Bass Pro Shops, Scary Malls, Dave & Busted's

PLEASE NOTE: I will post pictures I took on my iPhone really soon but since I'm typing this at work, I can't do that just yet.  Later today...

Last Saturday was very strange to me.  And it's not cause it was 4/20 (I don't smoke, SORRY KIDS).  It's because my brother (2 years younger than me) and his girlfriend were driving to Orlando to come visit me for the day.  It was a treat since it gave me the incentive to do something besides sleep in all day to make up for my lack of sleep during the work week.

Whatever, so we're off to go do stuff.  First, we stop at Chipotle to eat tacos.  I throw around a lot of jokes, get a bunch of laughs.  Then after we eat, we want to do something fun.  Since we're near International Drive where all the tourist traps are, we think "Hey, let's go putt-putt."  So Brother searches for "putt putt" on his iPhone and we're off to some place called "Putting Edge."  Strange thing is it takes us to the Festival Bay, a gigantic mall near the end of International Drive (by the Fun Spot and the terrible outlet malls that sell clothes I'm not interested in).  We don't see a sign ANYWHERE for a Putting Edge but we do spot a Bass Pro Shops which served as an anchor to a large mall!  Because Brother and Girlfriend are into outdoors stuff, they inexplicably want to go in.  And I obliged.

In case you're like "dafuq is bass pro shops", it's basically a giant log-cabin department store with a shiatload of ourdoor merchandise--hunting, camping, fishing, boats, ATV's, an aquarium-esque fishing tank, "homemade" candy prepared an log cabin (yo dawg we herd you like...), NASCAR toys, Cabela's silly light-gun games (which reminds me, where the hell is Sega Bass Pro Fishing???), and old-timey red-state stuff.  A far cry from Academy Sports (from my hometown Slidell, LA) which is basically a white box with some sporting goods in it.  Since this place is so big, it was like an amusement park of its own.  Brother pushed Girlfriend around in the shopping cart, checked out the lousy light-gun game, tried on hats, looked at poor taxidermed animals, took pictures next to the Tony Stewart sign, also checked out the stuffed toy animals (I bought a coyote and a brown thrasher, I like little toy animals, I think they're cool so STFU), and sat in comfy recliners.

But after we've had our fun for about an hour, I glance at the other exit to Bass Pro Shops--the one leading to the actual mall.  Now the last time I was at this store, I hadn't gone into the mall.  But here, there was a sign leading to the "Fantasy Arcade" or something.  It was too alluring not to go so I told Brother and Girlfriend, "I'm going to check out that arcade, see ya later."

What happened next was rather surreal like a Twilight Zone or Creepypasta (at least to me anyway).  See, I had walked into....a dead mall.  It was a big, vacant hallway.  All the stores were boarded up except for a few stragglers like a sporting goods, Smoothie King, and the indoor glow-in-the-dark Putting Edge that took us to this very building in the first place.  As I was wandering around looking for the arcade, I felt like I had been here before...  Visually, this building is nearly the same as some of the macabre dreams I had before--ones where everything was dim, the building was on its last legs, and a shoddy arcade.  I did find the arcade and not to my surprise, it was a bunch of poorly aligned arcade cabinets with a bias towards American games (as usual).  No Sega racers but they had Cruis'n World (dumb) and San Francisco Rush (better).

I didn't play any games though.  Didn't feel like it.  Was too weirded out by the place.  I sort of wandered around aimlessly as I nearly crawled up into a ball to cry.  Pains of going to the Northshore Square Mall in Slidell, LA to play Daytona USA 2 wrought me with misery.  I feel like those dreams were just self-fulfilling prophecy of the death of malls (see this informative site), arcades, and Sega in general and that the happy times were never coming back.  And how my journey thus far was really a dramatic one--that malls like this is where my "life force" came from and I'm trying to bring it home for racing game fans everywhere but I been shut out from being able to help for so long.  Drama, I have it...

