In 1986, Worlds of Wonder unleashed Lazer Tag and my world was never the same (note: In the 80s kids played with fake guns and could still carry pocket knives to school.) It was a simple enough game. Use a gun to shoot a sensor on your friends chest. Shoot him enough times and you win. Laser-style games are still popular in some arcades and malls, but the late mid 80s were a golden age for the technology. My friends and I took advantage of this beautiful high techery.
When you played this game outside at night you could spot the blinking target from a hundred yards away and their was nothing sweeter then squeezing off a shot from behind a tree and watching your enemy scramble. Lazer Tag is dangerous, but it is also hauntingly addictive.
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, sweating, my eyes blurry with strobing red dots. I can still hear the screams of my buddies who got eliminated in the empty lot by the river. It was all my fault. Why did I have to survive! Why??
Lazer Tag changes a man. Especially when you are risking your neck on the front lines every night. Sometime I wonder if I might have been a different man if I had only made it into the Lazer Tag Academy.
I just loved Laze Tag and still miss it today. Such good times.
I remember playing it with my friends (the Knodels) at their house. One night while we were shooting at each other, a police office shined a spotlight on us. The old grumpy lady next door had called the cops on us. Being we were holding something that looked like guns, I shudder to think how close we might have been to being shot at.
Even today, I still remember the sound of a StarLyte being fired.