Day 3 - Friday 11/18/05
Friday I intended to go with my brother, but he was not back from his visit to the Arctic jungles. Instead, I went with my friend Gary. Gary is a master of getting free stuff (current record: 5 shirts and 2 beach-balls at one concert) so I was anxious to put his skills to use here.
This is actually a picture of us leaving, but if I didn't
tell you that you probably wouldn't know the difference, so:
Here we are on our way in.
We decided to start the day off with the MaxFlight FS 2000 Flight Sim. Thats a pretty fancy name for a box that flips you around.
You get strapped into the little box, it closes, and then the movements of the simulator follow whatever happens in the video projected in front of you- loops, twists and all.
There were two versions, a rollercoaster sim and a flight sim. I rode the Coaster one twice and was very impressed. It's a lot of fun, but can't match the g-forces that you experience on a real ride.
Here is a short video of the ride in action.
Sega had a corner of one of the halls all to themselves. I'm not big on video games so I don't know if anything they had was new or not. They did have a big setup for the latest version of the House of the Dead arcade game. It has a very realistic display (plasma or LCD or something). We were hoping to play it, but there were these two guys who looked like they had been training their whole lives for this thing- they just wouldn't lose. So we gave up on that task.
It was about this time that I caught 'Hoop Fever'. Hoop Fever is a mysterious illness. Those who get it usually become obsessed with collecting as many tickets as possible from the "Hoop Fever" basketball game. Even if there is nowhere to actually redeem the tickets for anything of value.
Turns out Hoop Fever is contagious- Gary caught it too.
Despite my best efforts, I was unable to beat Gary in Hoop Fever a single time, even after nearly 30 minutes of trying. But I soon found something more suited to me, a coin game thingy based on one of my all time favorite games- Monopoly! Please take note of all the gold coins I have, I'm actually good at this game!
Now take note of how many gold coins Gary has. That's right- I Win at Something!
Gary was determined to defeat me again, and he found his opportunity at the Namco booth.
Notice that Gary is much more excited about Mario Kart then I am. That is because people don't laugh at his driving skills when he plays.
I decided to take out some of my video game frustrations on this little frog. Sure, I could have shot the leopard, but I think that frog is related to the ones from those old Budweiser commercials so he had to go.
I'm not too sure where Gary learned to shoot, but I'm confident that he is not going to hit anything.
Go Karts! Unfortunately we were not allowed to try them out.
Does anyone actually miss when they are playing these water-race games? All you have to do is pull the trigger!
While we were crossing between show buildings, we were lucky enough to be just in time for the Pyro Show. See a short clip from it here.
This ride was right next to the Disk-O. It doesn't look all that exciting from the ground, but the airtime is incredible. Every thirty seconds or so you get a huge "jump" and leave your seat far behind. Gary and I rode this one a bunch, sometimes it even went backwards (I hope that was not an accident). Click here to see a short clip of it in action.
Shortly after this picture was taken Gary ceased to exist. I decided to call it a day.