Airplane Games for Kids (and adults like me)

Last night I got way too excited about a game I played called Loopin Louie.  In part because it brought back to mind a forgotten game I used to own as a kid.  At first I couldn't recall its name, but after a few minutes searching on The Geek, I found it: Chutes Away!  You had to control your plane, and watch through the view-finder, trying to release your paratroopers so they'd fall into the targets on the spinning map below.  It was a bulky, noisy, solitaire game with no variation whatsoever, as the same map spun relentlessly past your crosshairs.  And I played it over and over until it was finally crushed during a game of, "Let's see how many of us can hide from my little brother by squeezing into this little closet."

Well, Looping Louie is a whole different kind of fun, with enough tension to get a guy like me up out of his seat.  (Well, perhaps my childhood ardor for "Chutes Away!" disqualifies me as an objective standard, but this is my blog, so just deal with it.)  In Looping Louie, you've got a barn with 3 chickens perched on the roof, and a crazy pilot named Loopin Louie barnstorming his plane around the neighborhood terrorizing each player's chickens in turn.  Your poultry's only defense is a little thingy like a vertical pinball paddle which can be used to divert the plane's course away from your barn and hopefully send him over to make kung-pow of your neighbor's coop.

Granted most of my excitement stemmed from the fact that I was awesome in the first round, which ended with everyone's chickens dethroned, while all 3 of mine remained unscathed atop their perch.  It was promptly proposed that everyone needed to "...take Michael out."  I made some sort of off-hand comment about it just being "my kind of game."  Let the record show that in reality, dexterity games are NOT my kind of game, as I have mediocre hand-eye coordination at best.  But 42 years of experience and memory were temporarily blinded by the irrefutable proof before my eyes: My Last Hens Standing!

I then embarked upon an absolute failure to recreate my previous results for the next 6 rounds, slipping steadily from first place to last.  Some of my fowls weren't even foiled by my foes; several times there were jostled by the adrenaline-fueled pounding of my own poultry protection paddle!

At the last possible moment, my luck (for that's surely all it was) began to return, as I managed to win again, bringing myself back into contention.  It was sudden death, and anyone could emerge the victor when, to my delight, first Darrel, then Steve were eliminated from the game.  I was head-to-head with Mark, who may have had an edge because he was up-wind of me.  But in the end his advantage mattered not, as I launched Louie into a stratospheric loop that bypassed Mark's farm entirely, not returning to earth until he was in a dive-bombing beeline for my own barn.  In the end, all that remained was a pile of splintered wood and scattered feathers, with the faint smell of my crushed hopes lingering in the gentle breeze.