SEGA Is Gone From The Iconic Arcade Hall: It Is The New Look For Akihabara

General news News 03/21/2022

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SEGA’s removal of the big boards marks the end of an era for Japanese video games.

In January this year, SEGA Sammy announced it would sell its arcade division to Genda GiGO after acquiring an 85.1% stake in SEGA Entertainment, the company’s division that manages its Japanese game centres, in 2020. GiGO has bought the remaining 14.9% stake in the subdivision, which will see the giant’s exit the arcade market.

This marks the end of an era for SEGA, which opened its first arcades in the late 1960s and operated nearly 1,000 arcades nationwide in the 1990s.

It is a story of more than 50 years, ending with the removal of the company’s iconic billboards, which were part of popular culture, from the vast red buildings of Akihabara in Tokyo.

Hisashi Kataoka, president of Genda, shared how the buildings will look with the new GiGO signs. Social media is also full of photos of Japanese fans capturing the moment the popular signs were taken down. VGC picked up these and confirmed that the replacement took place on Friday night.

These buildings experienced one of the most emotional moments last year after the closure of SEGA Ikebukuro Gigo, one of Japan’s most iconic buildings, which had been open for more than 28 years. At the time of the closure, a thank you plaque was put up for fans who had gathered outside the gates of the famous entertainment centre.

The company is paying tribute to the golden age of arcades with a mini version of its most iconic arcade machine, the SEGA Astro City, which now gets the vertical screen model after the classic horizontal screen layout, with games featuring shoot ’em up classics such as Truxton, Terra Cresta and Gunbird.

Source: VGC