The fire on Weed Street raged throughout the night, spitting clouds of thick smoke into the summer air. By early morning there was nothing left of Patty’s Sports Bar and Restaurant – only the burnt remains of a brick structure and a few shattered pint glasses on the asphalt outside.

A crowd of pedestrians gather at the police barricade across the street to mourn the loss of a beloved neighborhood landmark. Some are crying. There isn’t a single one of them who doesn’t harbor fond memories of nights spent drinking watery well drinks, listening to crappy cover bands, and hurling in the gnarly co-ed toilet behind the custodial closet.

These are but distant memories now, thanks to Rick Loodlum, the sober son-of-a-bitch who touched the Big Buck Hunter Machine and blew the entire place to smithereens.

“It’s a tragedy,” said Darleen Conroy-Levin, a private tutor who was a regular at the bar. “All of my high scores are gone. And all those people are dead, too.”

Big Buck Hunter was developed by Play Mechanix, Inc. in 2001 and has since been a staple in bars across the US. Gameplay consists of two or more players taking turns shooting virtual buck while avoiding does and other wildlife. The game was not meant to be played by people who aren’t wasted.

“We’re treating this situation with the utmost seriousness,” said Dale McGaffin, CEO of Play Mechanix, Inc. “We never calibrated the machine to withstand sobriety. It just wasn’t something we ever considered in our playtesting.”

Current estimates put the death count for the fire at around thirty. A spokesman for the fire department gave Hardcasual a rough timeline of the event:

10:45 p.m. – Rick Loodlum and three of his friends from work enter Patty’s Sports Bar and sit in a booth near the entrance.
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10:58 p.m. – Rick buys a round of drinks for his friends and announces to the bartender that he is the designated driver for the evening. No one cares.

11:22 p.m. –Rick leaves his friends and strolls over to the Big Buck Hunter Machine. Upon touching it, the machine detonates and engulfs the bar in flames.

The crowd has doubled by the time the Big Buck Hunter machine is hauled out of the bar, now only a twisted mess of plastic and fiberglass. The onlookers go quiet, mourning the loss of a game that has seen them through countless hours of drunkenness. It is the loss only comparable to that of an old friend.