Off to the Laser Tag Museum

Isn't it amazing that laser tag, which was thought to be a passing fad when it was invented, is more popular than ever today? 30-plus years later, we all benefit from the technical progress over the years. I admire Erik, the curator of the Laser Tag Museum, for using his extensive connections in the industry to round up examples of nearly every known commercial laser tag system, and to try to write the very specific history of this unusual intersection between electronic game and sport.

The Star Laser Force pack has been refurbished expressly to be set up for display in the Museum at a future date. My primary goal was to get it to light up, giving it the same appearance as it would have had in its native arena. It wasn't too hard, but some parts, especially the helmet, were time consuming.

After some experimentation, I found that I could feed power into the BOOM sound module as well as the main board, so the restored helmet's new speaker now works as well, instead of just the lights. You may ask, who cares if there's a hit sound, if it's just sitting on display? If you've been following along, you know that you weren't allowed to take pictures in the arena at Star Laser Force for a reason. So consider it an Easter egg of sorts, that when you shoot a flash picture of this pack, you'll actually be shooting the pack and you may be able to score points. Since it's designed to score using strobe flash only, I found it to be a bit tricky with a mobile phone LED, but it can be done at close range, and I have been blinking the "flashlight" feature on my phone at the pack to carry out most of my shooting tests.

Old photo of some of the Museum's displays.

Kick me

So if you should happen to visit the Laser Tag Museum some day in the future, you may come across this Star Laser Force pack on display. If so, please shoot it. You may hear in response, through the display glass, a tiny burst of sound, a faint sigh from the past.

Plus you'll score 10 points. Hooray for our side.