And like any good Creepypasta story, I didn't simply "run away" when things got weird.  I stuck around and wandered some more and took pictures (Frank West style, speaking of Dead Rising, yeah this mall looks like it).  Eventually, Brother & Girlfriend walked to the mall too but I ran back to Bass Pro Shops.  What would happen is 30 minutes of us trying to message each other in order to meet up again but to little success.  When I finally found them, in a cold I bought a bag of malted milk balls, munched on 'em in the car as I took off uneasy.  I told Brother & Girlfriend that I felt ill but they didn't get it.  I was very talkative up until the moment I went into the mall but afterwards, my energy was drained.

Well, what else is there to do on a Saturday night in Orlando?  Eventually, we agreed to go to Dave & Buster's, the one that I went to twice already (once, twice).  My mood lightened up once we got there.  We paid $25 to play some games and, obviously, I had opted to play Daytona USA (no really?).  Brother & Girlfriend stood on and watched but were mostly interested in getting in petty debates over dating stuff (which is why I'm currently single--no debating with girls and more time to play games).

While I shed a tear and was slightly healed from experiencing the cathartic effects of a Sega racer, the problem was the pedals were defunct.  If you floored it, the car only accelerated 70-90% of the way, varying on the different machines.  Like on Expert, I couldn't even pass a single car on the starting straightaway which is not supposed to happen.  After playing a couple of rounds to much disappointment, I spotted an arcade attendee repairing a House of the Dead 3 machine.  Told him "the pedals on those machines are off," he said okay but was mostly uninterested.  I highly doubt he fixed them.  Judging by how content people are from playing Beginner with the AT car bouncing off the walls with no skill, I highly doubt it was in Dave & Buster's interest to even repair the machines.  That is depressing.

The day did end on an okay thing.  We played this little football game where you score points by throwing tiny footballs through some holes.  I got the worst score of us three and, in three plays, got consecutively worse scores.  I Tebowed in the middle of the place.  Girlfriend got the highest score of all (WTF indeed), plus she also beat me at Daytona USA on beginner (a first for me) but only because my cabinet had busted pedals and hers didn't and she used rubber banding to win.  Was shitty but she didn't rub it in.

We go home to my apartment, I convince Brother & Girlfriend to watch a few Top Gear UK clips on YouTube, they go to sleep on the crappy Target futon, wake up early and drive back home.  It was an interesting Saturday but in many ways depressing.  It makes me think that over the last year or few, I sorta missed out on the pain that Sega & arcade games were going through and that I opted to spend my time on personal projects that had nothing to do with Sega, really.  I couldn't help but cry a little.

Man, the reason I'm going through this "journey" to Sega is to bring back the good times for everyone who was in my boat.  And we're making progress but still, I always feel I could've done better.

Good news though and that is my dad is coming up to visit me today.  I get to see my dad again, it will be fun.  Hopefully we don't get in any stupid situations like I did with Brother & Girlfriend, heh.  I just want to be at peace, that is all...

I love you, Dad.  I love you too, Sega, for your games fathered me like a real father would.  You convinced me to be this way so I'm trying to spend time with you again.  Just don't shut me out, please.  And yes, I do have a habit of spinning media about missing family/friends/loved ones into missing Sega games and now you know that.

GRID, Dead Heat, H2Overdrive: Three Arcade Reviews

Ok guys, while on July 9th's exciting Dave & Buster's expedition (complete with Daytona USA footage), I also had the chance to play some other racing games.  And at this D&B's, there was a TON of racing games. Unfortunately, only Daytona USA and Club Kart (which I've never really talked about...it's Chuck E Cheese fodder (so is Scud Race) ) in terms of Sega racers.  So I decided to play some other racing games.  Bear in mind that each of these following games cost slightly more than Daytona USA so every time I played one of these games, that meant one less run at Daytona USA so these better damn well be worth it.  These brief reviews are only based off of one play session so take 'em with a grain of salt.

