The Lightning Reaction Extreme Game is so much fun, I can barely tear myself away from it long enough to talk about it for a few seconds. Maybe I like it so much because my reflexes are wildly fast, so I almost always win. It’s a strategy-based game of hand-eye coordination and mental endurance; in other words, fun for all ages. Get yourself a joystick and quickly familiarize yourself with the exact amount of tension it will take to make the button engage, then commit that to muscle memory. Ready? Now hit the start button and nervously watch the center light flash red for a while and listen to the game play you a song that goes faster and faster. It really gets your adrenaline flowing.
Here’s the secret: do not allow yourself to stop paying attention at this point. This is when you need to start doing whatever you can to distract your opponents—talk about being hungry, or tell a long boring story about something that happened to you in third grade, or ask a very interesting and penetrating question that makes them stop and think. Then, when they least expect it, the music stops, the center light changes to green, and that’s when you frantically push your trigger button. Last one in’s a rotten egg, and gets shocked. It’s kind of like a new-fangled, lazier version of musical chairs.
But there are several modern catches: hit the button before the color changes and you’re guaranteeing yourself a shock for premature e-joystick-ulation. In fact, the only one who doesn’t get shocked is the first person who presses his or her joystick button at the earliest opportunity. It’s a truly great and rare game that punishes three-quarters of its participants in each round. Oh, and one more little detail: the more experienced you are at the game, the higher the shock level you get for not winning. I lost once yesterday, and it took almost an hour before I could type again.
