SEGA

I assumed SEGA was going to be easy. I sat down with the expectation that I'd have a couple of addresses to check out and then I could move on, job done. I wallowed in my ignorance. What is there to say about SEGA's presence in the UK? Megadrive, Saturn, Dreamcast? That's it, isn't it? Obviously the answer is no. I was dealing with two separate SEGAs and nine addresses after a couple of hours of basic research on Companies House. Plus, I needed not to forget about SEGA World London, and another one in Bournemouth, and Virgin Mastertronic. Pass the aspirin.

127 Wandsworth High Street, London. SW18

In the beginning there was a company called Ruffler & Deith Holdings. That's Bill Ruffler and Bob Deith. They got together in 1974 to work in the quaintly named UK coin machine industry. That's jukeboxes, vending machines, fruit machines, pinball machines, those crane machines with tempting prizes that always fall from the grip of the crane at the last minute, penny falls, and latterly arcade machines. 

March 2026

The Wandsworth building was Ruffler & Deith's registered address but it had branches across the country; as you'd, expect often near the coast to supply arcades. There was a big warehouse at 82 Reed Street in Hartlepool and another I can't track down at Bridges, Luxulyan, Bodmin; which sounds like a What3Words reference but is apparently an address in Cornwall. Ruffler & Deith were listed on the stock exchange and taken over in 1979 by a Walsall-based company called Hawley Leisure. Ruffler & Deither were a big deal, and in 1980 Bob Deith gave a few quotes to THE JOURNAL, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Monday 15 June 1981 page 2:

Deith's own big hit is The Defender, a U.S. space game for which he has hundreds of back orders... "The video games market is getting stronger, not smaller," says Mr. Deith... "Out of the total amusements machine business in Britain of an estimated £1 billion a year, video games take about £260m."

Yes. £1 billion pounds a year, in 1981. Despite Bob Deith's confident words, profits fell and Ruffler & Deith were de-merged from Hawley Leisure in 1983. Companies House records a new company Ruffler & Deith Public Holdings PLC (number 01711515) as founded on 29 April 1983. Then on the 2 November 1984 the company was renamed Deith Leisure. No idea why but presumably Bill Ruffler had moved on. Which is where, eventually, SEGA comes in. Deith Leisure was then taken over by a company called Corton Beach and in May 1987 their registered address bounces north to Southport. I don't count this because it's not SEGA time yet. The Wandsworth picture is only here because I passed through the place to get to New Malden. Now, let's step sideways.

SEGA Europe Ltd, 15 Old Bond Street, Mayfair, London, W1X 3UB

I must give credit where it's due. A lot of the information I've got about Deith Leisure came from this post about the company, and in particular their remarkable old warehouse in Hartlepool. Meanwhile this thread on the Sonic Retro forum[2] is where I found I'd blundered into a fucking quagmire, if you'll pardon my language. It started off nicely enough with a lovely scan of a 1982 flyer for SEGA's Pengu arcade game but then... I read through the thread on the forum and watched people with considerably more knowledge and patience try to pick through the history of SEGA in the UK. SEGA, it appears, is one of those companies that created a new company for each new venture. There are a lot listed on Companies House and the only stroke of luck I have is that a lot of them are dissolved and only have skeletal entries with minimal information. I only need to focus on the live companies, so that's just SEGA Europe, another company called SEGA Europe, SEGA Europe Overseas Ltd, Sega Amusements Europe, SEGA Publishing Europe, SEGA Publishing Europe VGDC, SEGA Operations UK, and of course Deith Leisure and Virgin Mastertronic. That whining sound you can hear in the background right now. That's me.

Here's a picture of 15 Old Bond Street to look at while I breathe into a paper bag.

