Scott Pilgrim vs. Stephanie ... and Spaceteam won.

Friends of ours came over this last weekend to enjoy some dinner and good ol' fashioned fellowship. The husband needed to borrow a router [and of course Mr. Dude had an extra one] and some troubleshooting in setting it up for whatever project he had going on at home. I told him any night of the week was fine [amazing how your evenings are suddenly all available when you're at home with your sleeping kiddo], and he'd get bonus points for bringing his wife along and staying long enough for us to have dinner together. He agreed and the date was set.

So our home-beer-brewin'-gotta-moustache-that'll-make-Moses-jealous-composer-extraordinaire friend and his lovely graphic-designing-film-photography-I-can-knit-anything-with-my-eyes-closed wife joined us for a fantastic evening in.

After dinner, the guys set about to work on their project while we ladies decided that chatting away with BBC's classic Pride and Prejudice in the background would be lovely. Suddenly, though, Mr. Dude quit out of the movie and went to the arcade games section on the XBox360, declaring that he had been waiting for Mr. Composer Friend to come over just so they could play this particular game together since they share a love of the movie by the same name.

Even more suddenly, a controller was in my hands and all four of us were trying to help poor Scott Pilgrim defeat all the bullies so he could go on a date with Ramona, or something to that effect.

Correction. They were all helping Scott. I was randomly pushing buttons and wondering what the heck they made my character do. It all seemed like a giant plot just to get me to play video games.

Attempted indoctrination via "gateway" games, I tell you.

[But, Stephanie! This is a really easy arcade game! You gotta admit that it's awesome! How could you not like video games when there's stuff like this to play?! Look at those graphics! Listen to that 8-bit music they wrote just for this game!]

And when we all got horrendously sick of the soundtrack [or maybe that was just me] and finally beat the level, our artsy and talented friends pulled out all four of their Apple devices so we could play an epic group game.

[I make the distinction about what kind of friends they are because there are very few people that Mr. Dude will recommend Apple products to or not scoff at for purchasing said products. He's a techie - and it irks him that Apple won't let him "under the hood", so to speak. But if you're a composer, a photographer, a graphic designer, an architect, etc, who actually needs some of their specialized software, then he's all for you dropping a ridiculous amount of money on an Apple product.]

Spaceteam is a cooperative game where you have commands flashing on your screen that you need to follow or one of your teammates needs to follow. And if you don't follow them all [or enough of them], then your space ship dies. Oh no!

Here's the official [and better-than-Stephanie's] description from the Apple Store:

Fluxtrunions? Beveled Nanobuzzers? Auxiliary Technoprobes? Outrunning an exploded star?!?!

Felt awfully Star Trek-ish to me.

I guess I'm just lucky that Q didn't show up to make it all the more confusing.

Also, have you ever tried to play a game like Catch Phrase, Pictionary or Yahtzee quietly, especially when there's an infant attempting to sleep not-so-far-away in a rather small apartment?

This was like that. As in, not possible.

Multiple infant-wakings aside, it was exhilarating, confusing, fun and stressful, all at the same time.

And I think I may actually like it.

[Gasp! Is this where I tell Mr. Dude that I found it on the Google Play Store, so we can install it on our phones, too?] 

So that was my epic Friday night. It was Scott Pilgrim vs. me. Or maybe that was Mr. Dude vs. me. Not sure if he won or I lost.

Either way, I spent my Friday night playing video games.

Definitely wasn't expecting that.

Uh, at least we can be on the same Spaceteam now?