Tackling the battery box

The back box of the Star Laser Force pack is pretty much all batteries, which is not uncommon in the industry to this day, although technology has vastly improved since then! Each of the three separate power supplies used conventional NiCd cells.

All hand built, too.
The single remaining AA cell was removed due to corrosion.

Workspace shift

Took two weeks off to set up, play, and tear down laser tag, and one more for a pinball project. Since then I've decided to move the restoration project to another room with better lighting and more space. I'm tackling the battery box next.

Deconstructing the helmet

As hinted in the last post, I have the exceptionally rare opportunity to inspect and clean up one of the Star Laser Force packs for the Laser Tag Museum.  Part of this will involve making sure it's in functioning condition, or at least that it might light up while on display as it once did when it was being used.

A quick inspection shows the helmet to be worse off than the vest, so I'll tackle it first. It is not ready for polite society. The padding is rotted, the leather is moldy, and the wiring is trashed. There's no ID number, so I can't pull the service logs, but going by appearance it seems to have seen a lot of battles.

I was a teenaged Xenon Red Raider.

First step was to remove the lining and foam. I found the wiring to be held in place with duct tape, or (most often) no longer held in place, and the tape dull or balled up.

You volunteered.  Suck it up and get scrubbing, soldier.

Some of the duct tape still holds wire runs down or even sticks bare soldered splices in place so they don't short. Unfortunately whoever built this (or repaired it) didn't use simple heat shrink tubing to slip over the soldered connections. Most splices are insulated with electrical tape, which is holding up pretty well considering its age, but it will all need attention.

Okay, I can see the team color LEDs everywhere, but where are those hit sensors?

T 1¾ size. Ish.

Hmm... there's a peanut lamp on each side of the face. Try as I might, I can't remember these being used in the game... but don't hold me to it.

A real light bulb, with a filament and everything. How about that pile of particulate crud that showered out of the interior when I flipped the helmet over? It's like my dad's ashtray. Actually the light bulb is kind of my dad's era, too, now...

There's a pretty substantial pocket carved out of the Styrofoam in the helmet, a couple of unused holes in the top of the helmet, and four neatly severed wires, so I'm going to assume for now that the helmet sensors are gone... or were they any sensors to begin with? Perhaps a sensor board, or even a speaker? There's not much to go on here. I hope there will be another unit to compare with someday.

There's a 6" harness out the back of the helmet that's in good shape until you get to the interior, where the connections are iffy and the multiconductor cable itself can't be inspected without hacking it up, but it looks like something I wouldn't trust, like a cable that has been abused. I may end up bypassing it and going straight to the pack connector for the restoration.  Besides, I'm looking forward to finding out why the vest plug has 6 connector pins, while the helmet harness has only 4 pins (shield/ground, LED power, and two unknowns).

In the mean time, I've given the helmet a light polish, preserving the battle scars while removing a layer of grunge. The road to polite society has at last been found.

Megatron 100

It's almost time to blow the lid off this system.

Hardware geekery to come.  Shoutout to Lee Weinstein.

Poster Giveaway!

The Laser Tag Museum seeks to preserve and commemorate the historic foundations of the game (or sport), documenting the efforts of the laser tag pioneers and collecting the original equipment used in those games.

Starting last year, the 30th anniversary of Photon, the Museum issued the first International Laser Tag Day poster depicting the battle gear actually used in arena Photon games.

The new 2015 posters

The 2015 International Laser Tag Day poster honors the 30th anniversary of Star Laser Force with a photo of the newly recovered battle suit of the Starship Blue Force.  Thanks to the Museum I have a limited number of these 18x24" posters to give away to readers.  Here are the rules:

• First come, first served. Email me at the address on the sidebar to request a poster.
• If you are in or near the City of Houston, I can probably meet with you and give it to you directly.
• If not, I may ask you to pay for postage.

It's as simple as that. If this message is still here, posters are still available.

3rd in order, Hall of Famer

After years of research, the Laser Tag Museum has declared Star Laser Force to be the third indoor laser tag system opened to the public worldwide (after Photon in Dallas and Laser Zone in Chicago). If you were ever at Star Laser Force, that makes you an industry pioneer!

30th anniversary honors.

