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 Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 1:23 pm
Looking at her watch, Nat tapped her foot. Five minutes to four. She'd realized afterwards that she and Alex had exchanged nothing for contact information, so if he couldn't make it, she'd have no idea. Hopefully he wasn't the late sort.
Cuz she really didn't feel comfortable hanging around outside the arcade. It was as foreign to her as a vegan diet. They just didn't go hand in hand with her lifestyle. Sighing, she pushed some loose hair behind her ear and looked around. The whirring and pinging of the games inside was partially drowned out by people walking by. Some kid inside was hooting and hollering over beating his friend at some... dance game? He was essentially hopping around on a pink and blue square.
What exactly was cool about that? He looked like he was stepping on hot coals, or had a rock in his shoe. So. Very. Uncool. For whatever the reason, however, these kids seemed pretty happy. Though, given their mostly pasty complexions, she doubted they were much for going out and doing any real sports. Speaking of sports, she had noticed sport games in the arcade when she'd originally walked in to take a peek.
Pointless. Go out and use a real basketball! So much more fun that way.
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Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 9:19 pm
Alex was in fact late, though he honestly didn't mean to be one of the late sort. He had a very good excuse for his timing -- in fact, he was wearing it. The boy had a grin on his face as he practically waltzed towards the arcade, proudly wearing his latest find at the bargain bin at the mall: a dark grayish-brown shirt with a red Piranha Plant from the Mario Bros games next to the words "OH SNAP!"
Clearly this boy needed to learn how to dress better. Silly video gamer. Novelty t-shirts are for chumps!
"Hey!" He called, waving. "Ready to play some programmer's attempts at replicating real sports to the point where you can go skiing in the middle of summer or go shoot virtual dinosaurs? That one's pretty fun even if the gun sometimes doesn't fire or jams up to the point where pulling the trigger does nothing, though I've managed to jam it one to the point where it auto-fired. Totally on accident."
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Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2009 5:26 am
Nat's head snapped to attention as the somewhat familiar voice began to speak. As her gaze fell upon Alex, she did her best not to wince at the geeky t-shirt he was sporting. Though, on second glance, it was pretty cute. To her credit, she got the joke, old school Mario was a game she had played as a child, and failed repeatedly.
Stupid game.
"Yo." she grinned, "I guess so. But I make no promises on being able to do anything here in any decent way." she shook her head, "So I guess you can just go pick something, and we can go watch me utterly fail at it. Yeah, sounds fun." she crinkled her nose and laughed in spite of herself.
Yeah, this was going to be great. Cough.
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Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2009 1:14 am
In Alex's defense, the shirt was a classic and sure to bring grins to any adult considering how old the NES Mario game was. If he could, he'd wager money on how many people fell trap to the Piranha Plant's pipe-lurking ways. Sure, Mario could jump on top of Goombas and kill them dead, but jumping on top of OMNOMNOMing teeth? Not a very smart idea kids, don't try it.
"Oh ho ho! An open invitation to your doom?" He joked, grabbing her arm and pulling her into the arcade. He waved to those he knew, ignoring them as they gaped in wonder at the fresh blood of a girl known as Natasha he had with him.
"Here!" He said, letting go and gesturing to a machine. It... it looked as if someone stole a tiny jet ski and bolted it to a pedestal under a TV screen. "Hop on and be amazed at the wonders arcade manufacturers went through to try and make a dry jet-ski! Might wanna get used to leaning on it now before I pop the quarters in -- the left side's a bit sticky 'cause some idiot jammed it not too long ago, but other then that... Ready? Here!" With that, two shiny quarters were shoved into the machine and the boy stepped back, grinning.
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Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 11:42 am
Doing her best not to trip as Alex excitedly dragged her through the arcade, towards the jet-ski game, Nat boggled at the sight. A dry jet-ski? Half the fun was getting drenched! Oh well. She supposed it was better than some sort of shoot em up, drag em out thing, which she had been expecting to have her butt handed to her in.
Tepidly she pulled herself up on the machine, grabbing the handles and only half listening to her friend. She heard something about left and sticky as she looked up at the screen. There was animated water, a checkered starting point (how there was checkered strips in the water, she had no idea), and suddenly it started to count down.
3
2
1
GO!!!
The machine began to rumble and she let out the tiniest of squeaks, surprised by the sudden kick start it had. On the screen she blasted across the water, zooming along. Not to long into it, however, she saw something coming up on her left side. Yanking the machine to the right she managed to avoid the first obstacle, causing a sudden rush of ecstatic surprise to course through her. Though the lean of the machine unnerved her slightly, making her feel like she was going to fall off the machine.
She straightened back up, and soon saw an obstacle coming up on the right. She waited momentarily before yanking herself to the left. It was then she clued into what Alex had been saying before. Her imaginary jet-ski crashed into a large rock out in the middle of the virtual ocean. It lit on fire and the game came to an end.
