Violet lay peacefully in the empty forest room of the second floor. She had decided to take a break and get some sleep. It was hard work to build a dungeon, always having to take so many different factors into account. Sinking into a blissful dream where she could relive the memories she had with her beloved husband, Lee, was the best reward after working so hard.
"Come on, love, we have to get in line."
Violet laughed as she replied
"Sorry, you know how much I love the arcade! I just can't help but get excited every time we come here."
Lee rolled his eyes playfully at her, but said nothing. This particular arcade had a regular promotional deal where you could get 120 game tokens for $20, but you had to go through the prize counter employee rather than the token machines. Normally, you would only get 4 tokens for every $1 you spent, but they both preferred to have a good couple of hours of fun, so the more tokens the better.
Violet smiled happily as she watched Lee give the employee a $20 bill, excited to watch as the tokens poured out of the special token machine they had behind them. This one must have been set up specifically to dispense the amount for the promotion, unlike the other ones. Once they received their tokens, Lee grabbed a separate cup and Violet helped to count out exactly 60 tokens for each of them.
"So, what game do you want to play first?"
Violet grinned mischievously, her eyes crinkling at the edges as she pointed to the back of the arcades. Lee raised his eyebrows in mock surprise as he asked
"You want to play the new hunting game?"
Violet shook her head, pouting as she said
"No! I want to play breeze puck!"
Lee chuckled, enjoying his wife's cute reaction as he replied
"Of course! How could I possibly forget, your favorite has always been breeze puck."
Lee poked her nose playfully for emphasis as he said the last half of his sentence. Violet scrunched her nose up in discomfort. However, her expression smoothed out once more as she begged
"Come on, please? Pretty please!"
Lee chuckled as he replied
"Alright, I'll play a few games of it with you, but then you have to play some of my favorites with me in return."
Violet nodded, easily agreeing. She happily trotted over to the breeze puck table, holding Lee's hand as she did so. When they got past the other machines that had been in the way, they could better see their target. As it would turn out, one of the machines was out of order while the other two were already occupied. Lee frowned, looking around before pointing to the right as he said
"Why don't we go play some roll-score together for a bit? We can come back when the breeze puck is less busy."
Roll-score was Violet's other favorite arcade game, so she happily agreed. It wasn't like either of them could change the fact that the breeze puck tables were busy. Besides, even if Violet felt comfortable acting like herself around her husband, even if she was a bit childish at times, she was still mature enough to not throw a fit about not getting what she wanted right away.
Neither of them were really overly competitive, but it was still fun to compete at roll-score to see who could get a higher score. So, they each put in two game tokens and took turns rolling their balls up the slope and into the scoring area. They continued their playful banter as they watched the other play. Sometimes they'd 'boo!' a good score on the other person's end or cheer when they made a good score of their own. Other times, they'd console the other whenever they lost a game, saying words of encouragement that they'd do better with the next game.
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It took three games of roll-score before the breeze puck tables were clear. A group of four teenage boys was hogging the other table, so it was still busy, but the other was free. So, Lee pointed it out to Violet as he asked
"Do you still want to play breeze puck? If so, we should get a move on before someone else takes the table."
Violet nodded, grabbing his hand before they quickly marched over to the table. The breeze puck required four tokens per game, which could quickly add up. However, Lee always covered the cost for the games he liked in exchange for her covering the cost of the breeze puck she wanted to play. This way, it was less likely that either one of them would end up having to wait for a long time while the other finished spending their tokens.
Violet practically bounced on her feet as the game came to life and the paddles started to float across the board. Lee grabbed his right away, but she had to quickly snatch hers before it could finish getting away. The disc ended up on his side, so Violet prepared herself as he went to serve. She always played with a vigorous spirit, so the disc went flying as she smacked it away, defending her side of the table.
Lee was a lot more calm about the game, happy whether he won or lost. That tended to mean that Violet would either end up getting the best of him due to her quick reflexes or she'd end up hitting the disc too hard and it would end up zooming back towards her side of the table without Lee having to do anything and he'd end up scoring a point. Occasionally, though, Lee would even manage to score a point due to his own efforts.
After four games, they decided to call it on the breeze puck. Someone else was waiting on the sidelines for their turn and they simply felt too guilty keeping the game all to themselves. Besides, they had easily spent 22 game tokens between roll-score and breeze puck as it was. If Violet kept spending her tokens, she'd soon have nothing left.
Lee tended to like playing the arcade games that involved shooting, racing, or two characters fighting against one another. These came in a variety of different themes from police or CIA-type officers gunning down aliens or mobsters to cars on a racetrack or water vehicles racing over open water. Luckily, Lee tended to skip the racing games until after they split up to have some solo game time. Violet hated racing games the most and he didn't want to torture her with boredom when they could have a fun bonding moment playing the other games.
As Violet actually tended to enjoy the two-player shooting games, Lee first led them over to one with a red and blue pistol holstered to the machine. He put in some tokens for them and they each took their own pistol in hand. Lee was better with accuracy as he shot the various enemies on screen, but Violet made up for her lack of skill with enthusiasm. She made sure to reload frequently and then repeatedly pulled the trigger as she attempted to take down any enemies that appeared on the screen.
Lee continued the game twice before he ended up calling it and they moved on to something else. Violet was happy to spend time with her husband and he was glad that his wife was willing to set aside some time to do the things he enjoyed together. The next game they played was one with superheroes fighting against one another. Violet always preferred to choose a female superhero as she found them more relatable while Lee tried to change it up each time they played. While she rarely ever won at these types of games, it was still fun to experiment and find out more about the various powers the character had and it was worth it to play a game she mostly lost if it made her husband happy.
They played that game for three rounds as well, Lee winning all of them, before they decided to part ways. Her husband was likely going to play some of the single-player games while Violet planned to try some other game types. While she didn't like to gamble all of her tokens away, some of the ticket-dispensing games could be pretty fun. The timed light one where you had to hit the light at the right time was actually one she was pretty good at. She tried to limit gambling-type games to less than 10 tokens per visit with most of them going to this game, but she still tended to get a jackpot on several of the visits and several decent ticket payouts on every visit they made.
The prizes at the prize counter were mostly kiddie toys and cheap candies at the lower ticket tiers. Things like sticker earrings made from plastic and meant to imitate gems, 'Chinese' finger [Traps], and half-sphere bits of plastic that you turned inside out and then set on the ground before waiting for it to randomly pop up as it righted itself were staples of the arcade ticket counter. There were some better prizes if you could save up hundreds or even thousands of tickets. Things like BRICKO sets and even a console at several hundred thousand tickets. However, that would require saving up a significant amount of tickets before bringing them in to exchange them.
Violet and Lee tended to come in once every month or so to play arcade games, but it wasn't like they were spending crazy money on playing arcade games and they were hardly going to amass enough tickets to earn any top-tier items. Instead, Violet was saving up her tickets for some of the more middle-tier items. Right now, she was saving up tickets to exchange for a BRICKO set for Lee. It was based on one of his favorite science fiction series and had BRICKO people meant to look like the characters as well as a set of BRICKOs for building one of the notable spaceships from the series. Violet was hoping to surprise him with it for Christmas later that year, but that was still a ways off.