Jim Ke

Located in Linkou District of New Taipei City, Mitsui Outlet Park has been drawing large crowds with an abundance of brands and gourmet food since its opening on January 27, 2016.  Among the commercial establishments in Mitsui Outlet Park, the most special one is PLUS SEGA, which provides family interaction-centered facilities.  It is noteworthy that there are no commonly seen traditional games in the place.

Four major areas emphasize virtual interaction

PLUS SEGA has planned four major areas for consumers, which include “Pirate Ship Ball Pool Area”, “Painting Aquarium”, “Jungle Crayon Painting Area” and “Creative Painting Sand World”.  There is also the “Creation Printing Area” to provide peripheral products.  The game content projects mainly put emphasis on virtual interaction.

Almost all those who pass by PLUS SEGA would be drawn to the pirate ship in the “Pirate Ship Ball Pool Area”.  80,000 blue-colored hollow balls are used to create a special setting with an expansive ocean look.  The center of the pirate ship is equipped with two cannons, allowing players to use balls in the ball pool as projectiles.  Projectiles are launched using air pressure, so it makes a loud sound but it is very safe. 

There is a small slide at the back end of the ship and both adults and children can board the ship to check it out.  Next to the ship there is a “ball pool fountain”.  Balls in the ball pool can be put into a machine, and by pressing the switch, balls can be ejected upwards like a fountain.  The site is staffed by attendants to provide explanation and prevent active children from making dangerous movements.  With complete safety equipment, this area allows parents to feel at ease when their children play there.

1.      The “Pirate Ship Ball Pool Area” utilizes 80,000 blue-colored hollow balls to create an ocean look.

Painting Aquarium for creating your own sea creatures

“Painting Aquarium” adopts the projection method to show objects on a big screen, so it is darker in this area.  This is a place that enables people to give full play to their imagination.  Consumers first need to get a sheet of drawing paper at the event and whatever is within the scanning range of the paper can be displayed on the screen.  Consumers can freely draw and paint in the painting area.  After they finish their works, they can go to the machine there to scan their drawings.  Then their creativity can immediately appear on the projection screen and turned into wonderful sea creatures swimming around.

The store manager Chen Jun-hao said, “This is the virtual projection interactive equipment developed by Japanese company TEAM LAB.  Children are not limited by the pattern frame provided when painting.  They can freely paint within the scanning range of the paper.”  After scanning, the patterns they just drew would immediately appear on the screen and players can interact with the hand-painted animals.  Players can also touch the treasure chest on the screen to let bait come out and at this moment all animals on the screen would swim towards the bait.  It is extremely vivid and interesting.

2.      “Painting Aquarium” employs the projection interaction technology, enabling consumers to freely create patterns and showing the patterns created on the screen.

Jungle Crayon Painting Area for building your own wildlife park

The equipment used by the “Jungle Crayon Painting Area” is “Live Sketchbook”, which was released by Korean company d’strict and employs Kinect technology.  PLUS SEGA has a total of 9 touchscreens on site.  This game is similar to the gameplay of “Painting Aquarium”.  Both allow players to paint freely and the biggest difference is their themes.  “Live Sketchbook” features a jungle while the other uses an ocean as its theme.

Players can paint on the touchscreen of “Live Sketchbook”.  They can use the paint brush on the screen to select different animals and freely paint.  After they finish painting, they can operate the interface to let the animals painted appear on the screen.  No matter what players draw, be it an elephant, lion, zebra or fox, the animals can walk around in the jungle at this moment.  Like in “Painting Aquarium”, players can step forward to touch and interact with the animals.

3.      Players can indulge in painting with the touchscreen of “Jungle Crayon Painting Area” and enjoy the fun of creating jungle animals.

“Creative Painting Sand World” offers amazing fun of playing sand

The highlight of PLUS SEGA, “Creative Painting Sand World”, provides SEGA’s own product, “Sand Painting Machine”.  “Sand Painting Machine” utilizes the gray Kinetic sand imported from Italy, which is also called clay sand and features the uncompacted texture of sand grains and the bonding property of clay.  Therefore the sand does not stick to hands and is easy to clean up.

Kinetic sand is a children’s toy commonly seen in the market, but “Sand Painting Machine” employs the projection interaction function to offer a colorful and fun interactive experience.  Based on the height of the sand piled, the projections would reflect the topography to form the green shades of hills or the blue color of the ocean.

The game provides task mode and free mode.  For example, if the task is to use sand to make a doughnut, when it is completed, many small Ladybirds would appear through projection.  Players can directly use their hands to drive Ladybirds into the circle.  It is a lot of fun.  Under the same game mode, different seasons including spring, summer, autumn and winter have different background colors.  Besides Ladybirds, there are the Hercules beetle, stag beetle, grasshopper and spider categories.  The unique gameplay can definitely make children go crazy with excitement.

4.      “Creative Painting Sand World” utilizes the sand painting machine to offer a colorful interactive experience.

Machine-free experience, a new edutainment option for families

In PLUS SEGA, not only can children indulge themselves in games but adults can also join children to deepen bonds and facilitate close interaction between children and parents.  The painting patterns created in the “Jungle Crayon Painting Area” or “Painting Aquarium” can be printed into photos free of charge.  The patterns can also be turned into T-shirts.  One T-shirt costs NT$350 and comes with the crayons specially made for T-shirts.  If players feel like adding something to their patterns, they can use the giveaway crayons to directly paint on the T-shirts.  Then the attendants on the site would process the clothes for protection so that the wonderful memories can be preserved forever.

Chen Jun-hao pointed out “SEGA PLUS aims to break with tradition and create a unique parent-child interactive fun world.  It can provide consumers an unprecedented gaming feeling.  It is also a leisure option that offers relaxation and allows consumers to give play to their creativity.”  During the opening period of SEGA PLUS, consumers from other countries showed great interest in such a business model and hoped that this type of business establishment could be opened in their countries.  SEGA PLUS is very suitable for parents and children having fun together and also attracts a lot of couples.  Depending on the business results in the future, it would provide more new and fun game content or even further expand to more locations so that consumers residing outside of northern Taiwan can have the opportunity of experiencing machine-free interactive fun.

5.      PLUS SEGA provides consumers the service of turning their works into T-shirts.

※The article is published in the GTI Magazine Issue No. 141 in April, 2016