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JUNJI ITO PINBALL

A place to discuss the fabled pinball machine · By Alfred Valley

I found two Uzumaki console games circa 2000

A topic by friendly ghost created 58 days ago Views: 175 Replies: 5
Viewing posts 1 to 4
(3 edits) (+1)

The company that produced Junji Ito’s Uzumaki film with all the spirals, Omega Micott Inc, directly produced two Uzumaki computer games in 2000 for the Japan domestic market exclusive handheld console the Bandai WonderSwan. The wonderswan sounded sick, like a beefier gameboy.

Uzumaki: Denshi Kaikihen (2000) Uzumaki: Noroi Simulation (2000)

Frankly this is huge.

  • Only 1 year earlier than the gogooze99 incident.
  • The producers were actively producing multiple spinoff games.
  • Bandai has a big arcade game footprint.
  • The game graphics sound similar to the reported pinball machine.

Is it such a stretch to think they also produced a pinball machine with Bandai to accompany these games?

https://www.myabandonware.com/browse/developer/omega-micott-inc-6xw/

https://www.ebay.com/itm/198064215068

Great find - it's good to know Ito was open to works like this at this time (and lends a bit more credence to the idea of a prototype machine). The Bandai connection here is interesting. Again, we've got a surprising amount of connections between the various people and companies at play.

Joe Blackwell, one of the lead developers of the machine (if the manual pic is to be believed), is now at Bandai Namco as their Customer Service Director. He's been there for years now and these games would have happened prior to his run, but its the same time frame as the machine, like you said.

Feels like there could be something going on with the Sega > Stern > Bandai Namco and some of their employees over the years. 

Interesting! No shade to customer service, but that does sound like maybe they took Blackwell off creative projects after something went awry? Gave him some director job at the edge of the company to keep him within the company and satisfied. You do wonder what he knows...

Also interesting that Joe Blackwell worked on a tournament system that seems to have been included in the Stern Playboy game (which is mentioned by gozooze99 in the original post)

This press release mentions the Sega connection as well: https://www.pinballnews.com/news/tops.html

It seems as if multiple persons were making games revolving around the influence of Ito's work with or without them mowing.

I watched this last night and this is definitely a vibe. But I woke up this morning with the intro/outro music stuck in my head. Like not just stuck but swirling around getting louder and louder. Every loop is pressing in like it’s swelling from my ears into my eyes and I’ve got like tunnel vision or something now it’s going black. Maybe it’s just a hangover I was up practically all night drinking and searching for Omega Micott leads in japanese オメガ・ミコット. I remember thinking I’d made a huge breakthrough but I can’t remember what now with this music screaming in my ears. I just feel so dizzy and everything is spinning. I’m scared.