The art on the center card looks very similar to the Sonic calendar art. Any way to know who did the art?
A few just dropped in this post, though I haven't been keeping track: "'88 A HAPPY NEW HARRIER" Did they really have to make a minor variant for both a specific game center and a special occasion like New Years as well??
Age's Kumamoto came up again, so I gave it a page. The address in that EnJoint scan wasn't playing nicely with OCR software which is why I hadn't tackled it sooner, but Google handles it fine when searching for our PDF. ...I mean the address doesn't exist anymore but I'm fairly sure it used to. Sega claims it was at the entrance to the "Kamitori shopping area" so... here you go. It looks like coincided with a redevelopment of the area in 1990, but there was another one in 1998 that likely hides all traces of its existence. And obviously Japan hasn't documented its history online very well, despite the place supposedly dating back to 1632.
The bones of what was once SegaWorld are of course long gone now in most parts of the world - last time I checked the Trocadero was becoming a mosque again, and Darling Harbour on the other side of the world is unrecognisable. Things are apparently different sometimes in Japan... because this was once this: and the former appears to be what that part of the Osaka ATC building has stayed like to today. (having said all that, the first Joypolis location was completely demolished altogether ages ago, so swings and roundabouts I guess)
Came here just to post this: Wikimedia Commons has one picture of one of SS Mega Dunia (as they called it) Jakarta branches (dated September 2002 according to its exif metadata) that I found by accident: There's also text mentions of "Sega World" in the 2003 Jakarta Shopping Center Guide (bilingual English/Indonesian), though no mention in which location. (The Sega Worlds in Indonesia weren't in one location - in addition to Jakarta, there were also ones in Surabaya and Yogyakarta.) On a side note, I would also like to document history of Indonesian arcades in general - local sources and communities, as well as trade magazines doesn't seem to give clear picture to me.
Mornin' https://archive.org/details/coin-jo...urnal September 1992/page/198/mode/2up?q=sega This is (what became) Sega World Apollo, but here it's being called "Sega Amusement Theater" (セガ・アミューズメントシアター). It even comes with maps! Weirdly this is the second time this weekend that I've accidentally come across "car size" Super Monaco GP cabinets. EDIT: there's another one too, which I only spotted after making this post
Yeah I remember the similar Game Machine coverage of that one being linked on here few times before. This is one of those that I really wish we could get colour photos of from that period - it looked gloriously insane back then. Some of the remnants of the "theater" theming even lingered right into recent years, as documented by @RyogaMasaki.
Evenin' https://archive.org/details/Coin-Jo...Journal October 1997/page/378/mode/1up?q=sega Sega World Festival Gate
Mornin' after https://archive.org/details/Coin-Jo...Journal October 1994/page/133/mode/1up?q=sega https://archive.org/details/Coin-Jo...Journal October 1994/page/245/mode/1up?q=sega "Deporte" is Spanish for sport. Delegating these things to interested parties - these are coming through faster than I can deal with them.
I'm going to upload those four "Monthly Coin Journal" magazines to Retro CDN... There are only four of these magazines at the moment, right?
https://archive.org/details/Coin-Journal-January-1997-600 https://archive.org/details/Coin-Journal-May-1996-600 You're not wrong
I posted this before archive.org had done its processing: More places: https://archive.org/details/Coin-Journal-May-1996-600/Coin Journal May 1996/page/262/mode/2up?q=sega Also locations in Thailand, apparently: https://archive.org/details/Coin-Journal-May-1996-600/Coin Journal May 1996/page/397/mode/1up?q=sega I had a brief look, but rather than give me what I asked for, Google threw up some purdy watches instead. And I mean, hey, great - I don't have time to deal with it, but good to know they exist - I've added it to the pile (though why does only the US one get high definition graphics??).
That makes sense with this place having a Ghost Hunters. I wonder if that location was originally owned by the original partners mentioned, or if it ended up there after another closed and things got sold off at auction, à la Sydney? EDIT: was just idly looking through some of the other linked photos on that site and clocked a small VR-1 installation also there in the background for the first time. Very surprised one of those was still knocking around as late as 2008 too.
https://archive.org/details/Coin-Journal-May-1996-600/Coin Journal May 1996/page/397/mode/1up?q=sega Wow... Mitsui & Co., Ltd.?!... that's the company that acquired this Greek bathtub in 1970 ...
Try here https://web.archive.org/web/20010409040818/http://www.galaxy.co.th/available.htm I'm guessing they used the "Edu-Hitech" (ETC) brand rather than Sega for the actual locations, but inside they had Sega/Sonic. And look; MBK had an AS-1! I've been in that arcade in the 2000s, but the AS-1 was long gone.
Glanced over a few more things, came across a couple mentions in Coin Cascade August 1995: Yoyo Land is even mentioned just before the specific detail on the two Sega-affiliated locations (MBK and a bigger, otherwise undocumented one at Imperial World Ladprao), but it appears to have not had the large attractions by them at that point in time - I suspect the theory on those finding their way there later after a closure or downsize of one of these Galaxy-ran places may be correct.
update - They've just sold it back to the Americans. A contents preview was recently sent elsewhere of the August 1993 edition of Coin Journal, and it listed a feature on the place from when Sega World Seagaia first opened. Hopefully that one comes through soon?
It's a "Japanese arcade historian @onionsoftware casually posts a scan with not just one but two obscure Sega location things" kind of day This is from the "Sega Prepaid Card System Catalog 1987" (セガ・プリペイド カードシステムカタログ 1987). No other mention of this exists online, and the 1987 part implies there may have been more that could massively improve our coverage of Sega Game Card. But that's not all: An elusive Sega Chan sighting. There was a photo of this out in the wild already at another Hi-Tech Land Sega location from a Gamest report, but in very low quality.