GRID

This is the arcade version of Codemasters' racing "classic," GRID.  Surprisingly, this arcade version was distributed by "Sega Amusements" as you see the Sega logo plastered all over the thing.   Now, this game is off to a bad start for me because the game's dingy "realistic" hues still turn me off.  I mean, look at the box art of the game for gosh darn's sakes:

When the Xbox 360 logo is more colorful than the rest of the game then we have a problem.  The game's format is similar to Scud Race--four cars. four tracks.  IMO, that's disappointing.  In 1996, four tracks/cars would've been okay but it's 2010 (when the game was released) and based on an existing console game so cut me some slack.  Not only that, but three of the cars are American (Mustang, Viper, Challenger) and one is Japanese (Supra) so that's a great mix there (compare to the four nationalities of Scud Race cars).  There's only six cars on the track, not eight, not twelve, which is another disappointment, seeing as this isn't some PS1 racing sim people, it's 2012, remember?

Putting all that aside, I admit the gameplay itself is not that bad.  I picked the San Francisco track and some medium-level car, I forgot which one.  Indeed I picked manual transmission--the gear stick is like that of OutRun 2 & Crazy Taxi--shift up and shift down only.  It reminds me of Project Gotham Racing but with dingier hues.  Handling is a bit drifty and I had no idea how to drift so I just cornered hard on every turn and hoped for the best.  That seemed to fair well as I moved up from 6th to 3rd just before the finish line.  Only problem is you never seem to reach OutRun/Daytona speeds of 180+ mph which is kind of a bummer.  There's also a bit of car damage (including car doors flinging wide open mid-race) so that's kind of gnarly without being Burnout-ridiculous.

Overall, you could put some time into this game since it's not shoddily made but with only four cars & tracks and limited top speeds, I only see so much worth in this game.  Better off buying the console version for cheap I suppose.  LAZY REVIEW SCORE: 7.4

Dead Heat

Check out the official Namco page.

Ah, Namco, we meet again.  I heard about Dead Heat a couple of times and I wanted to know what all the fuss is about.  It looks like a crap Fast & Furious clone with loose Ridge Racer elements plus photo booth in one slick cabinet.  And we all know that in this Facebook/Twitter/awesome Blogspot era, everyone wants to slap their mug shot all over the place so what's not to love about this game???  Well, I'll tell you...

While writing this review, I have my conflicts on whether or not I'm factually correct.  For instance, this four-player Dead Heat setup DID NOT have gear shifters available on any of the dashboards.  I don't believe I was asked at all to choose Automatic or Manual Transmission.  But the pictures/footage I looked up online show that the game does, in fact, have a four-gear stick shifter.  But in my recollection of my game, there was no stick.  I'm serious folks--I could've sworn that this version of Dead Heat didn't have Manual Transmission.  If for some reason the game did have manual, then I was never made aware of it at any time during the game. EDIT: I recall seeing a couple of Fast & Furious cabinets that didn't have a manual stick at all so I believe there may be Dead Heat cabinets without the stick too.

As an aside, I'll say this.  Aside from a few exceptions such as Mario Kart and non-traditional racers (like Super Sprint or Bang Bang Racing), if your racing game does not have manual transmission (not even a simple hi/low gear like OutRun/Crazy Taxi) then it sucks, period.  I don't care if it's a "crap" racer like Cruis'n World, you get that gear shift working or else my interest drops rapidly.  Another reason why we need to round up all copies of Burnout & Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and have a bonfire Fahrenheit 451-style.  EDIT: The way I see it, if you program different gears into to the game (to resemble an actual car, not just one long gear), then I'd better damn well be able to switch through them.  How hard is it to implement manual?  Press a button and the gear switches instead of automatically.  Wow, that was hard.

