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!!!