When we got back Eric, Ken and I played Chrononauts, another card game by Looney Labs. In this one you're trying to restore your timeline, and prevent everyone else from restoring their timeline. There are like 32 event cards, laid out in a row to represent the timeline, which starts out at Earth normal. Each timeline card is either a normal event or a nexus. Flipping a nexus causes ripples that flip other timeline cards. Flipping a normal event causes a paradox, which must be patched with a specific card or by reflipping the nexus event. Like thirteen paradoxes and the continuum implodes, so you want to keep patching them.

Each player gets an identity card, which gives you the three events (one normal and two flipped) that you must get in order to win. You also get a mission card (collect these items) which can also be used to win. Finally you can win by getting to ten cards at the end of your turn (I think you only get extra cards by patching paradoxes, otherwise it's draw one, play one). Besides the artifact and patch cards, there are actions and timewarps, which allow you to steal artifacts, flip cards and other things.

It took me a bit too long to realize that patching the timeline to get to the timeline I want is really hard. You have to get your two cards flipped, then have the paradoxes patched, meanwhile patched events can be unflipped when their corresponding nexus is flipped. Getting to ten cards also takes a long time. We finally decided that getting your three artifacts is the easiest. If only I had known that at the start because I got two "pick a card out of the draw pile" cards at the start and I stole an artifact from Eric, so I had what I needed to win in a couple of turns. Eric did win by getting his three artifacts. In the final analysis, Chrononauts needs a bit more work to make patching the timeline something people would actually do.

After that game I headed downstairs to play video games. First up was Maximum Force, a gun shooter. Three levels and I went through it using a few bucks, so it's not a hard game. You go around shooting terrorists, don't shoot the few civilians that randomly pop up. Then I played Raiden Fighters 2 which also wasn't too hard. Easy to get powerups though the screen does get crowded.

Finally I played California Speed. It's an easy racing game with 14 or so tracks through various California locations -- three racetracks and 11 other. I always came in second or third, a couple of times missing first place by less than a car length, so I think the game is designed to keep you in it. There are few obstacles that stop you, mostly you can sideswipe or bull through other cars and trees and such. The only redeeming quality are the tracks. Each of the non-race tracks goes through some city or area for the first half of the race, then ends up in a surreal location for the second half. Central Valley ends in a mall, San Jose in some underground psychedelic playhouse, Death Valley in an alien space ship, Mount Shasta inside a volcanic mountain, Yosemite you end up driving on Half Dome, Santa Cruz you end up on a roller coaster and so forth. When I was done I still had $2 or $3 left from the $20 I made into quarters on Friday night.

Then I went back to the room and was soon joined by Eric and Ken. While Ken surfed the web and worked on his article, Eric and I watched Cleopatra 2525, which Eric had never seen before. It's a weird show but I kind of like it. This week's episode had the team trying to get information from one of the giant shaft cannons that they discovered a week or two ago. That ended at 00:30 and then we watched Ebert and Roeper "Sweet November". By then Ken and Eric went to sleep while I stayed up since Dave and Chris would be in at any moment. So once they had returned we talked until 03:00 and then went to sleep, knowing that we had an 08:00 breakfast.