So what else is there?  Well, when choosing my car out of a lineup of generic street racers like the Corvette, Skyline, Viper, Supra, etc. I only had like, what, 9 seconds to choose a car?  So I scrolled through the cars then all of a sudden--BOOM, I was locked into the Dodge Viper.  Once again, I have a feeling that I'm inaccurate again because upon consulting other gameplay footage, they had more time with the car select.  But once again, I swear that I only had 9 seconds.  I just don't get it.  Nine seconds isn't enough time to pick a car when you offer so many cars as it is.

Then the best part of all, smile for the camera!  Now, the last thing I want the game to do is to take a picture of me and make me stare at it for 3 minutes!  God Forbid the game actually "stored" the photo in memory and used it as an AI photo for people who play the game after me!  That's probably not true but there's way too many mysterious faces in the game as it is so I don't know if they're recycling or not.  Either way, I just got up out of the seat and boom--game now has a picture of an empty seat.  Haw haw.  You can also tie your photo to your own account and come back and earn extra miles for paint jobs and stuff (remember, flame decals add 50% more horsepower) but the last thing I planned on in this moment was playing the game ever again.

Look at these people, they're demented.

Holy cow, how about the gameplay?  Well, there's for tracks--New York, San Francisco (dayum, this city is in every racing game these days), Chicago, and London.  I picked London cause...I really don't know why.  The tracks are supposedly based off of real city layouts (you mean like Project Gotham Racing???) but that doesn't excuse the fact that just four tracks is crap, I'm sorry.

Your car starts out with three NOS boosts.  Okay, nitrous in a racing game, never seen that in a racing game before so w/e, sounds neat.  Press the NOS boosts within the first 15 seconds of the race only to find out that the NOS doesn't come back.  It doesn't recharge like in other racing games so that's a bummer.

Car handling...well, it's loose in that you have to be careful while turning lest your car rubs the outside wall.  Either way, nothing about the game felt taxing at all.  The AI cars always stayed on your ass because of rubber-banding, that I know.  The landscapes were at least colorful and the sense of speed wasn't that bad (180+ mph) but that's all I got out of the main gameplay itself.  It was just mundane for me.  Taking a photo of myself wouldn't have sweetened the deal at all.

Then, as abruptly as you can imagine, the race ends.  I literally only played for 80 seconds.  Once again, this is my personal recollection and may not be accurate for other Dead Heat cabinets but I truly do remember saying, "Holy cow, that's it?"  I'm stunned that such a racing game could be so short.  I thought we moved on from crap short races like Cruis'n USA but no, nothing's changed over the last 20 years.  What a huge letdown.

This game's garbage.  Aside from the photo gimmick, nothing about this game is really any better than Fast & the Furious.  And since F&F is already terrible enough as it is, this game is truly mediocre.  Your money's better spent playing a Sega racer.  LAZY REVIEW SCORE: 4.4

H2Overdrive

Check out the official H2Overdrive page.

Oh God, another Raw Thrills racer.  This can only turn out badly.  So there was a twin cabinet setup at D&B's and I decided to give it a shot since I hate myself and want to take the hit so that the rest of you don't think about playing this lousy ass game.  EDIT: Thanks to the anonymous poster who said that this game was just published my Raw Thrills and actually not made by them.  Bonus point on the review score!

I'm just kidding with this game sucking so bad.  Anyway, I heard that NBA superstar Rajon Rondo owns his own personal H2Overdrive machine.  How do we know this?  Check it out.

Good for Rajon!  However, I have different opinions.  The game has seven tracks and nine boats.  It plays pretty much the same as Hydro Thunder.  Pick a boat, pick a track, use the handle to speed up, collect the little blue/red boost thingies, and race to the finish.

I picked the hard track "London Underground" as well as some other hard difficulty boat.  Anyway...there's really not much to say about this game.  It's practically Hydro Thunder but with different stuff.  Problem is the game didn't seem as "exciting" as Hydro Thunder was.  This H2Overdrive version felt washed up.  Hence while I was playing the London Underground level, I was driving through these dark alleyways, dodging police boats and buoys while bouncing off the walls.  I tried doing the jump trick to reach the high boosts\ but failed because they must've changed how to do it or I'm just an idiot.