March 2026

Old Bond Street branches off from Piccadilly. It is posh, with a capital P. There's a De Beers shop. There's a Cartier shop. There are shops selling expensive watches and handbags. It's above my paygrade. It's also the kind of area that employs people in suits to stand in doorways and stop the wrong kind of people from coming into the shops and inconveniencing the right kind of people. It is, in short not the sort of area where you want to stand visibly taking photos of the front of buildings. There was a big white van parked in front of 15 Old Bond Street, probably picking up the afternoon's takings (in gold Krugerrands). When I walked round the van, there were a couple of serious looking guys standing in front of number 15, so I walked back down the road to see if I could get a picture from the other side of the van. I immediately found myself in the eyeline of one of the aforementioned people in suits, standing in the doorway of the Jaeger-LeCoultre Boutique at number 13. I shuffled up the street so the van blocked me from the eyeline of this bloke and took a picture. It was rubbish. I shuffled further back up the street. The two serious looking guys were still having their conversation in front of number 15. I shuffled back down the street and took another rubbish photo. I shuffled back up the street, aware that I now looked considerably more suspicious than if I'd just stood in the middle of the road shouting "tr-la-la, another fine photo of a burglar alarm to add to my entirely innocent collection." Fortunately, the two serious looking guys had gone inside number 15 at this point [3] so I grabbed the picture you can see to your left. That red car driving round the van is an open-topped red Ferrari, which is annoyingly on the nose for an article about SEGA. In my picture, there's a lady pushing a pram just coming round the back of the van. She's in front of a doorway which leads to the upper floors of number 15 where, I assume, SEGA Europe were based in 1982 and they could watch les Aristos parading round Old Bond Street buying luxury goods.

The SEGA Europe based at 15 Old Bond Street was company number 01402808. The consensus on the Sonic Retro forum is that they distributed SEGA's arcade games, presumably before Deith Leisure picked up the licence. This company trades from 31 December 1980 to 15 August 1984 and then something weird happens.

SEGA Europe Ltd, 410/420 Rayners Lane, Harrow, Middlesex, HA5 5DY

SEGA Europe Ltd (01402808) meet SEGA Europe Ltd, company number 01830443. This new company is founded on 05 July 1984 as Asptour Ltd and their name is changed to SEGA Europe Ltd on 15 August 1984 . Here's the funny thing, on exactly the same day, SEGA Europe changed their name to Asptour. The old switcheroo! Of course! It's so simple!

It isn't simple at all.

Let's call 01402808, SEGA Europe/Asptour and 01830443 Asptour/SEGA Europe. It's not possible to tell with any accuracy what happens to SEGA Europe/Asptour because Companies House records are incomplete with no documents listed from 1980 to 1987. My best guess: SEGA, the parent company, decided this company was surplus to requirements and there was a corporate reshuffle. SEGA Europe/Asptour somehow ends up as a subsidiary of Gulf & Western. How, I don't really know, but Gulf & Western were once responsible for an American company called Sega Enterprises, Inc (SEI) and so I guess control of SEGA Europe/Asptour got passed over the Atlantic. Then, through a chain of corporate buyouts, Gulf & Western was brought by Viacom, who were brought by Paramount, and SEGA Europe/Asptour still seems to be part of that corporate structure today [3]. Note. The only company with a more complicated history than SEGA in the UK is SEGA in the USA.

That leaves me with Asptour/SEGA Europe. What did they do? One of the earliest sets of accounts online covers the period from 1994 to 95 and it notes:

The company is principally engaged in the operation of entertainment centres and in assisting its parent company in the management of its European amusement machine business.

We'll get back to the entertainment centres later. I think Asptour/SEGA Europe was responsible for distributing arcade machines into Europe and did this from 15 August 1984 to 03 September 1991 (we'll get back to this date later, as well) while Deith Leisure did the same in the UK. Why didn't SEGA distribute it's own arcade games in the UK? Well Deith Leisure was bigger and better known and could probably get better results, so at the time it was worth it for SEGA to licence distribution rights to Deith.

March 2026

Here's a picture of Rayners Lane where Asptour/SEGA Europe were registered from when they were founded . I assume this was just a business address and the company was actually based somewhere else. Regardless, Asptour/SEGA Europe moved again on 24 October 1989.

SEGA Europe. Unit 6, Churchill Court, 58 Station Road, North Harrow, Middlesex HA2 7SA

We'll be seeing this Unit 6 address a lot. Here's what it looks like today.

March 2026

This is the point where I need to bring in Virgin Mastertronic so assume the brace position as we jump back in time again.

