Dancing Queen

My friend's family has a beach house, and we did a "boys' weekend" at the coast. A few facts to put the trip in context: Oregon, January, rain and snow and wind, (very) small town, five guys, beer, rum, more beer. We walked down to the beach and in to town a few times, but hung out at the beach house most of the weekend. Much non-PC social gaming this weekend.

Pool. The beach house is decorated in classic 1970s style. However. The pool table upstairs scored big points. A decade ago I could shoot pool. Not so much anymore. Note to self, brush up on billiards skills.

Dance Dance Revolution. At some point late Friday night someone pulls out DDR for the Xbox. Not my idea... but I'm drunk and happy and what the hell. I felt dorky and self conscious at first... but, you know, after you let go of silly notions like pride and shame the game is fun. It works as a party game. I couldn't imagine playing it by myself or stone cold sober. We danced for 4+ hours. But it's not really dancing. More like stomping in time with beat of the techno music. My body was hurting the next day. I recorded a 30-second video clip on my cell phone. Black mail material. Or insurance that a similar clip on my friend's cell phone won't show up on YouTube.

Chess. Four player cutthroat variation. Five second clock. Playing in the local hippie coffee shop Saturday morning. The teams weren't fair though. Our opponents couldn't remember how all the pieces moved. Or so they claimed. All I can say is L2Play newbs!

Halo. Most of my friends are the twitchy console gamer types. They paid me back for slaughtering them at poker and chess. I tried. I died. Over and over. I'll admit I'm not good at these games, but I'm playing against someone who recently spent 10 hours playing PvP on his day off from work. The same guy who refrains from shooting or throwing grenades to "make it fair." Gee, thanks. Hehe.

Poker. Texas Hold 'Em. We played for beers later Saturday night at the one bar in town. I put the hurt to my friends and won 8 beers. I opted for 4 micros instead of 8 light beers. Not that I have anything against PBR, but I was already drunk and I've learned to listen to that little voice that says slow down.

Dance Dance Mortal Kombat. Sunday morning we had the bright idea of trying the DDR pad with other games. Halo was a no go... but Mortal Kombat 2 worked. You can move the characters and attack by "dancing" on the game pad. The "Finish Him" move looks ridiculous but got us talking about the future of how we interface with games.