I wanted to celebrate my birthday by doing something fun.
I went to Next Level Pinball and Arcade in Hillsboro.
It sucked.
There are tons of video games, pinball, claw games, hoop shoots and other stuff.
I walked in, looked around, saw a lot of flashing lights and heard a mix of many sounds.
I found Rolling Thunder right away. I was reminded of playing it at Izzy’s pizza on Lancaster. I play it at home sometimes, but it’s not the same. I decided to finally defeat this game. I got to level 4 and tried over and over until the game reset and sent me back to the beginning. I walked away.
I played a variety of other things. Driving games, a Halo shooter, Tron, Roadblasters, T2, and a few others. They felt like such a waste of time. I found Samurai Shodown 2 and decided to beat that one. It was difficult. I had a hard time with many of the characters. I got mad. I cursed, punched my hand, bit myself and kicked the bottom of the machine. I kept going until I got to the final opponent. I couldn’t get past it. I got mad and kicked the bottom of the machine and it reset the whole thing back to the intro screen. I walked away.
I was not having fun. I came to the conclusion that the purpose of video games was to steal your money. The system cheats to get more quarters out of you.
I thought it would be funny to pay $5 to sit in a photo booth and take essentially the same scowling picture of myself.
I’m never going to another arcade again. I never want to play another video game again.