Battle Suits received at the Laser Tag Museum

I'm delighted to report that the Laser Tag Museum has secured three sets of the original Star Laser Force battle gear, or packs, for collection and display. Congratulations!

Edit: New link

Star Laser Force video

Many thanks to the Laser Tag Museum for permission to mirror this John Davenport report from the early days of Star Laser Force.

Here's a quick overview with commentary:

00:02 - The right-hand building included the offices, waiting area, ticket window, and later the party area; the left-hand building had the playing field.

00:06 - These were the early days. The front entrance opened directly into a small waiting area with a front counter -- a sensible floor plan for, say, a manufacturing company, but for a service business drawing crowds this rapidly became untenable. Parking in the rear became mandatory and you entered the back door of the building, passed through  a tunnel and into a larger waiting area (which included the new ticket window, vending/games, and space for parties).  The former waiting area became what we would now call the briefing room.

00:09 - That was the whole waiting area in the early days. The cameraman is standing in the corner next to the ticket window.  Benches were added later. I had forgotten they once had no place to sit! I sat on that floor, but only on my first visit.

00:11 - Does anyone know her?

00:15 - Ugh!  Those nasty plastic hairnets kept the heat from leaving your head and kept your hair saturated with sweat. Kids, this is why most battle places don't have helmets:  It's just too stinkin' realistic.

00:17 - This sequence would have taken place in the vesting room.

The attendant is holding the gun connector in his right hand and plugging it into the bottom of the bottom of the front box, then handing the gun to the player. This helped people to not get tangled in the gun cable when putting the armor on. Today manufacturers use coiled gun cables.

00:18 - Look how clean the armor was...

00:19 - If you look carefully you can see the gun holster on left side of the front box on the armor.

00:22 - The tech room.

00:28 - That is the gun sound of Star Laser Force.

The long breakaway barrels got knocked off the gun a lot. Eventually they were left off, or shortened. I would imagine it would be dangerous to step on a loose barrel, dangerous to be poked in the eye by one... seems like just an all-around bad idea, except the gun looks like it belongs to Han Solo!

00:30 - Here you can see inside the front box; the display board is visible without the aluminum cover.

Watch and see it start to count up 10 points, the penalty for being hit. Eyeballing the counting speed, it looks like you had barely 4 seconds to hide before you could be hit again.

00:33 - Soon, all the walls were scratched up like that.  Looks like the snap-on helmet visors were never actually used in the game. I had wondered if they had once been used, but apparently not.

00:35 - Bill Lewis himself in one of the Transporter rooms. The wall treatment, the hatchway (shown) and the transporter sound FX (not used in the video) made the start of the game memorable and immersive.

00:44 - In small games, both teams could fit in the same Transporter and only 1 attendant was needed.

Seems like these helmets do not fit these kids very well... either that or their heads are still sweaty from the last game and they're trying to cool off.

00:47 - The cluster of barrels - there were only a few. What is that glowing thing?

00:52 - Leaving the bridge and turning to go down the ridiculously steep ramp.

01:04 - The final scene takes place on the Bridge, with the Saturn mural/viewscreen in the background.

Although short, this report was a real treat to see.  Thanks to whoever donated it to the museum!

Edit: new link

Fun summer action (in 1986)

I said that I'd found no mention of Star Laser Force in my newspaper-research sojourn this year, but that wasn't strictly true; there was one article in the index that I couldn't find in the actual archive, and then there is this one, which I already had.  For the sake of completeness, here are the hours and prices, part of a longer list of things to do during the summer of 1986.

Houston Chronicle
July 6, 1986
Fun summer action for those on a budget
Gina Seay

Most parents struggling to make ends meet will have to tell Johnny and Suzy to put their dream vacations on hold. But that doesn't mean the summer has to be long and boring.

There are lots of indoor and outdoor activities in the greater Houston area that fit within a teen-ager's budget....

Getting to the point...

Star Laser Force, 5810 S. Rice Ave., allows visitors to live out their "Star Trek" fantasies in laser gun duels. Everyone gets a light-sensitive helmet and shoulder pads. Purchase a lifetime membership for $3.50. Games for members are $1.25; for non-members, $4. Hours are 2-11 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 2 p.m-1 a.m. Friday and Saturday and noon-11 p.m. Sunday.

