CHAPTER TWO: Book Work

Three electronic games.  Hmmmmmmm.  What to choose, what to choose?  Well, what game console do I own?  None.  There's that Atari joystick thing, but I've already used that this year.  Back into the depths of the closet with that thing.  I know.  I'll play one of the games on my wife's fancy phone.  She's using it now, but she'll understand if I say it's an emergency.

(52 minutes later)

Got it.  It's a free game called "Abduction".

This game was designed for soccer moms, knitting dads, wrestling grandmas, napping grandpas, and, most likely, little kids in the backseat.  The art is bright and pleasant.  There's no wordy instruction screen before it starts.  Just start tilting.  You're a cow fighting aliens, saving the other members of your herd, endlessly bouncing upwards on little platforms.   It's controlled by a thing called an "accelerometer".  You tilt it and it moves.  Great game to play while driving.  It's simple.  It's free.  I hope somebody got paid for their work on this.  Wonder if it was a team of 400 game designers?  Or one dude?  With a thing for floating cows.

Next up, another webernet download from 1up.com's  101 best games of 2007 list.  I went with one from the "Armchair Strategy" category called "gate 88".

I had no idea at the time, but "Armchair Strategy" means "bor-ing".  After 50 individual instruction screens, I was finally able to fly my little green shuttlecock around.  The flying was fun.  You leave a little trail of digital smoke behind.  I'm supposed to be protecting the pulsing, green ping pong ball.  You're also supposed to be building stuff.  Power stations or something.  You press a letter and then there's all these choices you have to make....all while a swarm of red shuttlecocks are speeding towards you, shootin' lasers. 

It looks cool.  Kinda like the designs of the Death Star that R2 had in his belly.  And you have a few choices for the background. This was made for fans of science fiction.  Not the casual game playa.  

I need a drink.  I'm heading out to a local watering hole for the final game of this assignment.  

Ahhhhhh, there it is.  My old friend.....

The MEGATOUCH!  Nobody's playing it, so I'm in luck.  Even if somebody was playing it, I'd sit behind them and heckle them 'til they left.  I'm like that when it comes to games played in public setting.  Not sure why.

Allright

Beer me  (glug, glug, glug)

Quarter in

Beer me again  (glug, glug, glug)

"Trivia Whiz"

"Music" category

(awesome electric guitar riffage sound)

I've played this game so much, that I recognize some of the questions.  Of course, I usually make the same wrong guesses.  But when I get it right, sometimes answering the question immediately when the first clue is presented, it feels great.  It's the simplest game of this assignment.  You bet ALL, 1/2, or 1/4 of your points on the first few questions.  Just bet it ALL.  All the time.  Do it.  Believe in yourself.  Answer quick.  the quicker the better.  More points.  If you get 'em correct, you'll enter round two, where you have no say over what points you're betting.  

Unlike most video games, points in this one DO matter.  Only the top 10 can leave their name.  Your name will be forever, digitally engraved in the "Top Scorers" cycle that loops over and over while the Megatouch is not being played.  People will see your name and be amazed that a true master of music trivia ACTUALLY sat and scored such a staggeringly high score right where they're sitting!  Wow.  You achieved something great in life.  Screw all those teachers that said otherwise.  Your name is attached to something.  Well, until somebody scores higher than you.  Or unplugs the machine.  

This game was designed for, in a lack for a better term, drunks.  And bar/restaurant owners that want drunk people to remain in their establishment, buying drinks and plopping dollar bills into it.  As the evening proceeds, players get drunkier and drunkier.  Burp.  The screen gets a little blurry and, instead of touching answers (or shooting basketballs, or releasing darts, or whatever task the game calls for) with just a finger, they're using three or four.  Or using their palm.  Or tongue.  This machine was designed to take punches and beer splashes and full force headbutts.  Bonk.  Its gotta be sturdy.  There's money inside!

The art is simple.  Under each trivia question is a picture.  Sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it doesn't.  A question about Sun Records might just have a close-up of a microphone.  Or a question about Junior Walker will have a dude playing a saxophone on a dock and a woman with her feet dangling in the water smiling at him.  It doesn't matter.  Nobody in the history of this game has ever called the Megatouch Industries offices and complained.  

Okay.  That's all.  I need to go the ATM and get out $100.  Keep my barstool warm for me while I'm away.