I'm so board!

Oh, Strategic, adult-targeted board games. How I remember you! Specifically Risk and Stratego. Which, I would imagine, were the Alpha and the Omega of boring strategy board games aimed at your generation.

For readers not familiar with these games, either you're NOT having a real, bloody, explosive battle on a field, or you're NOT employing cool bombs and weaponry to take over the world, one country at a time. You see, in a patchouli scented back office somewhere at Milton Bradley, some hippie thought that if he took all of the fun and guts out of war via these board games, perhaps the next generation would grow up to roll its eyes at global conflict and instead resort to living peaceably.

I used to play these games with my brother and a family friend. Of course, back when we played them, video games were not at their graphical high points, to be certain. Pixels and blurred colors abounded. So we didn't know what we were missing out on as we maneuvered little pegs around either a single battlefield, or the entire free world (well, not so free if you won the game). When someone stepped on a bomb, we would throw the piece in the air (improv violence, we needed it!)

I'm sorry, but I have a lot more fun today playing games like Call of Duty, where I shoot a rocket launcher and a peasant village goes into the stratosphere. Screw strategy. Who needs a strategy when you've got the bomb??

And you know what I miss? The video arcade. There used to be one in every mall, filled with bleeps and buzzes and explosions and banshee howls. You fed your dollar into the change machine, and fed The Simpsons arcade or House of the Dead or Mortal Kombat until you were broke and had to beg your mom for more money.

And then there were those SUPER arcades, like Sports Plus out east on Long Island. Gigantic edifices filled with indoor roller coasters, those VR games you speak of (skateboard on a skateboard! punch with boxing gloves! vacuum with a vacuum!) and a little area where you could get overpriced Elio's pizza. My day camp went there on a monthly basis - it was easy enough. Give the fat kids some tokens and a hot dog and they'll leave you alone so you can smoke cigarettes in the parking lot and call your girlfriend.

But those places are dead. I haven't seen an arcade in decades. Where's Laser Tag? The indoor roller coasters? All that we have remaining are a few Dave and Busters, and they have about 20 square feet of space mostly dominated by skee-ball.

Bullshit!