Wednesday 4 April 2018

The Anomalous Triline Sega Logo of 1983

In the wake of our definitive SG-1000 hardware guide, good friend of the Junkyard, Scarred Sun (an admin over at the Sonic/Sega Retro forums), pointed out the unusual triline font used for the Sega logo on the front plate of New Zealand's version of the SG-1000 - the "Sega 1000" - released under license by electronic game and toy manufacturer Grandstand Leisure.

To be honest, I didn't notice this until it was pointed out


This seems to be the only place where this particular Sega logo is used, as the box art in New Zealand for both the system and the games bear the familiar biline version.

Click image for a closer look
This is the New Zealand release of the first SG-1000 game, Borderline

One further clue can be found on Grandstand's early cassette software for the SG-1000's microcomputer cousin - the SC-3000 (a companion SC-3000 hardware guide coming soon-ish [probably]). The "Grandstand" logo itself is sometimes displayed with a triline font, rather than the more common single solid line. It seems like this alternative stylistic choice was also used for the Sega 1000 logo.
An example of the triline font on early cassette software
Compare this against the single line font used on the
cartridge releases

In any case, we have now drawn attention to a newly re-discovered, but very uncommon Sega logo, only used once in New Zealand during 1983.

SIH-GUH!*
*New Zealand accent
  
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3 comments:

  1. Jennifer McMurray7 April 2018 at 04:29

    Interesting. That particular logo would have been great to use on their racing games, as it looks like a two lane road. :)

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  2. OriginalName22 April 2018 at 00:02

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. OriginalName22 April 2018 at 00:03

    I randomly decided to play Sports Jam for the Dreamcast after reading this (it may have been because I subconsciously remembered this, even) and lo and behold, if you look at the Sega logo on the ice hockey player's shorts, it's the very same logo.

    There's a good shot here at 8:12:

    https://youtu.be/Yvgzqv2-xz0?t=8m12s

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