Virgin Mastertronic, 2/4 Vernon Yard. Portobello Road, London W11

It's early 1987. Mastertronic have become the UK distributor for the Sega Master System. This wasn't what caught Virgin's attention, as then managing director Nick Alexander later told SEGA-16: 

In 1987 we bought a minority stake in Mastertronic. They needed to raise some cash to pay for the LCs [Letters of credit] for their first order of Master Systems and we wanted to be in the budget computer game business, which Mastertronic dominated.

Nick goes on to explain:

Sega delivered the shipment too late for Christmas so retailers cancelled their orders, and Mastertronic was tipped into a cash crisis which was resolved by our acquiring the rest of Mastertronic and merging it with Virgin Games to become Virgin Mastertronic, of which I was again Managing Director.

Virgin Mastertronic were based in the old Virgin Records offices at the end of this yard. This was the best picture I got of it because its all residential these days.

August 2022

Virgin Mastertronic rapidly realised the SEGA rights were more valuable than the budget software line. The stars aligned perfectly. Virgin Mastertronic were asked to take on distribution in France, and Germany as well. Virgin Mastertronic made a success of the Master System because its advertising ran in VIZ COMIC where it could be targeted at an older teenage user; VIZ at this point was selling a massive million copies an issue. See the Virgin Mastertronic article for the finer detail, along with my pretentious humourless explanation of why these adverts are actually rubbish.

Virgin Mastertronic, 16 Portland Road, London, W11

October 2022

Virgin Mastertronic moved from Vernon Yard around the summer of 1990, just before they added the Mega Drive to their sales roster in October. The finances involved quickly become eye-watering, as Richard Branson described in his biography, Losing My Virginity:

By 1991 the sales of Sega in Europe had soared to £150 million, up from £2 million in 1988. By then we were beginning to be rather terrified that the bubble might burst. In order to maintain our position we were having to spend £70 million marketing Sega each year, before the cost of financing the sales. There was always the danger that, because these games were primarily sold to an extremely narrow section of teenage boys, if another craze came along out of the blue, then Sega’s sales would collapse.

The stars aligned again. SEGA was very interested in reacquiring the licence to distribute its own products in Europe and Virgin needed cash. Virgin Music had just signed Janet Jackson for $25 million and the company wanted to reduce its debt to the banks and, in Richard Branson's phrase, "show the outside world some of the hidden value within the Virgin Group." SEGA paid £33 million to buy Virgin Mastertronic. Nice work. NEW COMPUTER EXPRESS covered the sale in July 1991 and on 8 August 1991:

Companies House
Company name changed\certificate issued on 02/09/91

The day of the sale Virgin Mastertronic changed their name to SEGA Europe and the other SEGA Europe (the one I was calling Asptour/SEGA Europe) changed their name to SEGA Amusements Europe. The sale included a second company called Virgin Mastertronic Overseas Ltd [5] who, I'm going to assume were used for distribution to European countries. You won't be surprised to learn their name was changed to SEGA Europe Overseas. Then on 9 September 1991 SEGA Europe and SEGA Europe Overseas both moved from 16 Portland Road. And where did they move to?

SEGA Europe and SEGA Europe Overseas and SEGA Amusements Europe, Unit 6, Churchill Court, 58 Station Road, North Harrow, Middlesex HA2 7SA

Now it's time for another emergency temporal shift as we see what Deith Leisure were up to.

Deith Leisure, Unit 2, Industrial Estate, Leigh Close, New Malden, Surrey, KT3 3NL

WANDSWORTH AND
PUTNEY GUARDIAN
Thursday 18 February 1988 page 72

Despite Companies House recording Deith Leisure as leaping up to Southport, that's just a change of registered address. The company kept its Wandsworth building until 1988 and moved to a new warehouse in New Malden.

It's clearly business as usual for the firm and this is, for me, peak SEGA arcade games. Starting with Outrun which was the big arcade game of 1987 as far as I was concerned, and then Afterburner, Alien Syndrome. Shinobi, Altered Beast, and Golden Axe; which remains the only arcade game I've ever completed. My Top Tip. Pump all your holiday money into a single game with your friends and then spend the rest of the week complaining you don't have any cash.