$1.25 a game is ridiculously cheap, and suggests desperation in response to the threat of Photon, which was the much "hotter" and better-promoted laser tag experience. It's interesting that they also allowed "non-members" to play, and I wonder if they were still using the liability release form at this time. It's quite possible that the bulk of the revenue at this time was coming from birthday parties, an element that would spread from pizza/arcade places to become a crucial part of operations in all entertainment destinations over the following ten years.

In case you're wondering, the other attractions listed were:

• Fame City (a very early family entertainment center)
• AstroWorld (the theme park, owned by Six Flags and later closed)
• WaterWorld (next to Astroworld)
• Sea-Arama Marineworld
• Galveston Island
• Armand Bayou Nature Center
• The Houston Zoo
• The Oil Ranch
• Games People Play
• The Children's Museum (fairly new back then), and finally...
• Splash Town USA ("scheduled to open in early August") which is still around to this day.

Edit: Updated title, added a bit of detail to the other attractions, and commentary about the pricing.

Death, you old toad, where is thy sting?

I hope that my two or three loyal readers will not mind another article about Photon. Beyond  repeating the same press-release bullet points, this one gives brief accounts of some municipalities' reluctance to accept laser tag as a business acceptable to the morals of their communities.

It's fair to say the inhabitants of Houston and surrounding communities (both then and today) would generally be comfortable with guns, and that there was scarcely a moment of fear that the game would transform the visiting child into a killing machine. Finding a jackrabbit in the city limits might have been tough, though, even back then. The fathers of some of those inhabitants picked most of them off a generation before.

For those not aware, the Houston City Council will issue a proclamation for the asking. It is of no particular significance and just shows that Sheil was doing her due diligence.

Spokane Chronicle - Mar 27, 1986
For Photon's warriors, death's just an inconvenience
By Fred Grimm
Knight-Ridder

HOUSTON — A sudden buzz, like a burst of radio static, and a phaser-wielding assassin leaps, giggling, from ambush and disappears down a darkened maze. The victim (me) was zapped, fatally.

But death is only a minor inconvenience there amid the rising fog of Photon.

Just four seconds. Just a four-second sojourn into that darkest void. Sort of lacks finality, doesn't it? Death, you old toad, where is thy sting?

First Laser Tag in Houston

(Here's the text of the article posted last year. Errors have been left unchanged.)

HOUSTON MAGAZINE
April, 1986
pp. 49-52

PRO/FILE
SPACE WAR BUSINESSES COMPETE IN SOUTHWEST
Two Firms Offer Space Fantasies

In a distant galaxy, warriors like Gandalf, Thorin, Mr. Micro and the Chameleon battle continuously with Sgt. York, Rambo, Captain Kirk and the entire Cleaver family—Ward, June, Wally and the Beaver—for control of the Photon. A few light years away on South Rice Avenue, the Starship Blue Force struggles against the Xenon Red Raiders on the planet Xenon.

Armed with infrared phasers, chest pods and sonic helmets, the Photon warriors zap each other until they have exhausted their energy and their time. After six and a half minutes, the Photonians relinquish the field to two fresh battalions who begin the battle again.

Packing turbo phasers and armor similar to that of the Photonians, the Blue Force and Red Raiders attack, the flash of lasers and rumble of battle sounds flooding the planet like a violent thunderstorm. The battle on Xenon lasts slightly longer, about seven minutes, before the soldiers call a truce to assess casualties.

As the Photonian warriors leave the battlefield and remove their gear, the reveal their true identities. Gandalf is an accountant, Thorin a lawyer, Rambo a truck driver, and the Cleavers are college students. Sgt. York fudged only slightly. He's a private on leave from the U.S. Marine Corps. The group has just finished playing Photon, a high-tech version of "capture the flag." The Starship Blue Force and the Xenon Red Raiders have just played Star Laser Force, a game similar to Photon.

Photon warriors don helmets, slip into chest pods and arm themselves to battle for control of the "planet."

Native Houstonian Bill Lewis began thinking of ways to stage a mock laser battle after watching Star Wars. He built and sold several businesses, including a driving school and a day care center, before embarking on Star Laser Force.

