Former Sonic Team lead programmer Yuji Naka has revealed that former SEGA managing director Akira Nagai has passed away. He died on November 15th 2022 aged 79.
Nagai started his career at Nihon Goraku Bussan in 1963 where he worked in sales and distribution, directly selling to SEGA when they were producing electro-mechanical arcade games. Nihon Goraku Bussan was absolved into SEGA in the CSK buyout of Gulf+Western in 1984 and Nagai stayed with the company until 2004 when he retired after SEGA’s merger with Sammy.
Nagai is digitally immortalised in Shenmue as a yakuza boss. SEGADriven would like to send our deepest condolences to Akira Nagai’s friends, families and colleagues.
SEGA have confirmed that long time artist, director and producer Rieko Kodama has passed away. Kodama passed much earlier in the year, back in May 2022.
News of Kodama’s passing came to light when Retro Gamer writer Nick Thorpe spotted a tribute to her in the credits for the Mega Drive Mini 2. This was then confirmed by SEGA producer Yosuke Okunari.
Rieko Kodama had been working at SEGA since 1984 and has produced art for many classic games that include Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Quartet, Phantasy Star, Altered Beast, Shadow Dancer and the first 2 Sonic the Hedgehog games. Kodama personally directed Phantasy Star IV and Magic Knight Rayearth for the SEGA Saturn, while producing a number of titles including Skies of Arcadia and the largely Japan exclusive 7th Dragon games.
SEGADriven would like to extend our condolences to Rieko Kodama’s family, friends and colleagues. She was 58 years old.
SEGA Japan have revealed the Mega Drive 2 Mini which expands the focus of the original Mega Drive Mini with the inclusion of “Mega CD games, arcade ports, unreleased games and a mysterious new game” according to GSK. 11 games have been revealed so far. See below for the full list:
– Silpheed (Mega-CD)
– Shining Force CD (Mega-CD)
– Sonic CD (Mega-CD)
– Yumemi Mystery Mansion (Mega-CD)
– Popful Mail (Mega-CD)
– Virtua Racing (Mega Drive)
– Bonanza Bros (Mega Drive)
– Shining in the Darkness (Mega Drive)
– Thunder Force IV (Mega Drive)
– Magical Tarurūto-kun (Mega Drive)
– Fantasy Zone (New Mega Drive Port)
The final release is promising 50 games in total and is due to release in Japan on October 27th 2022. The mini console is bundled with a 6 button controller. Also revealed during the stream is an entirely cosmetic Mega-CD 2 for the Mega Drive 2 Mini to lock onto, as well as a miniature Sonic CD CD-ROM and a Virtua Racing cart to pop into the cartridge slot. The Mega Drive Tower Mini 2 even has an expander so you can use it with the original Mega Drive Mini and a spacer for the 32X mini included in the original Mega Drive Tower Mini. Both are entirely non functional.
There is currently no word of a Western release for the new mini console.
Bloomberg have reported that SEGA Sammy Holdings Inc. are working on new entries in the Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio franchises, but they are being made as live service games in order to compete with Fortnite.
The games are supposedly a part of SEGA’s ‘Super Game’ initiative which was launched last year as a way to build online communities around its games. The new Crazy Taxi game has supposedly been in development for a year and is aiming to launch in the next 2-3 years. There is currently no word on how far along in development the new Jet Set Radio game is.
Bloomberg have received this information from an unknown Tokyo-based entertainment group so take this information with a grain of salt. There are already words saying that it is possible these games may end up being cancelled behind closed doors and SEGA are refusing to comment on the story directly. More on this story as it develops.
Hot on the heels of the recent news that SEGA Japan was selling all its Japanese arcade venues to Genda Inc, SEGA Japan have committed to a new Joypolis venue that will open in March 2022 in Sendai, North Japan. The Joypolis chain of in-door theme parks continues to be owned and operated by SEGA Japan and this new venue will be entirely sports focused and called Joypolis Sports.
The aim of the Joypolis Sports venue is to offer far more physical amusements to play and the venue is promising patrons access to ping pong tables, basketball courts, climbing walls, trampolines and much, much more.
The Joypolis Sports venue is located at the 1st floor of the Aeon Sendai Nakayama Store, Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture 981-3213 and will open in March 2022. Sendai is located 3+ hours away from Tokyo by train.
SEGA Japan have sold their remaining stocks in their Japanese arcade locations to Genda Inc and will stop operating arcades themselves going forward. While the company will continue to produce arcade games, these will simply be sold to any Japanese arcade operators and all SEGA-branded arcade locations will now be rebranded as GiGO arcades. SEGA had already sold the vast majority of their operations to Genda Inc back in November 2020 with the remaining stocks being sold only amounting to 15% of their total arcade business.
It’s another big loss to SEGA Japan’s arcade business which has been one of the country’s strongest up until the COVID-19 pandemic forced arcade operators to close their doors and limit indoor capacity. Back in September 2021, SEGA Japan closed its flagship Ikebukuro arcade which ran for an impressive 28 years.
A new version of the Astro City Mini has been revealed by SEGA Japan’s SEGA Toys division. Called the Astro City Mini V, this new version of the mini console features a vertically-orientated screen made for games that play in TATE mode. As a result, the system’s games library is specifically focused on TATE games, with a large amount being vertically-scrolling shoot-em-ups. Check out the reveal trailer below:
The Astro City Mini V will launch in Japan in 2022. There is no firm release date available at the time of writing. See below for a full list of included software:
Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio have revealed that long time leads Toshihiro Nagoshi and Daisuke Sato have left the company and the studio has undergone a restructure as a result. Masayoshi Yokoyama will now take over from Nagoshi as the studio’s Director and Executive Producer.
Toshihiro Nagoshi has been a SEGA mainstay since 1989, starting as a designer and director on games like Virtua Racing, Daytona USA and Shenmue before finding fame as the lead director of the Super Monkey Ball and Yakuza franchises.
Daisuke Sato is also a long-tenured SEGA employee starting his career on field map production for 1995’s Magic Knight Rayearth on the Saturn and having designer credits on games like SEGA Super GT, Virtua Fighter 3tb and Shenmue. Sato’s career highlights also include directing duties Yakuza 3 and Binary Domain.
You can read the full story on RGG Studio’s restructure by clicking this link.
As previously reported, on the 20th of September 2021, SEGA Japan closed the doors on one of its biggest arcades in the form of the SEGA GiGO located in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. While the arcade lives on through a virtual recreation that you can explore at home, the Tokyo Lens YouTube channel has created a short documentary about the arcade and why arcades are closing Japan with increasing frequency. It also contains interviews with the venue’s actual staff and managers and it offers some fascinating insight into the Japanese arcade industry in 2021.
Click the embed below to watch Tokyo Lens’s ‘Japan’s Arcades are DISAPPEARING’ documentary:
On the 20th of September 2021, SEGA Japan sadly shut the doors on the SEGA GiGO arcade in Ikebukuro, Tokyo after 28 years in business. It’s another major loss to SEGA Japan’s arcade business that has seen major casualties thanks to the COVID-19 epidemic.
Thankfully an explorable, 3D, virtual version of the arcade has been created and you can take a trip through this mammoth arcade via the comfort of your own home. This follows on from the previously released virtual version of SEGA’s Retro Game Floor in Akihabara.
SEGA streamed the events of the Ikebukuro SEGA GiGO’s final day of operation on YouTube, and the stream is archived and available to view by clicking here.
Tags: 3d, arcade, sega gigo, sega japan, virtual Posted in News | Comments Off on Explore a 3D Recreation of SEGA’s Recently Closed GiGO Arcade in Ikebukuro, Tokyo
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