Velociraptor Roulette

January 12, 2009 2:06 PM

Velociraptor Roulette
After getting a random request with only those two words to go by, I've created a silly, pointless time waster. Spin the wheel for your chance to win a deadly dinosaur. You can't win if you don't play!
posted by Plutor (20 comments total)

This project was posted to MetaFilter by silby on January 19, 2009: Velociraptor Roulette

Interesting, but do you always win a Velociraptor or are there other prizes? Because I played a few times and lets just say I'm balls-deep in Velociraptors right now (this is not pleasant). If this horrible winning streak keeps up, I predict some kind of hyper-inflation on the Velociraptor futures market.

If all you win is an endless stream of Velociraptor mongoliensis after Velociraptor mongoliensis, as a suggestion it might be fun if you could 'win' other 'prizes'. Like perhaps you could win a Utahraptor and it'd be like "Oh, sorry dude, you won a Utahraptor. Try again!" Or it could say "Too bad, you won a Dilophosaurus" and some kind of loser sound would play in the background.

Fuck, I just won another Velociraptor. Oh shit! I think the ones I won earlier just managed to cut off the power to the electric fences around their pen! This isn't going to end we--

*signal lost*
posted by Effigy2000 at 8:32 PM on January 12 [6 favorites]

Hey, whoa, OK, I'm back. I survived the initial raptor attack. I don't know where Ellie and Muldoon are though. I think they've gone to manually reset the circuit breakers at the utility shed.

Oh God, what has Hammond done? What has he done here? Why did he think he could play God? I tell you, after today I've totally decided not to endorse this park.
posted by Effigy2000 at 8:53 PM on January 12 [2 favorites]

OK, I've made it to the emergency bunkers. The power has been fully restored... Ellie did it! Malcolm and Hammond are here and Lex and Tim narrowly escaped two of the raptors in the kitchen. Lex has also finally been able to restore the park's computer systems in order to call Hammond to request a helicopter rescue for us.

Shit, fuck, what was that? Oh holy fuck no! Raptors are trying to break in! The electromagnetic locks aren't fully activated yet and Grant and Ellie are trying to hold them back but I don't like the look of this!

I just want to apologize to everyone's mom, and my mom. I am so sorry! Because it was my fault. I was the one who brought them here. I was the one that said "keep going south." I was the one who said that it was way too easy to win hundreds of Velociraptors with Plutors project and kept encouraging them to win more. It was my fault. I mean, it was Plutor's project and everything but it was my fault. I am so scared! I don't know what's out there. We are going to die out here! I am so scared!!!
posted by Effigy2000 at 9:00 PM on January 12 [5 favorites]

Oh hai! Yeah, I'm OK. We survived after all, but it was tense. What ended up happening is that we managed to climb up into the ceiling crawlspace and after doing that we arrived at the Visitors Center skeleton display. The raptors pursued us but after a scuffle on top of the fossil exhibits where the raptors blocked our escape route, this motherfuckin' Tyrannosaurus suddenly appears and ate the Raptors! Can you believe that shit? If this were a movie you'd probably want to see it again.

Anyway, what this whole, horrible chapter has hopefully explained to you Plutor is that having an option to win something other than a Velociraptor would be neat, if you can do that somehow.
posted by Effigy2000 at 4:02 AM on January 13 [2 favorites]

Clever girl.
posted by cortex at 7:54 AM on January 13 [7 favorites]

What do you want to be able to win, a Muttaburrasaurus? Or a Sinosauropteryx? Don't tell me you want a Tuojiangosaurus!

Or do you mean that you never lose? That might just be luck (one way or the other), since I just tried it and won once and then lost once. You should lose slightly more than half of the time, like in non-dinosaur roulette.
posted by Plutor at 8:07 AM on January 13

This totally delivers on its promise.
posted by cowbellemoo at 9:15 AM on January 13

I don't ever want to play non-dinosaur roulette again. It'd be so boring by comparison.
posted by bluishorange at 10:38 AM on January 13

I just won a velociraptor after two tries, and I now feel validated as a person.

Thank you.
posted by needs more cowbell at 4:09 AM on January 14

I thought I won a velociraptor with lightening tattoos, but no, I didn't.
posted by Pants! at 7:18 AM on January 14

I lost, but I got a very nice house in the suburbs, so thank you. That is probably worth less than a raptor in this economy though.
posted by rmless at 9:00 PM on January 15

Please advise anticipated shipping date for my velociraptor. Tracking number if possible. Thx!
(p.s. I do not need the feet in the bathtub that I received as a consolation prize, please send those to someone else.)
posted by KAS at 6:53 AM on January 17

This breaks in IE
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 7:54 AM on January 19

Any chance I could win a baluchithere? How about a carcharodon?
posted by Mister_A at 8:15 AM on January 19

Fixed the IE problem. It was caching the first result, so it would never "play again".
posted by Plutor at 8:31 AM on January 19

Maybe it's just me, but pushing Play crashes my browser (Safari) on my computer (Mac).
posted by lpsguy at 9:25 AM on January 19

It's like I have my own private genie. What should I ask for next? Hey, I know - could you do something about getting that asshat Bush out of the Oval Office for me? Thanks!
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 12:34 PM on January 19

"Fixed the IE problem. It was caching the first result, so it would never "play again"."
posted by Plutor at 2:31 AM on January 20

This likely explains my incredible Velociraptor winning streak up-thread.

Don't think I'm giving any of them back, though!
posted by Effigy2000 at 3:11 PM on January 19

Not only did I get one of those velocipedes on my second try but I also got a girl in a library on my first try! Best game evar!!
posted by jessamyn at 7:26 PM on January 21

Nine months later, and I finally figured out why the machine was breaking something like 10% of the time. Mark it up to Python newbness and Unicode super-newbness.

I take repairing my one-off web things very seriously.
posted by Plutor at 5:31 PM on October 7