The London Underground level wasn't that great.  After plowing through dreary canals and sewers for a minute, I had a sneaking suspicion that I would fall through the ground into a vat of lava/radioactive waste.  Instead, I hit a ramp and flew into a happy forest setting with a sign that reads "Ye Olde Finish Line."  That's great, Raw Thrills, after fumbling around the most depressing level ever, I finally see blue skies and a few hints at something pertaining to Renaissance England and the race is over.  It only lasted about 90 seconds which, like in Dead Heat's case, isn't great.

Like in Dead Heat and every other Raw Thrills racer, you can save your progress with a password.  I really don't know what for but it seems like another gimmick to get people to play more than once.  Overall, this game is just "meh" to me so that's what score I give it.  I'd probably take Hydro Thunder over this.  LAZY REVIEW SCORE: 6.0

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There were a couple more racing games at D&B's such as Fast & Furious Super Cars, Fast & Furious Bikes, Dirty Drivin', Need for Speed: Carbon, Tokyo Police Cop (wtf indeed)...I mean, what's the point of playing any of these games?  Playing any of these games meant one less play at Daytona USA so why waste my time with that dreck?  It also meant I had to wrack my brain even more writing more details about these non-Sega racers.  So I went to play Daytona USA and that was the end of it.  BTW, yay Olympics.  So that began today?  Cool, back to watchin NASCAR races...

Daytona USA Real Life Pics

So Saturday, July 7th, me and my dad went to the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona Speedway.  However, we're not going there yet.  On Sunday, July 8th, because my dad had an extra day to chill out, like the good little tourists we are, we drove up and down International Drive looking for go-kart tracks.  Not the wooden go-kart track at the Fun Spot, the legit 45+ mph go-kart tracks.  Too bad we couldn't find them and by the time we did, the places were closed.

What else do we do?  Let's go back to the Dave & Buster's we visited months ago.  Can't go wrong with an arcade with a Sega racer in it.  Let's play some deluxe Daytona USA cabinets.  Oh, and take some pics while I'm wearing my Daytona hat.  That's right, cause I'm awesome like that.

Look, Dave & Buster, someone who can actually PLAY this game correctly.

They see me rollin' in the black #5 Hornet...

My time sucks, look away everybody.

My initials.  Be on the lookout for these elusive letters.

Hey Nagoshi, where are you???  Soliciting porn stars for the new Yakuza game???

That's right, I'm playing Daytona USA, one of the greatest games of all time.  So Piss off, EA, go whore out the NFS franchise.

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I played about six races, nothing out of the ordinary happened, although I found out the pink #6 cabinet had a broken pedal (tragic).  And no multiplayer races, those are bad since everyone else is clueless and get by purely on catchup/rubber-banding.

I also played some other racing games while I was there.  And I'm going to review those games...next time.

Dave & Buster's Daytona Adventure

I will get to the FIEA capstone stuff later.  Spoiler alert--Battle Fortress Tortoise (and Plushy Knight...psh) survive the final cut.  Seriously, I can't be bothered to talk about school stuff for a while.

Anyway, my dad's in town for the Daytona 500 and we had a day to relax and do stuff.  So we decided after our failed opportunity to visit Dave & Busters' in August, we would go today.  Traffic along International Drive was bad but we made it.  D&B's is usually packed to the fire limit but here, we got in right away since it was still daytime.

If you don't know about Dave & Buster's, it's basically a large arcade full of arcade games, a bar, and a fancy restaurant.  It's not a Sega Gameworks but it'll do for now.  D&B's is like Chuck E Cheese's but with fewer kids around--granted there were quite a few around sucking at every game imaginable. I'll cut through the crap now--there was a six-player Daytona USA 1 setup.  There was also Fast & Furious Bikes, Sega Go-Kart Racing, Need for Speed Carbon, Dead Heat, NASCAR Arcade, four-player Pac-Man,, Time Crisis 4, Ghost Squad...I mean, who cares about any of that junk (except for Ghost Squad which is good)?  We're here to play Daytona USA.



