When we checked into our motel tonight my sailors were impressed with the chocolate chip cookies at the front desk. We trooped downstairs to our rooms and they got excited about the pool and the hot tub. And then they saw the long sweep of green lawn stretching down to the water and the girls kicked off their shoes and ran down the hill to the beach, excited.
I thought these things were nice, and was pleased to see it has free wi-fi, but what got me excited was the video game arcade. There's a little arcade just a few doors down from our room. The sailors changed and I headed to the arcade, where I pulled out my change purse and began feeding quarters into Carnival King, a friendly target shooter. The team gathered around me, eager to leave for dinner. "Don't interrupt me, I'm shooting." And I made the high scoreboard, and was crowned Carnival King. We came back from dinner and I went back to the arcade. This time I won a bonus game. I only stopped because I ran out of quarters, and they don't have a change machine down there. Thank goodness.
The game reminded me of my favorite video game ever, a seemingly endless and somewhat bizarre target shooting game called "Egg-Venture." The object was to shoot the "bad eggs" without hitting the "good eggs" as they popped out of cabinets or rode on rubber ducks across the screen or parachuted down from airplanes. I discovered this game in the anteroom of a nearby movie theater back when I was in law school, and I went back a couple of times with a buddy of mine specifically to play it. But one day it had been replaced by a driving game and the movie theater employees told me the game rental company periodically refreshed their games. I called the rental company but they didn't know where the game had been transferred to. Lost forever. But not forgotten.
Man, there used to be a video game where you have a crossbow and you have to shoot monsters that are trying to attack your friends, who were these very slow-walking Tolkein-ish looking guys. They walk across the screen and snakes, goblins, pterodactyls, and everything else tried to get them. That was a fun game. It actually had a crossbow mounted on the machine and you had to aim and shoot with it.
Posted by: Patrick | October 03, 2005 at 03:36 PM
Scheherazade, you are a perfect candidate to trial the new sport I am inventing. It is like biathlon, only with sailing replacing the nordic skiing aspect. So, you will sail a race course, meanwhile shooting at targets. Are you in?
Posted by: turboglacier | October 04, 2005 at 03:55 PM