Air hockey games
Author: Homer Holloway Air hockey games
Air hockey games are one of those indoor goofy sports games that are loads of fun and totally addictive. Like foosball, I recall playing hours of air hockey games with friends when I was a kid. On a rainy or otherwise poor weather day, air hockey games are a great way to pass the time.
Although air hockey games are probably the most popular with younger people, I still find myself enjoying them today as an adult. My younger cousins have an air hockey game table, and whenever I visit them I find myself getting sucked into air hockey game tournaments. Not only is it a lot of fun, but it's a great way to spend time with my cousins and a good way to get to know them better. It's certainly a lot better than just sitting around watching television.
There are a few different kinds of air hockey games out there, but they're all pretty much the same idea. An actual air hockey game table will have a thin layer of air blowing out over the top, reducing the friction between the puck and the surface considerably and giving it an ice like quality. Two holes on either end of the table act as 'goals' and players use a circular hunk of plastic with a handle on it as a sort of hockey stick to bash the puck around with the goal of getting it into their opponents hole. Essentially, its just like a live version of the arcade game Pong.
Well, more accurately, Pong is like a digital version of an air hockey game.
Like Pong, air hockey games were popular in game arcades, but unlike Pong they can still be found in arcades today. The air hockey game tables you see in arcades are usually the biggest and best kind. If you plug in a few quarters, the air flows, the puck is released, and you're in air hockey game heaven for a short while.
There are also versions of air hockey games you can buy and have in your home. If you have the space and extra cash, having one of these grandiose air hockey tables would make you a legend amongst your neighborhoods kids and teenagers. Smaller and cheaper versions are probably more practical. Some air hockey games you can even fold up and put away, so you don't have to devote an entire section of a room to it.
There are times when I credit air hockey games with the majority of my overall social standing. I wasn't the most popular kid in high school, but I usually managed to get along. I took part in a lot of different activities, from drama to baseball, and I had some really good friends. When I made it to college things remained about the same; I wasn't the most popular guy in school, but I had quite a few friends and managed to avoid getting beat up most of the time. Then I turned 21 and was finally able to go to the bars. When I got there, I didn't have anything to do.
In the small town where my college was located there wasn't a whole lot to do at the bars. You could dance, which usually involved a bunch of drunk people gyrating together, you could try to yell out a conversation at the bar, you could play pool, you could play darts, or you could try your luck at the air hockey games. My options were limited from the outset. I usually had to be pretty drunk to have any sort of interest in dancing, and by that point there weren't many people who were interested in dancing with me. I usually liked to have a conversation over a good beer, but most of the bars were so loud this was just about impossible without yelling into someone else's ear. I really enjoyed playing pool, but since I wasn't very good at it a night of pool had a tendency to get expensive pretty quickly. I was even worse at darts. I thought it was hopeless, until I found the air hockey games.
I loved air hockey games. I unabashedly loved them. Though skee-ball will always keep a place close to my heart, it was nearly impossible to strike up a good skee-ball game in any bar I've ever been to. Air hockey, on the other hand, was plenty popular, and it was never too tough to convince someone else to play. It had the speed of table-tennis without such a high demand for coordination, and it demanded none of the finesse and skill that most games of pool required. I made quite a few friends over air hockey games, both at the bar and anywhere else I could manage to find a table. I hope to have one of my own someday, even if it means that the dining room table in my tiny apartment has to go.
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