Trip to Boomers - the games

Saturday off.  We dropped Dory at doggie day care and went out to Boomers in Vista to play around and try some miniature golf.

The air hockey table took our $1 swipe, but there was no puck.  By the time I got a new puck from the lady at the prize table, the air hockey table was only barely blowing air, so it was a half game that went on way too long, and Anne ended up hurting her back.  Off to a good start.

We played a round of miniature golf and will cover that separately.

The arcade games were mostly disappointing.  About one out of four card swipes did nothing: took the money and did not activate.  I'm not sure we ever got a full minute of play time on any of the big machines on the main floor.  

There was a two-seat fishing game with cute graphics.  You hit a button to drop your hook down, and it hooks the first fish in the way and then you crank a handle to reel it up.  Really well implemented: it was a challenge to get past those top annoying fish to get tp the good ones below ... except it had about a 60-second timer and then you were done, wondering what happened.  A dollar per minute is $60/hour, just sayin'.

There was a giant two-seat Space Invaders game that started off right but went into double double time after barely 30 seconds, and the ships whizzed across the screen and it was over.  The top score was only 38,000 so it looks like nobody else got much more time than I did (I got 21,000 something).  

This big screen had a huge epilepsy trigger warning for about 30 seconds.  We saw this on the same big screen up in Temecula that one time, but by the time I got the camera ready it was gone (again) and didn't come back while we were still sitting there waiting.  Yes, this huge screen was very triggering.  My eyes were swirling in thei sockets after just two tries.  The warning was actually worse: unbelievably dense white-on-black tiny letters on the eight-foot-high wall of game.  Someday I will get a shot of that.  Call it a photography challenge.

It's not like the good old days where a skilled player good get 20 minutes and a million points for a quarter.  There were regular arcade games upstairs but they were all racing and fighting and shooting games with none of the classics.

Speaking of classics, the other side of the huge Space Invaders screen was labeled "World's Biggest Ms Pac Man Game" ... while actually showing ships from Galaga.  I forgot to get a shot of that.

A quick look at the prizes showed the usual flashy junk for kids, but I had a "meta" moment where I looked to see if any of the prizes were actual games that you could win by wasting your hours gaming.  Nothing.  Was it too much to ask for a little deck of Uno cards for 1000 points?

All the numbers felt off.  I played three games of Skeeball (some other brand name on the machine).  I got two 100s and a 50 on the first game, but the final score was 220. 

There was a huge ball-drop chamber which looked silly, but the first time we tried, Anne had more bonus balls come down, then another one, then more, as they kept ending up in the bonus ball cups.  So that was amusing.  It said 440 tickets.  Next time it was 75 with no bonus balls, and the last time was 5 points ... the lowest, lamest possible outcome.  We tried again on our way out and two swipes did nothing but lower the balance on our card.  

And when we checked out the balance on the card, after all that activity and numbers shown on screens, the card only had 215 actual ticket recorded.  The kiosk could show the complete history of every swipe and reward, but that's not what we were there to do.  I handle databases all day at work, last thing I want to see on an arcade outing is another spreadsheet full of tiny numbers.

I guess we just had no idea how the on-screen points translate into tickets or tokens or points.  But again, we weren't there to audit the place, just to try a bunch of new sights and sounds.

We tried a few other things and stopped at Money Pit for some cheap burgers on the way home.  Got Dory and were oddly exhausted considering how little we actually did.  But I guess two hours of walking around counts for something.






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