Slot cars! Club Sega Kohoku had a special attraction area so prominent for them on opening in 2007, it is co-billed in this Amusement Journal feature (alongside some noise about the as yet uninvestigated card game area brand "G-Link"). This part wasn't ran by Sega themselves though - apparently WiZ, the defunct original creators of Tamagotchi and Digimon, were involved here. There are however some fairly recent (okay, pre-COVID early 2020) patents suggesting Sega was trying to have a go at this sort of thing but with augmented reality tech. Considering the conspicuous timing, this may well have been to try and steal a march on Nintendo's Sega Super Circuit rip off Mario Kart Live and other AR things. Who knows if they'll ever release now though?
I've been filling in some holes, because turns out there were holes that could be filled. Code (Text): {|class="prettytable sortable" !name !opened !closed |- {{#dpl: | category=Venues in Japan | notnamespace=category | include={VenueBob}:opened,{VenueBob}:closed | titlelt=M | ordermethod=title | mode=userformat | secseparators=\n¦''[[%PAGE%]]''¦¦,,¦¦,\n¦- }} {{#dpl: | category=Venues in Japan | notnamespace=category | include={VenueBob}:opened,{VenueBob}:closed | titlegt=M | ordermethod=title | mode=userformat | secseparators=\n¦''[[%PAGE%]]''¦¦,,¦¦,\n¦- }} |} if you want to see where the gaps are. Note that ~185 arcades became GiGOs so weren't technically "closed". There's a lot of x-es. I think I can roughly date things through branding, but when we might be missing photos, I can't make that call. Sega's had arcades in Japan dating back to the 1960s. There's at least 20 years of history we don't understand. Around the mid-1980s we start seeing "Hi-Tech (Land) Sega"s. These have very ad-hoc branding and other than having Sega logos, aren't particularly consistent. It's shockingly hard to find evidence that these things existed, but basically if it looks janky, it's probably a 1980s invention. The "forgotten" Sega logo (hey look it's my unimaginative avatar <--) seems to turn up in the early 1990s. Sonic gets added to signage in 1991, Tails joins him in venues after 1992. Then you have "the best period" from about 1994-1998 where Sega starts establishing out-of-town Sega Worlds. classier, inner-city Club Segas start appearing around 1997. There's the "ugly period" of Sega Worlds, starting around 2003/2004 with this garish yellow logo and modern Sonic. And then there's a cleanup operation to make things as bland and boring as possible in the late 2000s/early 2010s. So you can kind-of tell how old a photograph is, but not necessarily the building itself.
Today I learnt there was both a "Bee Link" and a "Be Re-inc". Bee. It's a franchise of "darts bars" in Japan - you have a drink and/or play some darts. The links sat on on the edge of Sega's websites for 15 years - I just assumed it was a side-project Sega(-Sammy) bought into for a bit and then left alone. Turns out it kind-of matters more than I'd have liked, because it was invented by Hitmaker. In addition to being a video game R&D company, Hisao Oguchi decided to open a darts-themed bar... and then he opened some more, and then suddenly there was a franchise. When Hitmaker was merged back into Sega proper, a new subsidiary, Sega Bee Link was set up to deal with this noise. About 20-30 Bees have been opened since 2002, all wholly owned by Sega until 2016, when the business was sold off. It's clearly important to Sega's history - they even bother to highlight it, so we probably ought to care. What interests me more though is the state of the place in 2002 - the darts machines have always been electronic - did Hitmaker make the first ones? Because if so... that's an undocumented Sega game.
Yes, Hitmaker were always very much involved with the creation of Dartslive as well - which got its start independent of it but ended up being central there. Like Bee it also became more seperate, but the difference with that one of course is that it's still under the "Sega Group" to this day (and is even given as much importance as Super Monaco GP in the title of Oguchi's 4Gamer interview with Fumio Kurokawa, which talks about both businesses a bit).
Eagle eyed wiki readers may remember this footage of the exceedingly rare Cyber Dome and its one known game, Space Hard, from a place called "Komaki Corona World". Turns out this is another one of those venues that Sega jointly managed with another operator - the fifth with this "Corona Co. Ltd" (oh dear) company, according to that first Amusement Industry issue's piece. I had previously wondered whether that was the case with the preponderance of their games here (R360s and deluxe Super Monaco GPs are also prominent, among other big machines), but there was no confirmation of it out there until now. The question is still though... do we care? It is effectively a Sega World in all but name, and though Sega didn't outright own or operate it they apparently had exclusive maintenance and "various types of support" rights. Although there may be tons of these. (Also a comment has appeared under that video claiming a Cyber Dome went over to the States at Scotty's Golf Park's "Game City" - the first US Sega arcade following the second Time Out sell off, that still hasn't got a page. Further investigation needed)
Don't worry - it's spelled with a K I do think the shared Sega projects are worth covering (because again it's one of those "if we don't cover it, who will?" situations), though I don't know how wacky that'll become. If it turns out Sega were secretly managing 348029483209 arcades, maybe a list would be sufficient, idk.
https://archive.org/details/tech-saturn-1997-10/Tech Saturn 1997 10/page/16/mode/2up apparently Atlus opened a dedicated Print Club venue in 1997. Annoyingly it's just called "Print Club"... which means it's basically impossible to find.
A claim that 88 Time-Out arcades were owned by Sega before the sale https://archive.org/details/play-me...ume 16, Number 8 - July 1990/page/14/mode/1up (bonus points for working out where the photo is from)
https://archive.org/details/Coin-Journal-August-1993/Coin Journal 1993 08/page/160/mode/2up More details on Espacio, or as I originally put it, "a place that existed".
https://archive.org/details/arcadia0088/page/74/mode/2up A bit more on that "G-link" thing - I think it was basically a designated area for card games - other than this story, all traces have disappeared off the internet.
According to this they also slotted them into Shibuya GiGO, Sega Ikebukuro GiGO and Hi-Tech Land Sega Shibuya, as well as an eventual standalone location in the same building as the first of those and a Bee bar (?).
guess who's back Sega are having a go at retail - this is Sega Store Shanghai, which opened yesterday. Now you too can buy all of the things.
