I promised I'd scan in some photos (what small amount I have, anyway) of the now closed down SegaWorld (see further down for the previous article about it) and here they are. Click to full view.
This is the photo you could pay to have done as you walked in from the two flights of escalators. We had two done on this first visit, and I've scanned the one with the least people, as it's the Sonic statue your all interested in. Seesh, I'm even doing a Sonic-ish pose, judging by the hands and feet. I'm surprised I wasn't wearing one of my jackets smothered in Sonic patches, actually.More after the jump.
This was the outside entrance. Notice the lovely gold Sonic statue out front? Just one of many Sonic statues now either destroyed or shipped back to Japan where they still have some Sega locations.
The following pics, including the one above, are from my second visit in 1997. I'll go into the main reason me and one of my mates were in London another time, as that's also Sega relevant =P. Anyway, this statue wasn't here on first visit, and I think by this time Segaworld was around a fiver to enter (with the rides separate, so sadly we only ever went on them the first trip, although I think we paid for one this 2nd time). Remember what I said about the jackets? I still have bigger sized ones of them.
A huge Sonic painting up high in th racing game section/floor. I wouldn't be surprised if this was originally made for when Sega were a sponsor for a Formula 1 team. I'll have to find the book/comic that had photos of that car that had x-ray art showing Sonic's feet on it sometime. I've also cleaned this photo up a bit and made it into a wallpaper.WALLPAPER DOWNLOAD: 1024 X 768 (Click eet)
Yet another Sonic statue. There was loads of these. This one's surfing, as you can see, and was in the Sports games area (as you can possibly guess from the GetBass poster and other fishing game cabinet in shot).
Pocket money was spent, naturally, on the games. Me mate had a crack at Star Wars and Virtual On, and I had a go at the two Sonic games and Sega Rally 2, that had just been released.
If I found these two rare cabinets in one place ever again, I'd of most likely died and started having flashbacks of my life. hat, or I'd found myself in Japan.
Finally, some bonus material. I'm not sure if this was directly Sega related or not (I doubt it), but it was in SegaWorld, so it counts. This is a result sheet for that scream test attraction I told you about. You had to climb into this haunted house type room, sit down and hold on to these bars sticking out of the table that read your heartbeat as all sorts of animatronics and effects try to make you jump. It wasn't there the 2nd time we visited, so it must of been a outsider travelling attraction that goes to different destinations. Oh, and in case you were wondering, I was actually laughing through the whole thing.
This above photo is not from Segaworld, but in fact from Epcot in Florida. This dates back to 1998, although I remember also seeing the statue in S.T.C (Sonic the Comic) in a photo for a video game expo from around 1994. This was for a technology section of Epcot indoors that was full of Sega games, at the time a few Saturn pods (They had Burning Rangers!) and some arcade machines including one of those 10-in-a-row player-cam Daytona set ups. When we went again in 2000 they had another Sonic statue in it's place, the kind of ugly Sonic Adventure used at E3 in 1999 (sorry, didn't get a photo of that one), and the place was full of Dreamcast games, including Sega Bass with the fishing controller, which I found myself getting addicted on. Who needs rides about the history of communication anyway? Then by the time we visited again in 2004, the Sega section had been completely replaced by "Disney Interactive". =(
