People who hog the machines....

Well, I think I finally see the reason behind the insane price of New arcade machines.

People who hold up the queue of the machine by inserting dollar...after dollar...after dollar.

And that's just the first stage.

I was in Great World City's Time Zone today, checking out the latest shooting game, House of The Dead 4. However, since I was given only 20 minutes of spending time, I wanted to test out the bonus rooms (they worked for stage 1. Can't get it for stage 2 and 3. Nub me).

But, there are two girls in front of me, happily spraying the Uzi like there's no tomorrow.

On first impression, I was like "Wow, gamer girls. Leet.". Never mind that they are nubs who happen to be playing it for fun. The fact that they are actually THERE speaks volumes, since I know of females who have visited an arcade...oh, twice or something in their 18 years or so of life.

Arcade isn't a female thing, I guess. No idea why, but hey, I'm male.

So, the two girls in front of me are happily peppering zombies with bullets. However, as we all know, House of The Dead is a headshot game, i.e. headshots = bonus = more points = the way to survive since instead of 10 body shots, all you need is like 2 head shots. Even if you do survive all the way to the boss, the way you play will easily say how long you can survive against a boss.

When they finally reached boss 2, which to many of us vets, is called the "filter" boss (Stage 1 boss can be grenaded to hell, assuming you don't waste them all), for you need true experience and practise to get past it. I knew the girls won't last till part 2 of the boss.

I was right.

They died at part 1, since they had only 1 life left before the boss.

To my horror, they continued.

Never mind. Maybe they just want to waste a few more dollars. Besides, the card said that they are out of credit to play ($1.50 for normal. $1.40 for VIP, probably the cheapest in the whole of Singapore).

So, they somehow managed to get past the boss, even though all they have left is 1 miserable life each.

Needless to say, they suffered badly in stage 3.

Right went down first.

She swipped her TimeZone card, only to find that she's out of cash.

Instead of standing aside and wait for her friend to go down as well, she took the card, went to the counter, and topped up $10.

>_>

<_<

And the whole line was kept waiting.

Again.

It took them 15 more minutes till the Stage 4 boss before they were truely out of money. To their credit, they did (horribily) defeat stage 3 boss, and some how got past stage 4.

However, what annoys me is the people who just keep playing on. If there's no one behind, sure. But, if there was a huge line, as the case was for today, then you should think about the others. It's your game, but should you not call it quits? You are simply wasting your money, holding the line up, and getting laughed at for your nubishness. You could almost hear a collective sigh of relief by the people, despite the noise of the arcade, after they realised that they were out of cash, and they did not top up any more. All in all, I think they took up at least 8 credits each or something, but still failed to complete the game.

Do the math.

Another thing which I frown on, but something which I cannot prevent, for in ways, it help me as well, is people who can't aim worth nuts, but join in my HOTD 4 game. Like I've said, the stage 2 boss is the "filter" boss. If you can't aim, bye. On single player, the boss is a little too easy to beat (assuming you know where to shoot and when to reload). However, with 2, the boss has a lot more life, making it tough when you can't aim worth nuts.

Solution?

Grab all the life bonus. I used to be generous and tell people where the life bonuses are, even if I'm at 4 lives (Max 5), and they are at 1. However, I realised that it is bad, because since they have 2 lives, they can survive 2 attacks of the boss.

Which means, I too, lose 2 lives.

So, hell with them. \o/. I'll grab all the lives and stuff even though I'm maxed out.

Speaking of Time Zone, why is there a huge difference between TimeZone, and E-zone? The latest game of E-zone is...um...Star Wars Episode 1 Pod Racer or something, while TimeZone in both Causeway point and Great World City (A lot less crowd compared to the likes of Causeway Point, Bugis and Suntec) has Ghost Squad, HOTD 4 and Time Crisis 3 (All pretty new games, although TC 3 can't be new). I simply cannot understand why E-zone cannot buy any decent games. In the arcade business, new games is the key to earning money. Just look at bugis junction's arcade, probably the best arcade in Singapore, according to many arcade goers, including me. When Maximum Tune was hot, it had 10 machines (more than 8, IIRC). Result? People flocked there to race each other and gain "mileage points". 1 Maximum Tune machine costs around $40k or something ($20k US when it was new), yet it can have 10. To succeed, you must invest heavily, and the rewards are huge. I'm so insanely bored with World Combat, that I abandoned my game half way just to meet up with Ron and friends who were waiting for me, something unthinkingable just 2 years back when I was seriously into the game.

Bye bye E-zone. I doubt I'll play TC 2 for a long long time.

HOTD 4 is just way too addictive.