During our post broadcast discussion after last night's radio show, I somehow managed to bring up Sega's R360 mid conversation. After Huey made the accurate yet distasteful comparison between the design of the R360 to that of a particular plot device in a certain episode of South Park, I felt inspired to shed some light on this legendary piece of arcade equipment.
So what is a Sega R360? It's this. Behold.
The R360 is a motion simulator arcade cabinet that has the capability of sending players into full 360 degree rotations at any angle. Sega released the R360 in 1991 with a sticker price in the range of $90 to $100 thousand! While Sega and Nintendo were in a bitter fight to the death in the realm of home consoles, Sega was secretly dominating the arcade industry, which Nintendo had decided to abandon. As a leader in the arcade business, Sega had the luxury of experimenting with huge, cutting edge, and expensive technology that other manufacturers wouldn't even dream of developing...
The pinnacle of their innovation is without a doubt the R360.
As far as I know, there are only two games that can operate inside an R360: G-Loc and Wing War. Both of these games are fighter pilot simulator games, G-Loc being a 2D sprite driven game, while Wing War being an early 3D game. Because of the different platforms the two games run on, a fair amount of modification is involved to convert an R360 between the two. The interesting thing about Wing War is that it has multiplayer support... That's right - you can link two R360's together and actually play against each other in dogfight mode (good luck finding TWO working R360's though).
I was able to play an emulation of the R360 version of G-Loc, which to say the least, is not the same as being in the actual machine. It was interesting however to see the game request that I lower the safety and buckle my seat belt before playing. Sega also installed an emergency stop button inside the cabinet for those who tend to change their mind after it's too late, such as this poor kid...
For more information about the R360, check out Kevin Keinert's website. Kevin arguably knows more about the R360 than the people who designed it, as he has bought, sold, and restored many units over the past 10 years. He even managed to modify a sitdown version of Wing War so that it would communicate with an R360, allowing one person to play on a standard sitdown machine and the other to play inside the R360. Kevin explained that these games have a wide price range, starting from a few thousand dollars to well over 30 grand depending on condition and functionality. Here's a picture of Kevin with an R360 in mid-restoration to give you an idea just how big this machine really is (it weighs 2200 pounds!)
For me, the R360 represents the height of arcade impracticality. It is a testament of how the arcade has always offered something that simply couldn't be replicated at home. As a collector of arcade machines with limited space and funds, I can only dream to one day own an R360 (let alone find one). For now, it will have to go on the top of my holy grail list. Thank you Sega... for being insane.