Deith Leisure was a subsidiary of Southport-based Corton Beach. In September 1989 Corton Beach also acquired a New York company called Belam. A LIVERPOOL DAILY POST story covered the takeover (12 September 1989 page 2) and noted:

Two major coups have already come in the wake of the new acquisition as Corton Beach has won the distribution rights for Namco and Sega, both Japanese amusement machine manufacturers, in the U.S. and Canadian markets.

It seems reasonable to assume this deal set the stage for what happened after Corton Beach suddenly went into administration. The Deith Leisure accounts made up to 31 January 1991 fill in the detail:

On 11 October 1990 Administrative Receivers were appointed to the previous holding company, Corton Beach Plc and certain fellow subsidiaries. On 14 January 1991 the whole of the issued share capital

of the company was sold to Sega Enterprises Ltd, a company registered in Japan.

Actually, as SEGA Retro notes, the company was originally acquired by SEGA and Namco but Namco relinquished their stake in the business around 1991. My best guess is this happened late in 1991. Newspaper recruitment adverts up to September 1991 show Deith describing itself as "A Sega/Namco Company" but when they resume in January 1992 the business is now just "a member of Sega Group". What did this mean for Deith Leisure? Not a lot immediately because the company stayed in their New Malden warehouse.

March 2026

That's it today. In what must be the craziest coincidence ever for this blog, I was within 400 meters of the building two weeks previously for work purposes. I couldn't believe it when I drove back to take the photo. When Corton Beach took over Deith Leisure, the registered address was updated to Southport. Now, the change of management[6] involved a new registered business address. Would you care to guess what it was?

Deith Leisure and SEGA Europe and SEGA Europe Overseas and SEGA Amusements Europe, Unit 6, Churchill Court, 58 Station Road, North Harrow, Middlesex HA2 7SA

You might be starting to spot a pattern here.

Thanks to an incredibly useful link from SEGA Retro to the October 1 1991 issue of GAME MACHINE (page 32) I can also get to grips with the new corporate structure.

The overall holding company was called SEGA Europe Group Ltd. A company I haven't previously mentioned because they are defunct and their Companies House records are not accessible. SEGA Europe appears to handle consoles in the UK, which by now include the Master System, the Mega Drive, and the Game Gear. SEGA Europe Overseas probably does likewise for the rest of Europe. Deith Leisure does arcade games in the UK and SEGA Amusements Europe does the same but for Europe. The GAME MACHINE article goes on to quote SEGA President Hayao Nakayama:

"The opening of our European Headquarters is a further step in consolidating Sega's position as industry leader in home and coin-op video game entertainment in Europe."

Although, under the circumstances I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd said: "By heck, don't ask me lad. I 'aven't got a clue."

I think Nick Alexander was working behind the scenes to simplify the corporate structure and make SEGA more efficient because 1991 saw the UK console market becoming increasingly competitive. It was no longer a straight two horse race between SEGA and Nintendo. They remained the major players but Atari were in the mix, and so were Commodore, and Sony had big plans. The sales war between SEGA and Nintendo continued to hot up. To the point where Nintendo trolled SEGA owners in the first issue of MEAN MACHINES SEGA.

MEAN MACHINES SEGA
October 1992 page 74

247 Cromwell Road, London, SW5 9GA

From 1991 to March 1993, every SEGA UK company (probably) was registered at 6 Churchill Court, although in reality they could be anywhere in the UK. Deith Leisure were still in New Malden, and it looks like SEGA Europe (that is, the old Virgin Mastertronic) were still at 16 Portland Road, according to Companies House records. March 1993 was the date when SEGA consolidated all its disparate parts under one roof. Well, not all (Deith Leisure was still in New Malden but let's not split hairs). For the first time it feels like I can post a picture of a building and say with a fair degree of confidence: "SEGA woz 'ere." 

March 2026

To prove it, here's a picture from 1994. I would normally ask permission from Reddit user Cauterize but he doesn't seem to have posted for the last 8 months. 

Reddit

Look at that. A lovely big SEGA sign and an advertising hoarding over the door. SEGA heads can enlighten me on what game it was for, possibly Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble on the Game Gear,

Here's another.

