Sega City Irvine

To do

• We have: Later became GameWorks, and Later became Fox Sports Grill. Wait this was the Fox Sports Grill?? The... first one? (original??) I- think it may have moved ? from the top-most building to the one directly west of the center fountain, with the wide-curved patio area. Jiminey I've got some work...
• Square footage: 14,700
• Get a Sega City/Sega City Irvine photo that doesn't have a second image photoshopped into it.
• DATES: The Spectrum opened November 22nd (six days before Sega City Irvine's supposed opening.) But per user experiences below, it appears it was a Wherehouse Music store first? This may be inaccurate, as the case study PDF refers to Sega City as a key tenant, and this venue had to have had a LOT of construction involved. From my personal experience, the building where Sega City was housed looks VERY VERY dang similar to nearby buildings, and its located in a confusing area... not confusing, but as a kid I remember walking out of it for a sec and like- forgetting where it was on my way back multiple times. The entrances were in- alleys isnt the right word, but if you look at it on Google Maps or something, it didn't really have like a huge public-facing wall/entrance like the theatres etc. It had a big entrance, but that entrance was kinda caddy-corner to a few other little corners and Idunno. Basically saying the Wherehouse Music thing may be a red herring. Regardless, Sega City Irvine was probably there (more or less) from day 1, but just double-check these dates.
• Created by: Van Sickle & Rolleri, who did SoA's E3 1995 - 1998 booths, as well as Disney World Epcot stuff and others. ref
• https://casestudies.uli.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/C026017.pdf "a 15,000-square-foot virtual reality center".
• Per user experiences below, it appears Sega City Irvine was first a Wherehouse Music.
• https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-03-01-me-41933-story.html (Paywall)
• https://web.archive.org/web/20210402030942/https://www.reddit.com/r/orangecounty/comments/mibm0o/irvine_spectrum_center_under_construction_around/ user experiences, information on offers/deals/workings/etc.
• To clarify anyone curious about Horowitz' "Moroccan-themed" comment on Sega City Irvine, the Spectrum Center was designed as like an outdoor Moroccan-style bazaar with like shops on the left and right of an outdoor walkway with like shades and covers over top and palm trees and stuff. Once you got into Sega City's doors, all of that disappeared. Speaking of:
• Frick I forgot the name of it, but there was this brief time in the 90s where this like- industrial art design/typeface/art style was showing up... like a 90's factory-industrial-angled deal. I specifically remembered Sega City Irvine popping up a lot in those examples, and it was a DANG good example. It was really cool, wish I could remember the name of it. But Sega City Irvine pushed this neat neo-industrial typeface thing that's juust barely relevant to this article. Find the name of it and that example.
• Sega City logo!
• Get this article linked from the Sega City page, and start gearing that page up for individual location pages etc. Normally I'd just have a list of locations like the Joypolis stuff etc, but there's really only a handful... maaaaaaybbeee do individual sections with MainArticles if we can afford the room, if not just a standard list like other articles etc
• Verify address. It's 5X0-6X0 Spectrum Center Drive, unless the Spectrum radically changed their unit addressing in the last couple of decades. Regardless, it was in the Spectrum's north-most building with the rounded+domed end thing (to the immediate West of the movie theatres).
• Barely relevant, but it had multiple entrances (at least one near each end of that center metal-grilled raised platform that ran down the center of the play area) and blacked-out/walled-off windows and exterior lighting. There was a bar at the end of this platform too (I remember seeing the Virtua Racing/fullsize F1 cabs on my right, and the bar in front of me, while standing in the center of the room.)

CartridgeCulture (talk) 23:50, 27 November 2021 (EST)