Take a quick glance at the 5-6 sec mark...see the Daytona USA cabinets in the background?  Oh, and FnF, GTFO with that trash.



He's clearly playing Daytona USA in this scene although you never see the screen/logo.

This is what your Dave & Buster's Daytona USA setup looks like.  This is NOT a picture that I took--I had this one on my hard drive months ago.  It's not your normal Daytona cabinet.  The screens are huge and  the seat is cushy.  Oh, and the seat shakes like all hell when you turn.  Just like *BRRMMPPP*, the thing doesn't gradually slide at all--it just tilts back and forth like a simulator theme park ride.  And the wheel force feedback was really tough--it took about two games before I got used to the setup.  I persevered despite aching in my arms, legs, and fingers.  You have to wrestle that beast to the ground.  I'd like to see Team Marubaku put up WR's on these things.  Thankfully the cabinets were clean & functioning properly--no broken shifters or pedals so props to the staff.

Each go cost about $1.25.  You can't pinpoint an exact price since you had to swipe special D&B cards that you purchased credits for.  The more credits you bought, the greater deal you got on them.  We just plunked $25 and I played a lot of Daytona USA which was a damn good time.

Thankfully, my Daytona XBLA skills really paid off.  I wanted to play the Advanced and Expert courses, but if anyone joined during the 15-second wait time, you were forced to do whatever course they selected, usually Beginner.  When I did do Advanced & Expert (people stopped jumping in later on), I smoked the game.  Put up 3:02 on Advanced, 3:27 on Expert.  Ok, so the Expert time is pretty bad but it's up to par on my XBLA skills and I need to go back and improve.  It was the best I could do.

When I did play multiplayer, it was always on Beginner.  And I just about smoked everybody.  You'd be surprised the amount of people who hop on and have NO IDEA how to play the game at all.  How typical that they pick automatic transmission, bounce off the wall on the Sonic turn, accidentally go in the pits on occasion.  Only thing keeping them in the race is the major rubber-band/catch-up.  Noobs driving AT behind me didn't even have to strategize whatsoever--they were about a second behind the whole race but I made no mistakes.  Took the Sonic turn at about 180-185 mph each time and put up low 17 second laps.  I won.

Must've played about 12 races myself, let my dad try a few times.  We left feeling good about ourselves.  Finally, I had some fun for once in my life.  We will hopefully come back another day.

Here's another Daytona USA pic for good measure.

Now some other things about D&B's.  The place had a Star Wars arcade game (Model3, baby!!) and that game's just weird shooting your blaster with the flight joystick.  I can see using that thing while piloting a ship but not while traveling on foot.  Oh well.

And I also saw a new Midway/Raw Thrills game called "Big Buck World."  Now I know about those cheesy deer hunting games in every arcade/pizza place imaginable, but I just want you to take a look at the logo and see if you notice something:

Don't see it?  Well, lemme help you out:

That's right--the buffoons at Raw Thrills decided to recycle part of the Cruis'n World logo.  I can't believe--Eugene Jarvis and the crew just blow me away with their games.  The level of crap in their games is evident even in the logo.  Just great.

As for the rest of the games, there was a couple of HUGE basketball games (sink baskets not from the free throw line but the 3-pointer line) and a ton of slot-machine ticket games.  It's basically like a casino but kids are welcome to play.  Yeah kids, come on down and gamble your cash for a couple of Chinese finger traps and Jawbreakers.

The ticket redemption area is in the corner of the arcade and it looks like a small Disney gift shop.  You'll see toys, candy, soccer balls, giant stuffed animals, t-shirts, grills, blenders, deep fryers, iPads, PS3s, Xbox 360s, I mean what the hell???  If you want a blender, go to Target and buy one.  How many adults are in dire need of a blender that they would be willing play Wheel of Fortune/Deal or No Deal redemption games to get the tickets required???