AMIGA ACTION
March 1994 page 9

It's a shame this photo is further evidence of SEGA again being trawled by a competitor but, in the case of the CD32, I think it's fair to say SEGA had the last laugh.[7].

247 Cromwell Road turns out to be the former London office of BCCI. A bank which was force closed in July 1991 amid spectacular rumours of financing of terrorism and drug money laundering and many other crimes that earned it the nickname Bank of Crooks and Cocaine International. SEGA was the next owner, paying £6 million for the freehold and a 999 year lease.

April 1994 saw Nick Alexander leave SEGA for Pearson New Entertainment Europe, where as CEO he brought Future Publishing for £52 million. He told SEGA-16: 

The relationship between Sega Europe (SOE) and SOJ was complex and at times very challenging. The best example would be the Game Gear. Japan was very keen to achieve bigger numbers for this system. However, we had a negative gross margin from memory of -11%. Every one that we sold we lost more money. In order to sell more than originally planned we would have to reduce the price, increase the marketing, or increase the value of packs. All of these would increase our loss per unit even further. I had a long debate with Japan about this which culminated in the instruction to sell more units but not increase the losses. Clearly impossible if Japan would not reduce its price to us, which it would not. It was at this point that I decided to move on.

SEGA of Japan sold its consoles at a loss, to reduce the price. They made money by charging software companies a licence fee to release games. Presumably this licence fee went directly to SEGA of Japan so Nick Alexander was left squaring the impossible circle of selling more consoles in Europe (to increase the market share and make the machines more attractive to game developers) and losing money while keeping losses down. You can see why he got fed up. The SEGA Europe accounts for the year up to February 1995 mention a loss of £54,585,000 which is a tremendous amount of money. The same year the number of staff decreased from 488 to 417. The accounts also mention:

The board of directors has approved various schemes to recapitalise a number of the group's undertakings including Sega Gesellschaft fur Videospiele mbH, Sega Consumer Products SA, Sega Vertiebsgesellschaft mbH, Sega France SA and Sega Video Games Netherlands BV. The recapitalisation will increase the cost of investment of Sega Europe Overseas Limited in these subsidiary undertakings by a total of £40 million.

[UPDATE, 2 hours after this article was published] Hnng! Well this has never happened before. I was updating the Google map which sits alongside this blog and I thought I'd try and get a little clarity on exactly when Deith Leisure moved away from their New Malden warehouse. I didn't manage it, although I've pushed the date they were physically there back to 1998. However, what I did find was a new  SEGA company and a new address:

SEGA Operations, 1 Gresham Way, Durnsford Road, Wimbledon, SW19 8DW

EVENING STANDARD
Wednesday 16 March 1994 page 60

Meet SEGA Operations, a division of SEGA Amusements Europe. They were in Wimbledon at a time when everyone was supposed to be at 247 Cromwell Road. I don't have a photo of this address because it's Sunday evening and I have to put the bins out. Maybe soon. Ish. 

[UPDATE Ends]

Canberra House, 266-270 Gunnersbury Avenue, London, W4 5QB

December 1995 saw SEGA leave Cromwell Road and move further out of London, to Chiswick and a squat building just north of the Chiswick roundabout. The speed SEGA moved from Cromwell Road seemed odd to me although I couldn't track down any particular reason for the move. Then, in a happy coincidence, I was looking at EDGE issue 10, July 1994, [8] and found on page eight a lovely news story all about SEGA Europe's plans for the future:

As part of Sega's worldwide expansion plans, Tokyo have invested £7.5 million in the latest venture in the UK. The new London development headquarters, in Gunnersbury Avenue, Chiswick, is now open for business. 

It all started about two years ago when Sega decided that they wanted to start serious development in Europe or so claims Mike Brogan, director of product development at Sega Europe.

'Previously, most of the development has been in Japan and the US; but the plan here is now to set up a core development team just for Mars and Saturn- this will be the first development in Europe for these two formats', Mike told Edge. The new site is relatively empty at this early stage, but the company is 

currently recruiting around 30 staff who will be working on the very first Mars and Saturn development systems to arrive in the country. 

The Saturn was SEGA's ill-fated 32-bit console. Mars was the codename for what became the 32X, the stopgap add-on for the Mega Drive to bridge the gap between the Mega Drive and the Saturn. The article contains a couple of nice pictures of the offices.

