Notes From LIRGE: Sega is So Cool

Notes From LIRGE: Sega is So Cool

“Always has been.”

The main theme of Long Island Retro Gaming Expo 2026 (co-sponsored by yours truly, Limited Run Games) was a celebration of Nintendo 64 on its 30th anniversary. And that's good! But for those who wandered the show floor, it was hard not to stumble across constant reminders of how incredibly good Sega is as well.

Consider this permanent installation at the Cradle of Aviation Museum: a cluster of multiple Sega Airline Pilots arcade cabinets. And not just the cabinets, but the exquisite DX cabinets which create a cockpit panorama to immerse the player in the sensation of guiding a jumbo jet airliner through such tasks as landing, takeoff, and dealing with inclement weather.

Unlike most arcade games, Airline Pilots was designed for realism—a "ride-on" coin-op equivalent of something like Microsoft Flight Simulator rather than an update to, say, After Burner. Consider it a sort of companion piece to 18 Wheeler: American Pro Trucker, but even more methodical and realistic. Sega collaborated with Japan Airlines pilots to maximize its verisimilitude! It's the real deal! Huge, impressive, intimidating, and completely unlike any other arcade game before or since.

Of course, Sega had a long history of creating ride-on cabinets, called taikan in Japan, including the absolutely mind-boggling 360º version of Galaxy Force, a cabinet that required steely nerves and an iron stomach to prevent motion sickness. Sega fans know that the taikan line began with Sega's groundbreaking motorcycle racer Hang-On, a game that (in its taikan form) you controlled with your body, physically leaning into turns as you adjusted your grip on the handlebars to control your speed.

The taikan version of Hang-On wasn't present at LIRGE, though keen-eyed cabinet hunters could spot a stand-up version of Super Hang-On if they knew where to look. But that's OK, because the second most immersive version of Hang-On ever created was represented in fine form elsewhere in the museum.

The same Japanese PC corner that gave us the soul-draining experience of Super Mario Bros. Special also gave us the majestic home conversion of Super Hang-On for the Sharp X68000 home computer, as seen above. For ’80s gamers, the X68000 represents the absolute pinnacle of home gaming, a powerful tower machine that contained many of the same components as Sega arcade cabinets like the Y Board and the Capcom CP System setup. This made the X68000 so expensive that you pretty much had to be a lawbreaking day trader in order to afford it—it made Apple Macintosh look like a budget line by comparison. But in return for that life-altering investment, you ended up with a home computer capable of playing truly arcade-perfect ports of games.

And if you really had deep pockets, you could assemble the entire setup seen in the LIRGE museum. The X68000 could be expanded with multiple audio enhancement setups, boosted with additional RAM, and fitted out with incredible official speakers manufactured by Roland. Sharp manufactured custom multisync monitors for it, too, with a high-end CRT screen that looks immaculate despite its modest size. It also gave rise to some great controllers, most notably the Sharp CyberStick—the original dual analog controller, one so legendary that they produced a USB-based version as a companion to the Genesis Mini microconsole a few years ago!

Playing Super Hang-On by way of the X68000, with audio boosters and the CyberStick and an official monitor, is quite possibly the most immersive arcade gaming experience you can have at home. The blistering speed of the Super Scaler visuals (which the X68000 can recreate without breaking a sweat) and the perfect renditions of Hiroshi Kawaguchi's legendary soundtrack make for an unparalleled audio-visual experience. But it's actually the CyberStick that cements it. The left stick is a throttle lever that controls your bike's speed—press forward to accelerate and pull back to slow or brake—while the right stick controls your movement with fluid analogue precision. It's hard to express just how truly engrossing this setup feels for the game. If you didn't know about the taikan setup, you could easily mistake this for the game's true, primal form.

It's experiences like these that make shows like Long Island Retro Gaming Expo so enjoyable. You know how much it would cost to own these two game setups alone? Much more affordable to fly out to New York every once a year and spend a couple of days soaking in the experience.