WE WERE IN SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, AND SAW A SIGN SAYING ‘SEGA WORLD’
So we went and investigated it! The sign looked like it had where it says ‘SEGA’ covered up with a sticker, so it might’ve been a closed, abandoned SEGA World facility, with lots of classic games in that everyone’s forgotten about! This could be a lost tomb, sealed forever in 1998 and therefore with everything in mint condition and probably set to freeplay!
It’s worrying that the ‘SEGA’ bit seems to have been covered up.
It’s definitely been covered up, hasn’t it? It would be some coincidence for a piece of paper exactly that size to randomly attach itself to that sign in that specific place, wouldn’t it?
Sadly, to get to SEGA World, you have to walk down the sort of underpass that we usually associate with buying heavily-cut drugs from tramps or having our laptop stolen. This might explain why the sign has been papered over and why it looks like it might be closed and abandoned. What lies down the underpass of DOOM? Is it really a SEGA World? Is it still open? Or is it closed? Or has it been turned into a McDonalds or a Starbucks like every other available retail space?
It’s a boring shopping center. There is no SEGA World in Sydney any more. That was a waste of everyone’s time. We looked for ages. Nothing.
THEN, JUST NOW, THREE WEEKS LATER AND AS IF BY COINCIDENCE!
We got an email from this bloke who saw a second closed SEGA World in Shanghai. What is happening to the world? :(
All the while, Apple is opening *more* iPod hellholes. The end times really are upon us.
filed in GONZO on Aug.01, 2006
August 1st, 2006 on 3:46 pm
whats up with your myspace? i cant get into it. oh and sega rocks, to fit in.
August 1st, 2006 on 4:01 pm
Did you not know about this place? Sega launched a Sega World in Sydney back in 1996 and was a bit like the one at the Piccadilly Trocadero but closed in late 2000.
Can’t be arsed writing more about it so here’s a link to an article about it on Wikipedia here.
August 1st, 2006 on 4:16 pm
Oh my, thats made me all sad :(
I think I will go and watch an episode of friends.
August 1st, 2006 on 8:02 pm
There’s a SEGA world in Colindale, London area. And it’s been open for donkey’s years and has some good classics. In fact, it’s well used and there are always people in there.
I’ll try and get a photo to you guys (just like I was supposed to get a photo of that Sonic 2 jacket! – whoops!)
August 1st, 2006 on 9:58 pm
They closed the SEGA park in Brighton as well- the one featured on the site a few days ago is now gone :-(
August 2nd, 2006 on 1:16 am
I went to SEGA world in Sydney a number of years ago with a girl I met on the internets. The arcade was crap and had more NON sega games like TEKKEN in it than good stuff like Virtua Fighter or Magical Truck Adventure. Then there were some dumb neck jarring indoor rollercoasters with stories to read while you waited in line… except there were no lines: maybe the ride would have been better if I knew the back story. I thought I’d be walking out of there with a SONIC bomber jacket or at least a figurine but the fire alarm went off after about half an hour. I hoped it was the trigger for a Burning Rangers dance routine but it was a real evacuation situation… It was the biggest waste of $60 ever. Lucky the internet girl let me touch her bits later.
August 2nd, 2006 on 1:51 am
I know the Colindale one. Or I used to. Are there any Sega machines actually there?
I seem to remember playing air hockey. Which is almost like excersise.
August 2nd, 2006 on 6:58 am
Huh, you were in Sydney? You should have said, we could have met up in a pub or something. You know, just to chat. Nothing suss. Maybe you could come to my house and we could play with my megadrive and talk about how we love sonic and stuff. Then I’d get you a drink and you’d go to sleep and then you’d wake up in a carpark wearing a Cream the Rabbit mask.
sigh, maybe next time…
August 2nd, 2006 on 8:03 am
I was in Sega World in Sydney two days before it closed down.
It had some crappy bits and some moments of arcade wonderfulness.
It had loads of Saturn Era arcade machines including the skateboard one with the actual skateboard controller :-)
It also had a Dreamcast area where there were about 16 networked :-) Playing Quake 3 :-(
And all the arcades WERE on free play, dunno if this was because they were closing down though.
And a giant TV showing… Fox Kids???
August 2nd, 2006 on 10:19 am
A workmate tells of great drunken times at a MS conference at Sega World, but alas, i never made it.
“Just to chat. Nothing suss.”
That there is comedy gold, kids. Comedy gold. Aussie TV references FTW.
