Last Saturday (the 21st) I went to an arcade near work that specialized in BattleMech pods.  Inside each pod had a full set of controls for a ‘Mech and was well equipped to do just about anything you could do in the game “MechWarrior.”

I spoke with uglyman, the owner and proprietor of the shop, who said that the pods were a little dated but still worked well.  I ran a few games in Pods 1 and 5, where I had my butt royally handed to me, but it was fun.  Pod 5 did give me a little trouble with the joystick slowly moving itself up when it was left in the centered position, but that was easy to remedy by pulling it back down.

I used a mix of ‘Mechs starting with the Mad Cat Mk. II.  The first rounds were a horrible obliteration of my ‘Mech, but after a while I found just the right combination of missles and lasers.  It’s one thing to play against Rookie ‘Mechs on the computer but quite another to play against humans in the pods.

If you’re in the Seattle (specifically Kirkland) area and want to give it a go ’round the site for uglyman’s location is The Airlock.  Click on the images below to see my scores and the battle details.  Pay attention to number 2, when I had a kill 30 seconds in and 2 seconds from round end .

PS: I’ve been trying to get this post out for the last week! One of these days I’ll get on a semi-decent schedules. Read more

As soon as I’ve finished making my apartment presentable (and I’ll do that after I finish this post!) I’m going to start hosting Game Nights. Those who know me know I have a love of board games.  Those who know me and do NOT know I love board games, well, now you do.  Those who don’t know me are finding out right now.  But I digress.

Board games (and their slightly naughty sister, card games) have a way of bringing a group of people together to achieve a common goal.  Granted, their goal might be to beat the crap out of the other people getting there, but it’s still common to all players! It also brings out the competitive edge of most people and I find that it really doesn’t matter WHAT game you play as long as you all have fun playing it.

Monopoly is one of the few games that I refuse to play with anyone but family.  I don’t want to risk alienating people on something as stupid as such a cut throat game.  Risk also runs this risk (no pun intended).  I want to give people a fighting chance on a game.  That’s why games like Jenga,Life and Pit are at the tops of my list of games for new players.  They’re relatively simple to learn, different almost every time and a wild blast to play with a bunch of people. Given that most people never take the time to sit down and play I’m surprised that anyone remembers the rules at all!

As the days go on and get longer, I’ll probably start hosting more outdoorsy games (Ultimate Frisbee anyone?) but for now, we’ll start with the games everyone knows and can play! See you soon!