Anyway, after the big reveal my friend's eyes lit up like, ahem, a pinball machine and we soon found ourselves pumping quarters into Johnny Depp and his pirate buddies. Parlay! There are actually only one or two pinball games tucked into a marginalized corner of the Center because most of the focus is on sleek instruments of high end computer gaming. I'll leave it to you to imagine the main clientele.
One of my friends was not the pinball wizard that we all imagine ourselves to be, and was hitting both flippers at once. She was appropriately mocked, and we all enjoyed ourselves. We switched to playing the neighboring Fish Tails game, and that was when the problems started. With the first double-flipper flap the game had the pinball equivalent of the blue screen of death and we were forced to call over the guy working there to help us. He had a magical key that he had only to turn to create as many credits as he deigned. 1! 2! That's it, because we had only put 75 cents into it in the first place.
After the rescue, the nice young man hung about watching us play, and after a few minutes had some pointers. He spoke to my friend, "You see what you're doing there? You're hitting both flippers every time. You may want to hit only one at a time because..." and then want on to explain the strategic advantages of his way of doing things. "Thanks," said my friend, "I'll keep that in mind." Then the game died again and we left and we totally didn't start giggling until we were outside.
Look! I have a cute rockin' baby! That has got to have some kind of redemptive value, right?
1 comment:
He was like the comic book guy but for pinball...
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