Korean Life | Playing “Pirate Roulette”

 

While waiting for breakfast one morning at a guesthouse in Sokcho, we decided to play a game called “Pirate Roulette.” I’m pretty sure the target age range for this game is something like 4-6 years old but we were intrigued by the name and the creepy devil pirate head. It took me a lot longer than I care to admit to figure out how to actually “play” the game, but after some assistance from the kind Korean lady at the front desk we began our game.

I lost every single time.

The very first “sword” I stuck into the barrel popped the pirate’s head right off, scaring the crap out of me. We reset the game and played at least a dozen more times. After only a couple tries I  always seemed to be the one that found the slot that triggered the pirate head. The last game we played (shown in the video above) actually made me kind of nervous as it was the longest we had played without me “killing” the pirate.

Pirate Roulette was a simple, fun, easy, somewhat scary, game that we thought would translate into an awesome drinking game for adults — a shot for whomever popped the pirate head. Though, now come to think of it, maybe I was actually the winner because I killed the pirate, and Sly was the loser because he didn’t? Either way, imagine how hilarious this game would be after throwing back a few cold ones.

---

Speaking of games – has anyone been watching the Olympic trials? I love watching the Olympics and especially love watching gymnastics (and ice skating during the winter) with my sister. This week I was able to find a live stream of the women’s gymnastics trials so that my sister and I could watch at the same time (though technically on different days) while commenting via chat. It wasn’t quite the same but still fun. Hopefully we can sync up again when watching the Olympics.

And unrelated but worth noting – we had a 4.9 earthquake in Korea last week! WTF. Our apartment totally waved from side to side for about 5-10 seconds and at first we weren’t sure if it was a bomb or an earthquake (and honestly not sure which of the two was better/worse). You would think that having lived in SF for so long that I would be used to the occasional quake but this one still surprised me. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced an earthquake while in a tall building until last week. It was kind of spooky.

PS: One of my half-Japanese friends told me that this was a favorite game of hers growing up, which made me wonder if this was, in fact, a Korean game as the box claimed. As expected, it’s actually a Japanese game. I also found the American version, known as “Pop-up Pirate” on Amazon.  Somehow “Pop-up Pirate” doesn’t have the same ring to it as “Pirate Roulette.”