Fallen well and truly down the "this company really had their financial issues coming to them" rabbit hole again: Sega World Seagaia - at first glance, its tiny page on the wiki wouldn't indicate it was of much note. But it was in fact on the site of a giant resort centred around the Ocean Dome, what was once one of the world's largest indoor waterparks built for no discernible reason other than "lol tourism". Going well outside of the remit of Retro here, but the television adverts even featured Sting. Ocean Dome seems to have first opened with a golf course and a few other things, including said Sega World, in July 1993. As it goes this was apparently also quite big, spreading across two floors of the place + featuring an AS-1, though photo documentation looks very scarce (albeit not all that surprising, considering the entire complex went on to never actually turn a profit). As far as one can currently tell, Sega closed their space in the midst of wider woes with Seagaia - a 2001 bankruptcy, subsequent buyout by an American private equity firm, and the waterpark complex finally closing down by 2007. But then... In 2012, SegaSammy scooped up the remnants that were still running, and it became the first of their small collection of resort locations. This of course seemed like a fairly ridiculous acquisition at the time by the two companies previously best known for video games and pachinko. Indeed, upon news of it breaking, there were many jokes made about this at their expense, as well as some pointing out the naming similarity with Seagaia, and even a few remembering that this wasn't even Sega's first link to the place. Ultimately a Sega World never came back, the abandoned waterpark dome was demolished outright in 2017 as part of extensive renovation efforts, and the resorts area of the conglomerate has remained stagnant since 2020. Who knows what may happen with it moving forward (?).
Surp: https://retrocdn.net/index.php?title=File:MarukatsuMegaDrive_JP_Supplement_07.pdf&page=3 I think this is Sega World Ota circa 1993, although it's changed so much since then it could be something else. I made a mistake when looking this up. "Sega World Plane" (because there's a plane) threw up this noise: Apparently this Sega World Maebashi promotional(?) balloon has outlived the venue. This was from some balloon festival in the Philippines in 2020. Because it's great when looking for answers leads to more questions.
The research channel in the official Sega Forever server on Discord can bring things to light on occasion: This video has a few stills of a Hi-Tech Sega in Miyazaki. It may have later been Sega World Miyazaki, not sure. (edit: I know little about the area concerned here, but a quick search of "miyazaki MRT" also reveals that this place seems to have been found on the site of MRT micc, a commercial facility centred around Miyazaki Broadcasting's headquarters. Are television and radio station offices known to have been a Sega AM location before this?) A shame that this is pretty much just a few low-quality slides set to Generic Royalty Free Track no. 65 as backing though - at least there is the odd upload featuring actual camcorder footage of a Sega World out there, of course.
I can imagine Sting cost a pretty penny. SEGA for sure was not frugal in the 80s-90s Gosh London was beautiful