EDGE
July 1994 page 8

EDGE
July 1994 page 9

Unfortunately there's a degree of irony with SEGA moving in order to expand because by April 1996 they were looking to cut costs, as SEGA PRO revealed:

Sega have just woken up to the reducing size of the video game industry and have announced to employees that they are considering a number of redundances in the company. In a letter dated the l0th January, Sega informs employees that they are currently considering a number of redundancies, “including the position you currently hold".

In the past 18 months, the total market value of the video game industry has fallen by over 20%, causing some publishers to seek outside financial backing to help them. Only last month, Acclaim announced that they had made a profit of only $600,000 in the first fiscal quarter compared to $15.9 million In the same period last year. This shocking news caused the company’s stock to plummet while trading and coulď've severely damaged the American publisher even further.

Sega are not alone In this cost-cutting exercise.. Some disgruntled employees of Sega have even taken it upon themselves to post variations of Sega’s recent Saturn ad campaign around London. Variations include ‘D.H.S.S’ and ‘Sign On’. The culprits have yet to come forward, and if they have a brain cell between them, they won’t even think about it.

Canberra House is gone. Replaced by a giant self-storage centre. Streetview 2008 gives you a glimpse of Canberra House but it's difficult to get a good look because its set back from the main road and obscured by trees.

March 2026

SEGA liked Canberra House. The company stayed there for nearly 10 years. It's a turbulent period which covers a lot of big events. The opening and closing of SEGA World London, at the Trocadero Centre; which I'll talk about further down the page. The failure of the SEGA Saturn and it's follow up the Dreamcast and the transition away from developing hardware to be purely a software publisher. On the arcade side Deith Leisure finally took the SEGA name on 1 March 1997 becoming SEGA Amusements Europe. They had a bad few years as well. Although it all started so well, with this optimistic assessment in Deith's 1998 accounts:

As reported last year, to accommodate the expansion of Sega's coin-operated sales in Europe, Sega's existing European sales activities were merged into the company on 1 March 1997.

The directors are pleased to report that Sega's confidence in its European based management has been supported by the company's best ever result, with sales and profits above expectations.

The outlook for the coming year is very positive after an encouraging start to the year with sales of Harley Davidson, Sega Rally 2 and Virtua Striker 2. The directors expect to exceed previous profit levels for the year ended February 1999.

1999 wasn't a good year, This was the year SEGA World London was closed. The optimism of the 1998 accounts is gone in the next set of accounts:

The directors are disappointed to report that the company made a loss in the year ended 28 February 1999. After an encouraging start to the year, trading became very difficult and sales fell well below expectations and below the level of the previous year. In addition, margins came under pressure and stocks were written down to values that reflected the difficult trading conditions. In the face of these difficult circumstances policies were adopted to reduce operating expenses.

2000 saw Deith Leisure and SEGA part ways after 13 years. SEGA sold the name and the amusements with prizes division to a Spanish company called Cirsa. At some point there was a management buyout from Cirsa and Deith Leisure are still going. SEGA also sold its spare parts business and went from assembling its own machines to using subcontractors. However, SEGA Amusements Europe was still going and in 2004 the two companies separated. SEGA Europe was on the move to elsewhere in Chiswick. SEGA Amusements Europe was off to an anonymous office block in Epsom.

SEGA Amusements Europe, Suite 3A, Oaks House, 12-22 West Street, Epsom, Surrey, KT18 7RG

All the other SEGA companies were going to Chiswick so whoever filled out the Companies House change of address form for SEGA Amusements Europe had to take two goes at it.

COMPANIES HOUSE
Registered Office Change Form 24 Jan 2004

March 2026

SEGA Amusements Europe, 42 Barwell Business Park, Leatherhead Road, Chessington, Surrey, KT9 2NY

October 2007 saw SEGA Amusements move to Chessington where they've stayed. The company changed their name in 2015, to SEGA Amusements International, presumably to better reflect the scope of their operations. There was a management buy out in March 2021 and since then the company has been independent, although it continues to use the SEGA name and branding on their website.

