On this special episode of SEGA Talk, George and Barry take an IRL trip to the Galloping Ghost Arcade in Brookfield, IL! What games did we play? Who did we meet? Watch and find out!
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Earlier this week, news broke that Akihabara Gigo 1, formerly an iconic SEGA arcade with a 32 year history, was set to close at the end of August 2025. The reason given was that the fixed-term lease on the building has expired. The location originally opened in 1992 under SEGA’s ownership as High Tech Land Sega Shintoku, and later was called Club Sega Akihabara and then Sega Akihabara 1. If you’re wondering, the “1” denotes that this was the first of five SEGA arcades in the area.
On this SEGA Talk, Barry takes a visit to Tokyo Joypolis and shares his full day of fun playing games, eating food and getting yelled at by staff! Is SEGA’s last standing theme park a Joy? Watch and find out on SEGA Talk!
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Twitter/X user @suddendesu stumbled upon a Japanese porn video titled 超ハード変態娘 変態羞恥感じる露出女！！(roughly translated, it’s “A super hard perverted girl. An exposed woman who feels perverted and embarrassed! !”). How he stumbled upon it? I won’t judge, I’ve found my fare share of video game related gems in weird old Japanese porn videos (Google “Cosplay International” for some real weird Space Channel 5 content).
This is an odd story. An arcade auction in Texas ended up auctioning off a rare 1980 SEGA Samurai arcade cabinet without even being aware of it. Patrick Scott Patterson, who reached out to us to share the news, was bidding on a Mr. Do! arcade cabinet that was a converted SEGA Samurai cabinet. Because nobody was aware of the cabinet’s past life, Patrick was able to win the machine easily. Throughout May 2023, Patrick stripped off the forty year old paint to reveal the artwork for Samurai. Once the project was completed, Patrick had himself a Samurai cabinet with all the lovely artwork intact.
Everybody loves a good dump, especially when it comes to ROMs. Twitter user @iamamazing100 has announced that a rare English version of the 1993 arcade game SegaSonic Cosmo Fighter has been dumped and is now publicly available online. The game is not playable just yet, as it must be added to MAME, however @iamamazing100 has shared the audio files which showcase a very funny Superman style voice for Sonic the Hedgehog as well as Eggman’s voice, which oddly is more befitting for Sonic. It’s great to see that after 30 years we still are seeing new old Sonic content being uncovered!
Once the game is playable on MAME, we’ll be sure to news it!
The official SEGA Youtube channel revealed the first follow-up to the UFO A La Carte arcade machine series since 2009. A video was released showcasing the UFO A La Carte 3, the newest UFO machine developed by SEGA and the first under the GiGO license. The new catcher has bubbled pull strings to pull down using a fork-like gripper, with prizes on the end or next to it. How it works is you try to line up the gripper with the string to center it and it pulls the prize string down. You might have to get it a few times in order to win the prizes, which include plushes, keychains, figures and more. The video shows a small tutorial on how to use and is very familiar with other UFO machines with the two button layout. No information for distribution or a release date has come up but you can check out the video above.
For old school SEGA fans, before their entry into the (and then exit of) console market, the company had always been about arcades and still are. The latest entry is a licensed Mission: Impossible game that hos now begun shipping its Deluxe cabinets around America and Europe. SEGA’s arcade division isn’t a stranger to using licenses to create high quality arcade experiences since they’ve also made games based around Die Hard, Rambo and even recently Transformers.
Back on September 20th, the SEGA Ikebukuro GiGO arcade closed after 28 years of operations. Fans were emotional, and rightly so, and many pointed to this as a sign of SEGA’s arcade footprint diminishing. However, on October 22nd a new arcade center opened in Ikebukuro which was noted as being “Volume 1” of a larger project by Genda Sega Entertainment president Nao Kataoka. Volumes 2 and 3 would soon follow.
