoto Ichi Shiminbousai Center (京都市市民防災センター). It's all about simulating disasters so you can learn, or something (aka put Brave Firefighters cabinets in the lobby). But also they made a 3D ride and also they made a... oh come on really lads sit by a wooden table with headphones on and pretend you're in a landslide! It's not Murder Lodge with a different tape, honest*. This still exists, though is a lot less Sega-y https://kyotobousai-c.com/ Still, real fire extinguishers. This shouldn't be too hard to document - there's quite a bit of coverage online. *speaking of Murder Lodge: There were clues on the wiki already about this, but "Otaru Dynalecx" had a bunch of Sega-made attractions in it for some reason. It was part of the "Mycal Otaru" complex: There might not have been full fat Sega, but you do get Konami and Namco and at least one rabbit. Namco might still be there.
One of the many things they used NAOMIs for: Yes that is a Virtua Striker poster in the background of one of the shots for the emergency simulator. Bonus points to anyone who can find "OTHERS" - it says something about the boards being used as satellites to stream games at Club Sega Akihabara. Effectively the never-realised "Fog Gaming" but 20 years early?
