Back in the late nineties, Ric and I did much to cement our then-newfound friendship by going out with our boss and co-workers from DialAmerica to eat, drink and play NTN Trivia at bars somewhat close to work like Uno's in Lake Buena Vista.
This is a picture of the device the bartender would gingerly hand to you ('cause they frequently broke) if you wanted to play. The questions and team results would be displayed on several of the hanging CRT TV sets around the bar. It was mostly general knowledge trivia with four multiple choice answers for each question featuring a timer that would deduct points the longer you took to answer. Wait too long and it would time you out and you get nada. Answer wrong, in most cases, and you'd get negative points. You played against other bar patrons as well as players across the continent at other bars in the NTN network.
In the early 2000's the technology of the player devices improved and the system upgraded to these babies.
I have so many fond memories with Ric, Jay and other friends of those days playing this. I think I even posted a few times in this blog about still playing this at the now-demolished Uno's in Lake Mary back in 2005.
Well, Ric came down yesterday and we went to our usual haunts of Beef O'Brady's, The Wild Hawg and a wrap-up at Azul Tequila, but not before visiting our fav, Dimitri's. It was there we discovered they have a trivia system very much like the old NTN games called Tap TV. Of course, the operative device is now your own smartphone after downloading the app. Results and questions are still displayed on one of the TVs, albeit now 50" 4K flat panel LCD numbers.
My phone's battery is broken so we teamed up using Ric's new iPhone X and we actually placed in the top ten across the country a couple of times. We had, for a while, one other unseen competitor inside Dimitri's as well who we handily beat.
Now knowing this exists locally, I may be inclined to get social again and spend some time out amongst people. Ah, who am I kidding? Another frequent game I played back in those days was "Let's drive home drunk." That earned me a couple DUIs and I sure don't need a modern version of those "good ol days."