The ‘Sega World’ sign being covered up makes me sad. The world can’t just cover up ‘EG’, and pretend the Dreamcast never happened.
August 2nd, 2006 on 1:20 pm
“They closed the SEGA park in Brighton as well- the one featured on the site a few days ago is now gone :-(“
Seriously?! I’m sure it was open t’other day.
*cries*
August 2nd, 2006 on 4:34 pm
There used to be a sega shop in the small town of Deal in Kent when I was much younger. The sort of place where you go and pay £2 to play a megadrive for an hour. Perhaps ironically, the one time I went they’d arranged to have a SNES for one day only, so I ended up playing super Mario World and then deciding that’s what I wanted for my 8th Birthday. There was also a nintendo shop round the corner but they only had NESes.
The Sega shop is now a washing machine shop and the Nintendo one a fancy delicatessen.
August 3rd, 2006 on 7:35 pm
now thats saying something.
August 4th, 2006 on 1:12 pm
a sega shop made you buy a snes?
oh the humanity :(
August 4th, 2006 on 3:40 pm
I’d always wanted to check out the Sega World in Sydney and was bummed when it closed, though by the sounds of it I wasn’t missing much.
What I thought was cool is that at another (better) theme park in Aus, Dreamworld, they actually had a Dreamcast, some 6 months before it was released over here. A friend of mine got to try out Sonic Adventure, and I couldn’t believe how lucky he was.
Then I finally got to play it myself, and consequently get bored with it like I do with every other video game. Ah well.
August 5th, 2006 on 11:52 am
Yaaay! *Wrote the Wiki article here*
But yeah, given these photos.. Robotnik shall never receive his Chaos no matter how much he asks for it in song.
August 6th, 2006 on 2:39 pm
Someone ought to build the De Lorean DMC-12 and travel back to 1994 and set things right.
But hey at least Sega haven’t vapourised altogether.. And we all can look forward to NiGHTS 2 in 2010 :D
August 7th, 2006 on 1:49 am
I went back to the Segaworld site yesterday, it was like visiting a memorial to all the childhood puppies that got old and died while you were away at college and you asked your mum where he was buried and she said they just chucked him in the bin because it was a Thursday and the truck was coming the next morning.
I took some pictures but Outlook is being a shit so I’ll send them in tonight, which is like yesterday morning in your country.
October 18th, 2006 on 12:54 am
I went to Sega World in Sydney back in 1997 and spent all day there. It was blinding, just at the time when the Harley Davidson twin simulator came out and Top Skater was still king! I’ve got still got the special entry card (credit card sized ticket you carried round like a wristband at Alton Towers etc) !!
Hey, you could feature it alongside the Sega Pencil or Carpet?
Or I could keep them here, still warm, wrapped in my Sega T-Shirt forever….
By the way did you collect all the McDonalds Sega games last year. What a sellout for Sega, the games were so crap. I ate so many Happy Meals to get them all….
February 5th, 2007 on 1:44 am
I bought a Happy Meal once. I took it back because it didn’t work.
April 19th, 2007 on 1:32 pm
Sega World Darling Harbour. I used to work there! I was hired to put together all the arcade machines, and then worked on as technician.
After the park closed we used to play the giant Indy 500 game all night and shoot the other technicians with the bazooka dodgems. The best of times and the worst of times. As a theme park it sucked. As a job where you could fuck around and still get paid, it was pretty good.
Our Walkie Talkies had a huge range so we could walk up to Pizza Hut and still pretend we were down the other end of the park fixing a machine. The indoor roller coaster had a fake wall half way along where workers could hide out.
It was shut down not long after I left.
July 29th, 2008 on 3:31 am
the thing is sega sucks now of days, you se th sonig games now q days sonic(360,ps3) sonic rivals, heack a new games comin whare he useis a sowrd
July 29th, 2008 on 3:32 am
the thing is sega sucks now of days, you se th sonig games now q days sonic(360,ps3) sonic rivals, heack a new games comin whare he useis a sowrd
July 29th, 2008 on 3:33 am
the thing is sega sucks now of days, you se th sonig games now q days sonic(360,ps3) sonic rivals, heack a new games comin whare he useis a sowrd
July 29th, 2008 on 3:34 am
the thing is sega sucks now of days, you se th sonig games now q days sonic(360,ps3) sonic rivals, heack a new games comin whare he useis a sowrd
September 25th, 2008 on 6:05 pm
I’m sorry larry-inc, but nextgen sonic games and most new Sega stuff blow compared with their arcade offerings.