She turned to look over at Alex, "Well, that went, about as well as I figured it would." she did her best to pretend she hadn't really enjoyed it. Truth be told, for it's awkwardness, it was a nice substitute for not actually being able to go out on the water during school times.
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Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 6:38 pm
If Natasha ever brought up the subject of getting wet while riding a jet ski, Alex would have probably absently agreed then change the topic. Rain wasn't very kind to electronics -- something the boy loved and held dear, from the video camera in his pocket to the shiny red PSP he had in his other pocket.
"Nice!" He said, holding up another quarter. "Wanna go again? You got the hang of it, though you're leaning a liiittle too far -- your last turn was too sharp and... well," he gestured to the machine. "You saw what happened."
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Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 5:13 pm
"Err." Natasha looked uneasily towards the game screen again, the smoke still curling from her crashed jet-ski. Game over continued to flash for a moment before switching to the original screen she'd seen. Obviously whomever had played for the demo it showed, was much better at this game than she was.
"Why don't you show me?" she hopped down off the contraption, stretching her arms up above her head, cracking her shoulders as she moved. "M'sure you're likely better at this than I would ever dream of being, so... I can likely get a better idea of exactly how it goes?" she shrugged her shoulders and let her arms drop down to her sides.
"Or, I guess we can try something else."
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Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 5:42 pm
"Psh! It just takes practice!" Alex replied cheerfully, hopping up onto the waterless jet-ski in her place. "See, before the game starts you can shift it a little to the left or right," he did this, making the machine clunk! and shudder softly with each movement, "In order to get a bit of a feel for it. It's locked down so you can't go far, but it's good to get used to it ahead of time. This is how yuo can tell if a side is sticky or not before you play in order to get it, yeah?"
He hopped off of it, then shrugged. "Aside from this game, there's dancing games, shoot'em, fighters, co-ops, real-life simulators, fantasy, magical realism, crappy movie rip-offs... If there's something you wanna play or blow up, it'd be here."
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Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 6:21 pm
Watching as Alex moved around and explained the game better (perhaps because she was actually paying attention this time), Nat nodded her head. When he hopped off she looked towards the screen, then took a look around the rest of the arcade.
As he listed off all the varieties of gaming genres, she turned her head, furrowing her brow at the boy. That was a lot of different things to pick from. However, she opened her mouth to say something, when she looked towards the back of the room and spied something with lots of brightly coloured lights and spinning wheels.
She grabbed Alex's arm and started towards it. "That one!" she chirped. As they got closer to it, Alex would realize it was a pinball machine. And an old one at that.
"How's this work?"
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Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 6:30 pm
"Wh- Wha!" Caught off guard by the surprise latch, Alex nearly tumbled and fell to the floor before some part of him managed to remember how to walk, creating a stumble before he followed her to the back. He blinked slowly upon seeing the pinball, then grinned. "Pinball!" He exclaimed.
"Man! I thought the arcade got rid of this one! Let me see..." He stared at the machine, grinning at the memories of simple pinball, before high scores became serious. "C'mere. You see these buttons on the sides? Go on and push one -- see those flippers? Push the button and the flippers move. Right here --" he tapped the glass, "Are some metal balls. The object of the game is to bounce the ball off the flippers and keep it out of the gutter -- that's these spaces beneath the flippers -- for as long as you can. Lemme know when to put the quarter in and start it."
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Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2009 12:07 pm
Nat poked her head around Alex's side, peeking at the buttons. She then pulled back, and turned to look at the flippers inside the game. Nodding, she remembered to drop his wrist, and moved to stand in front of the game itself. She grinned with delight at all the blinking lights, and the bell like noises the game randomly threw off.
"Alright, I think I understand." She nodded. "Throw the quarter in. I got this." she muttered the last part, mostly to herself, but partly to her current partner in crime.
The quarter was tossed in, and the game squealed with mechanical glee as the lights along the ball shoot-out bleeped on like lights at the airlines, waiting for a plane to land. The first ball shot out, bumping and bouncing around the innards of the machine.
"Wow." her head moved around, keeping an eye on the silver ball. When it first came down towards the flippers, she managed to catch it...
Sort of.
It bounced once, then fell back down. She went to hit the flipper again, but it simply slid and fell down into the hole at the bottom. Nat's nose crinkled up as the machine whirred sadly at her. Almost making fun of her, it seemed.
She'd managed to score a smattering of 1,003 points. Pretty low. It was her first time, though. Some slack would have to be cut. Not that she was all that impressed.
Obviously, games just weren't her forte.
"That was pretty cool. " She turned and looked at Alex. "Better than the Jet-ski game, anyways." her laugh was tense, knowing full well how bad she'd done at this pinball game.
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