Honey, get that deep-fryer with the Dave & Buster's logo on it!!!

Aaaannddd...there's the restaurant which is just like your normal Applebee's/TGI Friday's stuff.  Place looks nice and has a bunch of TV's with ESPN.  The cheeseburger was alright, nothing new but satisfactory.  Then we went home.  Had a lot of fun.  Daytona USA was great.

Now I have to go to bed and drive to the Daytona 500 tomorrow.  It's gonna be great.  I'll try to bring a sign that says "Hey Sega, wish you were here, bring us Daytona USA 3" but I don't know if they take signs.  EDIT: No, signs are stupid but I'll bring something Daytona USA-related anyway.  Hahaha, later guys.

DAAAYYYYYTTTOOOOONNNNNAAAAAAAA!!!!  ROLLLLIINNNGGG STTAAARRRTTTTTTTT!!!  BLUE BLUE SKIEEESSSSS!!!

Going Around Orlando, Checking Out Arcades

Sup guys.  Reporting from Orlando, FL, these are the adventures of my life.  I was hanging out with my dad for a few days.  I'll tone down on the pics here.

Night drivin in Louisiana!

This is the George Wallace Tunnel in Mobile, Alabama.  It's a tunnel, what did you expect.

As we're nearing Orlando, the roads became more picturesque.  A saturated mix of gray, white, and green.

I wish I was on the race course.

Watch out, there's a ton of toll booths in Orlando.  DO NOT go on the highway if you want to pay the tolls (about $1 a toll).

Downtown Orlando.

This is the FIEA building.

Okay, enough of the pics.  We're staying in our little apartment.  We decide to go out and have some fun on Saturday.

I knew there was a Dave & Buster's somewhere in Orlando.  In case you don't know what D&B is, it's an arcade/restaurant/party location.  I've never been to a D&B so I was determined to check it out.  We got the address from Google, punched in the address, and off we go.

You have to realize there's two parts of Orlando.  We've been staying in Downtown Orlando which is basically like your everyday town--offices, apartments, stores, etc.  Driving about 7+ miles from Downtown, we end up on International Drive.  This is the other part of Orlando--the amusement parks, tourist traps, exotic restaurants, and heavy traffic.  Turns out that Dave & Buster's was in this myriad of stuff...

This is at about 8:30 PM.  The building is HUGE but there were hour-long lines of people waiting outside this late into the night.  So in the end, we had to leave.

I'll never know if there was a Daytona USA 2, Scud Race, etc. in there.  Well, maybe in the future.  Now's not the time to run out to a Dave & Buster's, especially since I have work to do at school.

But there's a saving grace--there is the World's Largest McDonald's Entertainment Center.  I saw this on Food Network's Top 10 Most Interesting McDonald's.  It's down the street from D&B's.  Unlike D&B's, there's no lines to wait in--just come right on in!

This place is huge.  The walls are painted with all these murals.  There's also two stories as well--restaurant on bottom, arcade/playplace on top.

Waiting in the big lines.  This place also has a bistro, wtf.   And it has a drive-thru as if you didn't want to enter this wonderful place...you idiots.  But me and my dad ate $1 hot fudge sundaes and that's it.

We're on the second floor and here's most the games.  This is essentially a more elaborate Chuck E. Cheese's.

Tons of redemption games!

What games did this place have?  Heh...four Fast & Furious games, four Fast & Furious Bikes games.  So that makes EIGHT FnF games in one location.  FFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.....

Also worth mentioning is that the place had two Nascar Arcade cabinets...I didn't take a picture though.

The place actually had indoor bowling?  Crap bowling, nonetheless...

A cutout of Bill Cosby?  That's ballin...

But that's not all.  I saw something at that McDonald's which significantly changed my life (more than Bill

Cosby).  What you ask?  This post is TO BE CONTINUED...