The bodies of the dead are piled high, broken and twisted. Imagine the stench of rotting fur. We will pray for their families and loved ones. Blessed are the fallen, for they lead the way so that we could live.
These sad scenes are repeated in UFO catcher machines across mainland Europe. We must never forget this senseless waste.
filed in GONZO on Jan.17, 2007
A man saw this in Japan. Like all good men he took a photo of it for us to put on the internet:
“Dear UKR, there is a Sega arcade in Shibuya that has this bizarro Sega-made foot massage machine called Ashipuri. You insert your money, stick your feet in, select the part of foot you want massaged and then enjoy five minutes of bliss, making it better value for money than the Dreamcast version of Dynamite Cop. Kind of. Also I think it plays some sort of Sonic music but I’m not sure as the arcade was quite loud.”
This is where it says SEGA on it.
And this is how hot the Japanese are for stupid talking mascots.
filed in GONZO on Jan.11, 2007
So yes, everyone’s been to Japan and taken photos of lots of SEGA Worlds. Well done you and your three grand holidays. Here are some of your Japan snaps, including, incredibly, one of some cosplaying girls a reader claims to have “chatted up”.
#1: A PHOTO OF DOBUITA STREET FROM SHENMUE
“Here’s something I’ll regret sending to you, although I at least had the good grace and sense to Paint Shop Pro Ryo over my pasty white torso. This is a photo of Dobuita Street from SHENMUE. Taken at 1600×1200 as that’s the only sane resolution to take pics at. Although, if my pics from 8 years ago are anything to go by, I used to say that about pics taken in 640×480 and they look shit and are blocky and low detail now. Anyway. Tom’s hotdog stand would be about opposite that Yakuza wagon that’s just about to disappear me. That silver bag contains a Yokosuka jacket that I haven’t worn once as it has dragons and shit on it and makes me look like some kind of gang member and has hung in my lovely wardrobe ever since.
“No pics of Akihabara as the SHAME of even being present there means it’s strictly a brisk walk down the street with head DOWN until it’s time to duck into one of the 2nd hand game shops to update your list to see who’s selling what game for 100 yen less than the other guys. Stopping to take a photo would involve so many eyes being rolled at you that even the Japs that camp outside gaming stores for three days to catch a glimpse of some idol or other would look down at you in pity and disgust. So no way. I don’t know how the other guy managed it. Must have been Nyarth. Or an American. I do have some school girl pics but she’s six and no I’d probably better not.
#2: A PHOTO OF A SEGA CRANE MACHINE IN KAWAGUCHIKO
“I know it’s not a Sega World but it:
a) has Sega in it
b) is a big photo
c) has a (kind of) video attached
“It was in Kawaguchiko – yet another crane machine but this time someone has dared to put Disney crap inside it. Played a nice selection of Sonic themes though. Couldn’t be bothered to film it in action, so just put the camera on the bench – it was too hot to piss about.”
We nearly didn’t use this photo as the photographer seems to be wearing cropped trousers and a sleeveless t-shirt, as is clearly visible in the reflection:
However, the original photo’s a WHOPPING 2448 x 3264 pixels in resolution, so we pretty much had to use it seeing as it stopped the Hotmail servers responding to all of Europe for the two hours it took to download.
He did indeed attach a sort-of-movie in which you can hear the machine playing a decent rendition of the Starlight Zone theme. This is top quality reader interaction, especially over the festive holiday period when people usually don’t give a shit.
#3 A LOAD MORE FROM SIMON ‘777’ STALLWOOD
Simon went to Japan in January of 2002. He embarrassingly didn’t have a digital camera in 2002, so these are primitive ‘scans’ of the photographic plates he made of his trip:
“It’s the same arcade in Electric city near the subway entrance that everyone likes to take pictures of, but from a different angle!“
“The famous Sega Joypolis, there were pictures on the Saturn game “Sonic Jam” of Sonic and Tails near this building. The Joypolis is located on Decks Beach in real life. This is coming up to the entrance in the photo.”
“When I came to the Joypolis early one morning, it was shut so I took a walk round part of the beach. This picture shows the Joypolis from the other side of the beach.”
“This is the front of the Joypolis guide book.”
“While in Electric City (near Club Sega) a nice Japanese women gave me this flyer. I don’t believe there is a real place called Sonic Cafe, I bet it’s just some web site somewhere, but it’s nice to imagine.”
