Sega and Sonic are video game icons. Seeing them on the side of an abandoned 90s arcade building in Japan is as good as urban exploration gets!
I’ve been playing video games my whole life. One of my earliest memories is watching my mom playing Pac Man on an Atari VCS2600 in the living room. In the 80s our typical family vacation was spent in the southern part of Lake Garda in Italy – which means that I spent an hour or two every evening at a local amusement arcade (sala giochi), because in Germany arcade video game were usually in the same establishments as slot machines and therefore illegal to enter age 17 and below – mostly watching other people playing… or even the self-running demo mode, but as a child we were easy to entertain back then. My dad was a part-time programmer and full-time musician at the time, and an avid gamer, too, so there were always computers and game consoles at the house. In the early 90s I already bolstered my pocket money by distributing leaflets for local supermarket, so I convinced my dad to go half on a TurboDuo with an adapter for Japanese games – which meant having to buy expensive import games as the system wasn’t released in Germany at all, allowing me to play classics like Bonk’s Adventure, Gate of Thunder and Bomberman ’94 – while my friends at school argued whether Sega or Nintendo was cooler… Amateurs! 🙂
Three decades later I’m still playing video games occasionally, preferably on the Nintendo Switch as it is a portable system (to me, never hooked it up to a display – not once!). As a hobby, I spend much more time on urban exploration though, so you can imagine my excitement when I first heard of this abandoned arcade in the sticks. Not just any generic arcade. A Sega World arcade with the iconic font and a Sonic almost one storey tall! In combination with the pink and bright green stripes on the otherwise white exterior this building oozes quintessential 90s. So cool!
I guess it’s no surprise when I tell you that this Sega World was opened in 1994 – though it might sound unbelievable that is has been closed in 2009! 15 years and hardly any damage, except for some rust and as well as a few graffiti on the large windows.
Now the big two questions…
1) Was I able to get inside?
2) Were there still arcade machines inside?
The answers: Yes and no.
I was able to get inside, but there were no arcade machines or anything else removable of value left behind – my guess is that they moved the games and merchandising to another location when they closed shop. “Able to get inside” sounds like more effort than it actually was. The door was open. Literally. It didn’t even have to open it, it stood open and I was able to walk inside to take a few photos… after removing a large spider web, which tells me that there weren’t any other visitors here recently.
The interior of the building was in as good condition as the exterior. Some natural decay from 15 years without maintenance as well as a few graffiti, but nothing too bad. For the most you could still see the original design of the wall, which was part space, part Egyptian style… which I guess is quite 90s, too? There even was a stylized satellite contraption in the middle of the upper floor and hardly any mold, so as far as explorations go, this was a very relaxed one, despite heavy traffic on the road in front – spectacular outside, mildly interesting inside. Definitely one of my favorite locations of 2024, despite the lack of arcade machines. But if you are into those, who don’t you check out the articles about the *Arcade Machine Hotel* or the *Nishiwaki Health Land Hotel*?
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Abandoned Kansai 