Happy Hump Day Survey!

Paleocon wrote:

Happy Hump Day.

Closest brush with death.

I don't remember exactly how old I was, but somewhere between 7 and 10, I fell out of a tree and landed about a foot away from a very large and pointed root that was sticking straight up. While I laid on the ground recovering from the fall, my little brother ran to my parents screaming that I was dead (despite me moving around and groaning).

DiscoDriveby wrote:

HAPPY HUMP DAY!!
What was your favorite game to play at the arcade when you were younger?

Closest thing I had to an arcade growing up was a couple of machines in the bowling alley a couple of towns over. Never got to play them often enough to have one become a favorite, since the few machines they had usually had changed between visits.

Paleocon wrote:

Happy Hump Day.

Closest brush with death.

I don't know. I guess it was when I was a kid and we'd play in housing construction sites. Nothing really happened, but there was plenty of rebar around and if something had happened nobody could have got to us quickly at all. Other than that, a few minor car accidents.

DiscoDriveby wrote:

HAPPY HUMP DAY!!

What was your favorite game to play at the arcade when you were younger?

Samurai Shodown 2. I can't enter an arcade without first searching for that game. There are a couple of beercades in Chicago that have it or one of those 200 game cabinets.

Grenn wrote:

Samurai Shodown 2.

Oh hell. That may have won out over Area 51. Between that and Soul Edge, now that I think about it.

Man, I spent a lot of time in arcades.

Paleocon wrote:

Happy Hump Day.

Closest brush with death.

Hmm. Closest was probably a few years ago when I was the pedestrian in a car vs. pedestrian accident - I lucked out and came away with a partial tear of my ACL, a cool scar on my hand, and a story.

DiscoDriveby wrote:

HAPPY HUMP DAY!!

What was your favorite game to play at the arcade when you were younger?

Atari's Star Wars game, with the vector graphics. Sitting down in the full cabinet, I *believed* I was taking out the Death Star.
IMAGE(http://www.findarcademachines.com/images2/Cabinet-White-top.jpg)

As that became scarce, I loved Golden Axe, Narc, Street Fighter 2 and Dark Stalkers.

DiscoDriveby wrote:

HAPPY HUMP DAY!!
What was your favorite game to play at the arcade when you were younger?

I wasn't allowed to go to arcades. My uncle did have (and still owns) a Taxi pinball machine. That was fun.

Paleocon wrote:

Happy Hump Day.
Closest brush with death.

I nearly drowned once at a beach in South Carolina. Got caught in a big wave and it just barreled on and wouldn't let go. A stranger had to pull me out. Maybe the sea would've spitted me out back onto the sand, but it was still scary.

@Ccesarano: Head wounds typically bleed a lot, so if you didn't lose consciousness, you were probably quite safe. I'm still kinda shocked that they didn't give you any anesthetic, that's kinda barbaric. I learned pretty early how to do stitches, and it's a simple matter to inject some numbing agents, especially if you're going to do stitches on the face. Sorry you had such a horrid experience.

DiscoDriveby wrote:

HAPPY HUMP DAY!!
What was your favorite game to play at the arcade when you were younger?

Asterix and Obelix, co-op with my brother.

And Virtual Striker 2, especially because the one year (arcade came with a yearly fair) my best friend couldn't complete it I did That game was so old by then, the left controller gave of tiny electric shocks.

Paleocon wrote:

Happy Hump Day.
Closest brush with death.

Nearly drowned at the age of 6, on a summer camp in Spa (the actual place in Belgium where the name spa comes from). We went swimming, and being badly supervised I got to climb the big waterslide. I had two of those inflatable orange thingies on my arms, so nope couldn't swim yet Standing at the top, I was about to chicken out when a group of teenage assholes got impatient so I went anyways.

I was already in trouble when I about made it to the surface, and then those teenagers landed on me in a group. Luckily I didn't panic (much :-D) and made it back up again. I didn't go on a waterslide again for at least 15 years.

IMAGE(http://www.yofuiaegb.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/galaga.jpg)

Also, pinball.

IMAGE(http://www.libertygames.co.uk/images/1/products/4841_earthshaker-pinball.jpg)

No contest. Atari's Major Havoc!

3D Galaga with a built-in Breakout game during intermissions and devious side scrolling Pitfall-style mazes.

I spent so much money on this game...

DiscoDriveby wrote:

HAPPY HUMP DAY!!

What was your favorite game to play at the arcade when you were younger?

Here's the first game I remember playing obsessively in the arcades:

Too many brushes with death to innumerate.

I didn't get to play arcade games much as a kid due to strict Asian parents. When I got to college though, I played the hell out of the original Double Dragon.