“It’s the other side of the flyer.”
“Leaving the Joypolis, and its time to cool down. What better way then beer/spirit/sake/cigarette vending machines out in the street!“
#4 SEGA GIGO, AKIHABARA
“Really good as they had all the arcade versions of Virtual On you could ever imagine. Which was obviously great.“
#5 CLUB SEGA AND SOME GIRLS!
Our fifth entrant, and the obvious winner, sent us one very boring photo of Club SEGA from far away, plus two photos of girls he claims to have spoken to and stood quite near with their implied consent.
Happy holidays. Come back tomorrow when we’ll have what will be 2007’s most boring update about the time we went to find a closed SEGA World in London that had been turned into a newsagent. All you could see was the old sign. We took 100 photos of it. It’s boring, but relevant.
filed in GONZO on Jan.01, 2007
A rival SEGA arcade photographer has risen to yesterday’s not-challenge pictorial update and sent us a stupidly high-resolution (2304 x 3072!) photo of the Tokyo Akihabara Club SEGA.
He says: “By the way, the Sega World in Nara was rubbish. The ground level was only crane machines and the upper level was pachinko. And some strange shooter where you had to pay money for each bullet“.
Seeing as all our readers seem to have been to Japan at some point or another, this probably isn’t news to most of you. You probably all have similar photos, in among your pictures of boring temples you thought you should waste a day going to see and those stupid trees with flowers on they have over there. And one you took of your dinner one night. And a train. And a blurry one of some schoolgirls you tried to take without anyone seeing.
Has anyone else got any photos of Japanese SEGA Worlds? Or, more importantly, a camera that can take photos in a higher resolution than 2304 x 3072? What we’d really like is an email containing both, plus a criticism of the Akihabara Club SEGA for balance. Or just 125 pics of schoolgirls as it’s Christmas.
filed in GONZO on Dec.31, 2006
This is a simple pictorial update for people who are in diabetic comas from over-exposure to Cadbury Celebrations, and can now only manage to disinterestedly observe colourful images projected in front of their faces:
Nice, but we get irrationally angry at seeing the photos today’s cameras output. There’s just no need for a photo to be 2288 x 1712 pixels big. Not even in porn.
filed in GONZO on Dec.30, 2006
And we thought this was a VERY BAD IDEA, until we read to the bit about it only being plastic poo. That’s probably OK and not against any laws. Especially in Spain. Good on you, crazy Europeans. Here’s how it works:
Sponsor a Poo and send it (with a personal note) to Sony
By El Alcalde de Tomelloso and CubitorahAre we men or mice?
Are you tired of abuse?
Gamerah is, and we have decided to do something about it. We are going to show Sony that in Europe there is no humiliation without response. We are going to show them that we are not an unimportant third-rate market. A pound of flesh.
Delays, higher prices, sloppy translations, harassment of import stores, and, even worse, cheekiness. What does Gamerah say to all this? Gamerah says: NO! And the way we propose to let the evildoers at Sony know is very simple: by sponsoring plastic poos which we will send to Sony’s higher echelons in Spain in one or many boxes.
Imagine: you are angry with Sony since the delay, or since they cancelled your order at play-asia, or even since the death of Dreamcast, like some resentful Sega fans in our staff. Anyway: your patience has run out. What can you do? Very simple.
1. Send us an email to apadrinaunacaca@gamerah.com. Include your nickname and your comment/complaint to Sony (one line). Just one grievance per poo, although you can send as many poos as you like.
2. We will reply to you with a bank account number and an identification number.
3. Transfer 4 euro and include the identification number on the transfer’s subject. This way we will know it is you.
4. We will attach your message to one of the fake excrements and put it, along with your nickname, in the box we will send to Sony’s Spanish headquarters. Of course, we will also include a petition asking them to forward the poos to their bosses in Japan.
Some examples of what you might write:
Tonio87: For the HDMi cable.
Pacotazo: For killing Lik-Sang.
Pepoto: For having no typographical criteria.Here is an example of what they will look like. Imagine Phil Harrison’s face! Hohoho!
The rubber band is provisional.
Just remember: no direct insults or death threats. Be subtle, as in our examples. We know you can do it.