March 2026

Not a great picture but it was strictly a one-and-done effort. Barwell Business Park has been photographed on Streetview, which normally means it is open for the public, but when I arrived on a weekend afternoon the barriers for vehicle access were down. I parked further up the road and walked onto the estate. My route took me passed a security guard kiosk which was staffed. I had a very nice conversation with the guard who accepted my intentionally vague explanation that I was looking for the SEGA building because "I wanted to see where it was." "Unit 42," he told me so I carried on, aware that I was now the most interesting thing in the guard's field of view. Unfortunately, I got to the SEGA building before I was fully out of his sight. Hence this picture which was taken by holding my phone at chest height so my body blocked the guard's view of what I was doing. I left the estate by walking straight on and nipping out through a different exit.

SEGA Europe, 27 Great West Road Brentford Middlesex TW8 9BW 

Meanwhile, back in Chiswick in 2004. SEGA Europe moved round the Chiswick roundabout to the opposite side. Imagine the roundabout as a clockface with Canberra House at 12 o'clock, and 27 Great West Road at 9 o'clock. The two buildings are less than half a mile from each other.

March 2026

SEGA left 27 Great West Road just last year. The building still carries traces of SEGA branding on the signs at the cark park entrances but no longer there are the giant picture of Sonic and the SEGA logo which once bookended the building. The Sonic picture must have made this one of the most photographed office blocks in the UK. SEGA were settled at 27 Great West Road and would probably have stayed, except the whole area has been gradually redeveloped since 2020 when Brentford Football Club moved into a new stadium behind the building. With 27 Great West Road due to go, SEGA moved on.

SEGA Europe, Building 12 Chiswick Business Park 566 Chiswick High Road London W4 5AN

Which brings us up to date. Chiswick Business Park is at 3 o'clock on the Chiswick Park roundabout, about half a mile from Canberra House, and three-quarters of a mile from 27 Great West Road. It's a very posh venue although not as posh as Old Bond Street. I was surprised to find the area was busy when I arrived on a Sunday afternoon. The business park has become a destination in its own right for local dog walkers and families. They'd all come to promenade in front of the glass and steel blocks laid out round a central lake and ignore the headquarters of a lot of big name companies; The Pokemon Company, Warner Brothers Discovery, Paramount, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and of course SEGA.

March 2026

It's easy to find the SEGA office. It's the first on the right as you walk in. At ground level there's nothing to give away who is based in the block, for that you need to look up.

This is up on the front of the building on the third floor. If you walk round the corner you can just catch a glimpse of the blue guy.

How posh is Chiswick Business Park? It has fancy touch screens that show you the location of each company. Obviously I was going to play around with it even though I knew where the SEGA office was. I'd walked passed it to get to the touch screen.

BOURNEMOUTH DAILY ECHO
Thursday 29 July page 17

SEGA World Bournemouth, 45-47 Westover Road, Bournemouth, Dorset, BH1 2BZ

Opened on 24 July 1993, SEGA World Bournemouth was a three floor branded arcade which included 130 games, a karaoke room, a SEGA shop, a cut down bowling alley, and a Burger King. 

The BOURNEMOUTH DAILY ECHO ran a lovely two page advertising feature in the 29 July edition which included good luck adverts from the contractors who had worked on the £3 million development, including the company who did the SEGA and Sonic branded carpet.

The messages of good luck didn't take. By winter, staff were being laid off because the out of season business wasn't as good as hoped. The next few years saw the arcade suffer the death of a thousand cuts as the more expensive, less popular, bits were closed one by one. In March 2000 the whole SEGA Park chain was sold to The Leisure Park chain with a licence to use the SEGA name until 2006.

MEGA POWER covered the opening of SEGA World in Bournemouth because, as they said in issue one, it was about 200 yards from the MEGA POWER offices. 

MEGA POWER
August 1993 page 8

The site did open on time and MEGA POWER printed a picture of the place in all it's glory in issue two.

MEGA POWER 
September 1993 page 12

If you are wondering why the photo includes half a Sonic, it's because the layout artist has decided to drop a picture of Sonic at the top of the page and it overlaps in a really annoying way. I don't currently have a photo of Westover Road but watch this space.