DiscoDriveby wrote:

HAPPY HUMP DAY!!

What was your favorite game to play at the arcade when you were younger?

Hands down - T-MEK. I ruined faces on T-MEK. My brother would get so annoyed when I'd be able to play for half an hour on a single set of quarters, while he blew $5 on skeeball or whatever. I was also a big fan of any "shooter" or "gun" game - Lethal Enforcer, Area51, the Aerosmith shooter.

Paleocon wrote:

Happy Hump Day.

Closest brush with death.

I ... got a few.

There was the time I almost hit a deer coming home from college.
There was the time we hit a spun-out Jeep on the highway during a snow storm.
There was the time a pickup tried to run me off the road while I was on my motorcycle.

But I think the one I'm going to go with is this story -

I was out visiting a friend in Denver, Colorado, and the plan was to take a pair of his motorcycles out for a weekend of riding based in Ouray, Colorado. If you take one of the more direct paths, this is a 300 (or so) mile trek, and is going to take the better part of 5 or 6 hours. But, being my first trip out to Colorado on the bikes, we decided to stretch it and hit "all the good parts" - nearly 400 miles and a solid 8 hours of travel.

But this meant I got to take I-70 through the Presidential Tunnels, drive through the valley at the base of Vail resort, ride through Leadville (the highest incorporated city), cut out over the continental divide at Independence Pass and Aspen (they had literally opened Indy Pass after a long winter the week before we went through), and finally along CO-92 as it went through Paonia, Hotchkiss, and around Black Canyon and Blue Mesa Reservoir before FINALLY cutting due west towards Montrose where we would connect with 550 and head south to Ouray. Truly some epic sites along the way, and some literal breath-taking scenario.

We had just finished Black Canyon rim, which is basically this strand of spaghetti draped three-quarters of the way up a 2,000 foot canyon, which eventually crosses over the western edge of Blue Mesa Reservoir, where it meets CO-50 that connects Gunnison and Montrose - which goes leads down into Black Canyon proper, and follows along closer to the river that made the canyon. We come around this wide, sweeping right-hander that is the initial descent into the canyon, and see black smoke up ahead. We keep going, but at a greatly reduced clip, and eventually come across an accident which is now completely engulfed in flames. A motorcycle coming eastbound drifted over the center line and slid under a Subaru that tried to avoid hitting the guy, something happened, and now the whole pile is wedged against a jersey barrier (right on the edge of a couple hundred foot drop) and on fire.

We stop, as there's 3 or 4 cars backed up on this side of the accident. The only saving grace is that this is on the outermost edge of a blind corner, with a wide shoulder on the inside edge.

My friend says to me "we either turn around and add at least 3 hours to this trip, and have no where to sleep when we get to Ouray - or we ride through".

So we did.

Visors down, butts clenched, we aim the bikes at that inner corner, and slowly creep through. Behind us, we're hearing pops and booms of things exploding in the Subaru. Clear on the other side, we check with the cars parked there and find that everyone made it out safe and were being transported to the hospital in Montrose. And we just rally on to Ouray at light speed so we have a bed for the night.

And that's when I've had my closest brush with death.

I didn't get to play too many arcade games growing up but they did always fascinate me. Most often, I'd get to play them at local pizza parlors. Heh... pizza parlor. I forgot people used to call them that. There was an up/down shmup that I always thought was cool with fighter jets. I seem to recall that each of the characters you could play as were from different countries like Japan, USA, Canada, etc. I looked through this list, and couldn't figure out which one it might be.

SCRATCH THAT I FOUND IT

It was Aero Fighters 2. I need to visit Ground Kontrol and see if they have that cabinet.

Watching that video is bringing back so many memories. The music, the how-to-play intro. Crazy!

DiscoDriveby wrote:

HAPPY HUMP DAY!!

What was your favorite game to play at the arcade when you were younger?

No contest here: Joust.

I recently went to a bachelor party where we went to an arcade with mostly 80's cabinets. I was fairly excited and played a lot of games and realized that I must have been crazy to have spent all my allowance money on these - except for Joust (and Galaga) which were still awesome.

Paleocon wrote:

Closest brush with death?

A little over 13 years ago I was in my aimless phase; spend some time in the Peace Corps and after that worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross as a driver and observer in Israel. I got shot towards a few times (probably by both sides). One time though the car I was riding in was shot at pretty good and it died. I sat pinned for about an hour with two others while they shot at the car every minute or so pinning us down.