THANKS, SPANISH JURY
Gamerah are the people who made the fake Horoshi Yamauchi interview a while back, so they’ll probably go through with it as well.
filed in GONZO on Nov.28, 2006
In Osaka, apparently. The writing says that the 23rd of each month is SEGA Day.
THE SEGA DOORMAT IN A VARIETY OF RESOLUTIONS:
640×480 800×600 1024×768 1152×864 1280×960 1280×720 1280×768 Original – 2592×1944
filed in GONZO on Nov.13, 2006
The SEGA Park in Bournemouth is now a “Leisure Exchange” which is like an arcade, only emptier and worse. A roving reporter took us some photos of the inside and was even kind enough to write some captions for us. We can now take the rest of the day off to stare blankly at a screen and line up our icons, because if the icons aren’t lined up properly…
THE REPORTER’S INTRODUCTION:
“The place has gone from being a testing site for every single new Sega arcade machine to a large empty room with no people and even less machines… oh, and a big area dedicated to ‘gambling'”
“This used to be where it said SEGA PARK in big blue letters. Now it says… well, this. And there’s a big silver AMUSEMENTS sign above the door, just in case people are too thick to work out what a Leisure Exchange is. On the plus side though, the Quasar’s quite good – nice and big, with loads of good places to hide”
“Sonic’s still in the windows despite the place no longer being a proper Sega Park, probably because they’re waiting for some chavs to smash them with a brick so they can claim for new Sonic-free glass on the insurance”
“The view from the front door. This place used to be CRAMMED with machines – really interesting ones. Now, there’s a huge gap in the middle (like, HUGE) and all the machines have been pushed against the walls. There’s a sole pool table at the back, which the chavs use mostly for sitting on”
“The newest machine the place has, besides Virtua Striker 4 and House Of The Dead 4 (both of which we’re surprised even appeared in this tired old place) is this WCCF card game. No one ever plays it. But then, there’s never anyone in here. To be fair though, having this and OutRun 2 SP is vaguely impressive… it’s just a shame all the other machines have been lost in the process”
“These people are playing Virtua Tennis 2. There are two VT2 machines in the arcade, but one’s got a shit screen that’s all purple and warped. It used to have several sit-down beat-’em-up cabinets (Tekken 4, SVC Chaos, Soul Calibur II) but they’re all gone now. In their place is a Sonic Blast Man punching machine. Bleugh”
AND THAT’S IT
Had we written this we would’ve included some sort of narrative structure about the day and probably lied about there being tramps cooking up smack in the toilets. Still, it’s not bad for a free update. Thanks!
Let’s just get all of these out of the way in one batch. Then we can move on. To the next batch.
This is of a Sonic The Hedgehog napkin.
And just in case the first photo wasn’t good enough, the sender sent in an additional second photo. Because the one thing we all really need is a spare photo of some Sonic The Hedgehog napkins.
This is a fake Sonic badge someone found at a craft fair. SEGA’s lawyers need to crack down on this shit, to stop churches funding their roof repairs via illegally produced merchandise.
Someone’s business card. She is called Annie Sega! If you married her, your name would be… oh no, that’s not how it works.
What the sender described as “Sonic boots” but it frankly could be anything.
Sonic endorsing fireworks.
A Sonic car.
Really rubbish SEGA graffiti. “My friend and I saw this on our way home from school the other day. He took the picture on his telephone. I thought it might be evidence of some guerrilla advertising from SEGA! Notice the lack of crotch on sonic and the penis to his right”.
This is a scan of newspaper comic ‘Striker’ that someone’s been sitting on for “four or five” years. It shows a SEGA Saturn advert in the paper the girls are holding. It’s amazing what people see and keep.
And this is an Indesit washing machine manual that features a logo that looks a bit like the Dreamcast swirl. That’s all for today.
filed in GONZO on Oct.24, 2006
Here’s a photograph. Can you work out what’s SEGA about it? There’s definitely something a bit SEGA about it!
Is it the spires? The car? The blue sky?
No, it’s not this bit.
It’s not this bit.
Nor is it this bit.
Or this.
It’s THIS bit! They sort of copied Sonic and blacked him up a bit to make him their tyre-repairing mascot. How well did you do?
filed in GONZO on Oct.19, 2006
THIS IS HOW IT ALWAYS ENDS