The new center has five floors and features a variety of SEGA arcade machines. Where is it located? Right across the street from the old location! The reason the original location sold was not because SEGA was leaving the arcade business in the area, but because of an expiring lease and a need for remodeling to the old building. Maybe SEGAbits will visit the arcade in 2022? 👀
[Photo Credit: @TicTaek, Source: Anime News Network]
In a Twitter post on August 2, the Ikebukuro SEGA arcade branch has announced that they will be closed on September 20th. They explained that the lease contract for the building that houses the arcade has expired and is ready for renovation. The arcade opened up in 1993, housing many arcade classics as the rising SEGA boom was taking over during the 90s (a 28-year open service). They also wish to provide the same premier customer service that brought in customers since opening. Currently celebrating the 28th anniversary, exclusive prizes can be won via UFO catcher machines or be bought for the month of August.
It looks like those SNK Atomiswave arcade ports continue to pour in for the SEGA Dreamcast. It seemed I even missed a few, but I had to come do a post for the release of both Guilty Gear Isuka and Rumble Fish 2! I have seriously been waiting for Rumble Fish 2 since this whole port thing got started.
Guilty Gear Isuka GDI Download | Rumble Fish 2 GDI Download
Its also cool to see other people in the community start porting some of these arcade titles over, even adding little short cuts to get into Time Attack and other options. Is the Atomiswave ports the best thing to happen to the Dreamcast in 2020?
The Atomiswave arcade ports are continuing at such a rapid pace that even your humble blogger, such as myself, is having issues keeping up. You can always check the past released titles by checking out our Atomiswave tag.
This time we have two sweet surprises as we are getting Arc System Works’ Fist of the North Star and the beat ’em up Demolish Fist. Both are really nice looking titles and totally worth checking out.
Demolish Fist GDI | Fist of the North Star GDI
Now we will wait for Rumble Fish 2….
As you know that the arcade business has been shrinking over the last few decades. This was one of the main reasons Yu Suzuki left SEGA in 2008, stating that they would no longer fund larger scale arcade games. As time went on, it seemed that only a handful of arcade titles continued to profit and the market kept shrinking. This year we got hit with Covid-19, which had a huge impact on the arcade market.
Because of these trends and the events of 2020. SEGA has sold off a majority stake (85.1%) of their SEGA Entertainment arcade business to GENDA, “a company created in 2018 by former President of Aeon Fantasy. Genda specialises in the rental of amusement machines and owns the LIFTる。website and mobile application which allows players to remotely play cranes and have their won prizes delivered home” (Source: Arcade Belgium). SEGA is now a minority shareholder of the business at 14.9%.
I’ve covered the Galloping Ghost Arcade in Brookfield, Illinois a bit here on SEGAbits. Mainly because it is just a short drive away from the SEGAbits Midwest HQ (or SEGAbits Building 2 as I will now refer to it as). The arcade opened in August 2010, and has since expanded to fill an entire block of storefront property in the Chicagoland suburb. In the past, the arcade has debuted countless SEGA classics and hidden treasures including Space Harrier, Air Bike Cop, Star Wars Arcade and Ribbit.
As the arcade nears 800 games and hits its 10 year anniversary, arcade owner Doc Mack has long wanted to celebrate the milestone by debuting the ultra rare and expensive SEGA R360. The process to obtain one has been in the works for a while, with Doc even reaching out to SEGAbits for help in finding somebody willing to part with one. Thankfully, it looks like Doc’s efforts paid off as now, for the first time in decades, a functioning SEGA R360 machine is publicly playable in America!
Earlier this month it was announced that SEGA Building 2, a Japanese SEGA arcade in Akihabara, will be closing its doors for good on August 30. While no official reason has been given, some speculate that SEGA are competing with themselves as the 1st, 3rd, 4th and recently opened 5th SEGA arcades in the area draw much more foot traffic thanks to being near stations and busy roads. It has also been said that Building 2 is cramped and is difficult to navigate.