BOURNEMOUTH DAILY ECHO
Thursday 29 July page 17

SEGA World London, The Trocadero Centre, 13 Coventry Street, London, W1

The EVENING STANDARD, 13 February 1995 page 31, broke the news of SEGA's plan for an indoor theme park in the Trocadero Centre. They described a £45 million pound plan to develop a joint venture between SEGA and the Burford Group, who owned the Trocadero, which would fill four empty floors of the giant building. By the time SEGA World opened on Saturday 6 September 1996, the park had expanded to six floors filled with a mixture of rides, stalls, and lots and lots of arcade machines. Other people have better told the story of the Trocadero Centre and the rise and fall of SEGA World.

There was a brief glorious moment when the Trocadero seemed like the entertainment centre of London. I went there a few times, had a go on Alien War in the basement, and later the 007 experience. I used the cinema a couple of times. I also went to SEGA World although I've been sitting here racking my brane for any memories of my visit. Any at all.  I don't remember being charged an entrance fee, or at least not baulking at the price, so I must have gone after December 1996 when the entrance fee dropped from £12 down to £2. Apart from that, I don't have strong memories of the place. I remember the giant escalator and I remember wandering darkened corridors looking for an Outrun arcade machine, without success, and that's about it.

The glory of the Trocadero has long faded. Where the entrance used to be is a place that advertises itself as "London's biggest souvenirs store". I wandered in and the most interesting thing about the shop is, the walls don't go all the way up to the ceiling. Behind them you can make out what would have been the Trocadero entrance fading off into the darkness. The noise of drilling came out of the darkness so clearly something is being built back there.

March 2026

Meanwhile, down in the subway, the entrance that used to lead into the Trocadero passed Alien War is a sad stub of its former self.

March 2026

The UK Resistance Mystery Sign

October 2009, SEGA fan site UK Resistance asked the question "Is Deith Leisure still going?" [9]. And followed up with three photographs taken on "a trading estate near Wembley." However, those three photos have fallen off the internet because UK Resistance didn't love SEGA enough. Were you "the man" who took the photos and do you still have them? Do you know where this sign was/or is it still there? Emails to whereweretheynow@gmail.com

And that's it. For all my whining at the start, this ended up being fun to write although it was a slog getting all the photos. Thank you to everyone who contributed to the forum thread at Sonic Retro. It was massively helpful and I've tried to build on your hard work and not just copy it. Please leave a comment or send an emails to whereweretheynow@gmail.com. Follow me on Bluesky, @shammountebank.bsky.social

[1] 37 Shakespeare Street, Southport, PR8 5AB, from 15 May 1987 to 20 Aug 1987 and Corton House, Shakespeare Street, Southport, PR8 5AB from 20 Aug 1987 to 14 December 1990. These are probably the same address with different names.

[2] Please note, the point I have linked to is page 130 in a 189 page thread. Heartbeat. Increasing heartbeat.

[3] The two blokes in my picture are a completely different pair who decided the outside of number 15 was the ideal place to stop for a natter. However I felt I could probably take these two in a fight, if it came to it, which is why I've included them.

[4] I have a theory. My theory about what happened to Asptour. My theory is this: Companies House shows they were renamed Forgotten Ltd in 1989. There was a 1989 film called The Forgotten. Later in 1994, Forgotten Ltd became Congo Films. There was a 1995 film called Congo. (It had monkeys in it). My theory proposes that having been absorbed into the Viacom corporation, the company that was SEGA Europe Ltd became a spare business occasionally used in the production of films/television. You can take my theory or leave it.

[5] It was still called Virgin Games Overseas Ltd until 2 May 1991 when it's name was changed to Virgin Mastertronic Overseas. As if someone was checking the details of the selloff and went "ooh, this should be part of the sale," and hurriedly updated the details with Companies House.

[6] Why didn't Deith Leisure get renamed? Brand recognition probably. It would take too long to keep explaining that SEGA Amusements Europe was the same company people had been dealing with previously, and how would Konami or Atari feel about trusting their distribution to SEGA?

[7] There's a game advert over the door but the detail is not good. Any idea what game it is?

[8] If you've seen the cover of that issue of EDGE, you'll have a pretty good idea of what article is coming next.

[9] Yes.