Eventually the shots stopped and people started walking the streets again (like nothing happened); we walked away. Now I know whoever "they" were didn't want to kill us but just scared the crap out of us (likely something in the area they didn't want us to see). At the time though I thought I was going to die and the next few days were tough for me.

Flintheart Glomgold wrote:

No contest here: Joust.

This is my answer to both questions.

I was SCUBA diving about 35 feet deep off "McMuffin Beach" (I have no idea what the real name of this beach is. We all call it "McMuffin Beach" because there's a McDonald's across the street and most divers would grab a breakfast before or after a dive) in Monterey, CA. There's an awesome amphibious APC wreck there that the Army had purposely sank during a training exercise and it's a totally fun dive.

So, I'm sitting there on the sandy ocean floor about 10 feet away from the wreck when a little otter comes out of the APC and heads right for me. I was so surprised the regulator flies from my mouth, I scramble madly, and manage to smash it against a rock. The regulator fails gloriously and starts shooting out air from multiple cracks all over it. I'm in full panic mode as I try and grab the reg and suck air from one of the many possible options now, and I'm getting no luck. I look over at my diving buddy, and I can just tell he's not concerned at all. Instead, he's basically laughing maniacally! I begin flailing like a mad man and I'm about to kick up to the surface as fast I can when my buddy finally catches my attention again and mimes grabbing my spare regulator. The light bulb finally goes off in my head and I reach around, grab my spare, and begin breathing normally again.

That entire sequence of events felt like an eternity, and my adrenaline was pumping so hard I was sure I would die. Of course, in hindsight, this was not a big deal, my buddy could have handed me his spare, I could have remembered my spare sooner, and really, from 35 feet deep I could have made it to the surface without incident. But man, those few minutes down there while I panicked and scrambled felt as close to death as I could get.

TheHarpoMarxist wrote:
Flintheart Glomgold wrote:

No contest here: Joust.

This is my answer to both questions.

IMAGE(http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view6/4515496/monty-python-ladies-clapping-o.gif)

I'm fortunate enough to not have any brushes with death, so that's good!

For the arcade games, I think I'm going with

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/HaVqNiM.jpg)

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/GUFX7o1.jpg)

Ooh, I did spend a lot of quarters on the Ironman Offroad at the local card and comic shop.

Bubble Hockey FTW.

Most recent real brush with death was the accident in 2011. Millimeters.

Paleocon wrote:

Happy Hump Day.
Closest brush with death.

Probably when they stopped my heart and ripped a chunk of it out through my chest. Cool scar though.

The one time I thought I might be about to die was when a 12 ft wall made of metal 3ft wide panels I was putting up in a factory temp job fell on me.

I was pinned onto a metal bollard, which felt and looked like it had gone through my stomach at the time. Turns out it didn't even break the skin, but I had a "oh sh*t, I think I might be able to die" moment.

DiscoDriveby wrote:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/HaVqNiM.jpg)

I had a small, home version of something similar when I was a kid. Going from memory, I think it was this one.

IMAGE(http://hockeygods.com/system/gallery_images/5363/original.jpg)

Paleocon wrote:

Happy Hump Day.

Closest brush with death.

Went swimming in a mountain area lake in April (really cold water is bad news if you aren't prepared, and I knew it) out to a small island via the short length and decided to take the long swim back. My arms stopped being able to do the motions for freestyle with like 20m left and I had to swtich to breaststroke, which worked.

DiscoDriveby wrote:

HAPPY HUMP DAY!!

What was your favorite game to play at the arcade when you were younger?

TMNT, X-Men, or Simpsons, I guess. Certainly the ones I remember the most.

EDIT: Hmmm, on second thought, you could also throw in either Crisis Zone and/or The Grid, but both were from around 17-18 years old. I guess that counts as younger now that it is approaching half my life ago.

Game:
Spy Hunter

Brush:
I was 21 or 22 years old in a V.A. hospital for a non life threatening issue. Late one night I was about to go to sleep when I noticed the IV feed to my arm was dark red instead of clear. I had been reading calmly and not moving around but the feed had come undone somewhere between my arm and the bag and I was starting to lose blood.
I don't know whether exsanguination is the type of event that would wake a person out of a sound sleep, but that night I was glad I'm a night owl.

HAPPY HUMP DAY!!

What are the best movie scenes in a store or mall?

There's gotta be a Dawn of the Dead scene that doesn't require NSFW. I'll keep looking.

I expect to see a lot of Kevin Smith but for your consideration...

Or

Flintheart Glomgold wrote:

I expect to see a lot of Kevin Smith but for your consideration...

Not going to lie, that was the first place my mind went.

I thought of another non-Kevin-Smith movie scene.