The view from the Target Audience

We've seen the calm and even reticent reactions of the self-proclaimed 'fuddy-duddies' to the as-yet unnamed sports of laser tag and paintball in the last two posts. Ken Lanterman, the reporter in this final article swings the other way, glib and giddy about "the new photon/laser games" and "the paint pellet war games" and dripping with enthusiasm (and sweat). He takes the trouble to describe the games in detail, making the summer-activities feature piece perfect for inflaming kids with hype and ensuring parents would soon hear, "Can you take me to....?"

Photos accompanying the article reproduced quite badly in microfilm, unfortunately, and are probably lost to history.

No. 1 rule of the game: Shoot to thrill
Ken Lanterman
Houston Post
May 23, 1986

Some may deny it, but deep down inside we are all curious to know how we'd do in battle. If nothing else, we are looking for a little adventure-- something more than the vicarious thrills we get from the movies.

We want to know what we'd do if our lives were put on the line. If we'd fight back. If so, [how?] Would we react like the noble unaggressive creature we may think we are or like the animal we all fear we might be?

Beyond that, how would we do? Would we survive? Are our instincts and skills good enough?

Besides providing the simple exhilaration of hide-and-seek and tag, this is what weekend warriors who play the paint pellet war games or the new photon/laser games learn about themselves.

In the past three years, several versions of these games have sprung up in and around Houston. We visited the newest of each of these: Adventure Games of America and Photon.

Eric Gerber on Photon

Continuing the side trip through articles written about Photon Houston, here's columnist Eric Gerber's first-hand account from just a few months after their opening day. There are all kinds of interesting details in here. (Seriously, the head of the Houston school district, superintendent Reagan, endorsed Photon?)

Electrifying Fantasy
Eric Gerber
Houston Post
February 2, 1986

When I was about 8 years old, I would put a colander on my head, use a raggedy bath towel for a cape and go flying about the house blasting space monsters with a rotary eggbeater — uh, ray gun.
And here I am today, nearly three decades later, more or less in the same situation.
The colander's been replaced by a high-tech space helmet that would turn Darth Vader black with envy. Instead of an egg beater, I've got a phaser, a sleek light-beam weapon. I'm also wearing a control module over my chest, and a 13-pound battery pack is cinched around my waist.

I'm not exactly flying — and the targets this morning aren't space monsters but other people wearing this space-age gear.

"At least it doesn't make you bleed"

Let's start with this editorial by David Westheimer. published in the Houston Post back on September 24, 1986.

"I understand kids whose parents have the wherewithal to buy the latest weapons needn't argue about who got whom first these days. They wear sensors at head and heart that glow when hit by a beam from the opponent's gun."

Westheimer briefly mentions both laser tag and paintball in this essay about playing with guns, and how different generations react to this new trend. There's a lot of food for thought here. How much have people of my generation, and those following, been changed by increasingly realistic entertainment?

 Click to read.

Further research

Vintage Houston Yellow Pages.
From the author's personal collection.
There's Photon, accidentally
listed as Synchro Management!

I have had the pleasure this past Spring to visit our downtown library to see if there were any obvious traces of Star Laser Force in newspapers of the day. To avoid suspense, I'll tell you now that I did not find anything mentioning SLF.  Photon was a national phenomenon sufficient to generate TV features, news coverage, the cartoon spinoff and of course the home version.  There was none of that for SLF which seems to have been just a bit of whimsy for a short season, and even when it was here in Houston it seems to have been nearly ignored by the major papers, the Chronicle and the Post.

To put that into perspective, though, in those same papers I found zero coverage of video games, either home or arcade, in an era where both dominated the amusement sphere of a large chunk of the next generation - kids, teens, and up. The people who edited the paper did not foresee the significance of games in the culture, and only those who beat the publicity drum in the right way could expect to be noticed. Movies were well represented in the entertainment sections; amusement parks were reliable news generators as well. As for laser tag, well, they didn't even have a name for it at first. Still, when Photon showed up, I imagine it was played up as the amusement park of the future, based on various accounts. In the next few posts, I'll document the response of the press here in Houston to the curious newcomer, Photon.


While on this trip I also visited the delightful Texas Room where a collection of local ephemera and documents of all kinds awaits the determined researcher. They pulled the entertainment file for me, and it was fascinating seeing what was meant to be fun throughout the past 100 years. There wasn't anything about SLF there either, sorry to say, but I enjoyed seeing first-hand entertainment ads for the defunct Busch Gardens Houston, which I had never heard of; wrestling, sports events, and much more.