I used to play Photon when I lived in Texas (San Antonio). It was like a mile from my high school. It was freakin expensive (like 3 bucks a game). But you could get a 3 game pass for 8 or some other ridiculous fee. But the place was awesome. Not like the modern laser tag set ups ( a room with ply wood walls spray painted with black light paint.
Photon was as much about the environmental experiance as it was about the game. LT had nothing on it. Was deep gray carpeted walls, Monster sound system, fog, search lights (that actually moved and made the search lights look wicked). It was green vs. red, not this everyone vs. everyone crap we are getting stuck with now. You would go into this brushed aluminum air lock type door. Then you were in an a very environmental team room where we got out gear on. I see comments about the the dorky lookin helmet... But it was totally necessary in the arena game. If you pulled the trigger half way you could line up on your target. If your target was lined up you heard a beep. It also turned on a little LED on the gun. If you got hit you, your gun and chest pack would vibrate and you would hear an explosion sound in your helmet. The gun would shut off for x amount of seconds. You lost x amount of points. Eventually the power up sound would happen. If you hit someone on the other team, it would explode but in a more positive uplifting way. The kind of explosion that let you know you just totally vaporized your opponent. If you shot one of your own team members, you lost a lot of points. That was bad.
But the layout was the real kick. There were multiple levels. Not the upstairs, downstairs thing like todays lasertag. It had walls that were at angles. crawl spaces, blacked out maze areas, wiggly bridge things (kinda like on kids playsets). This was usually accompanied by some deep thumpin' newage music (what today would be called ambient) But it was like Jean-Michal Jarre.
There was also an observation deck so non players could watch. But the kicker was that for a buck you could buy a "clink" (big gold token) you could use to play your own private version of target practice up there. About 2 times per game a red alert would happen and these banks of spot lights would come on and sweep the main battlefield area. This loud female monotone voice would be blaring at you something like emergency emergency... At these points in the game, the folks on the observation deck could actually effect the game and make you loose points, and for that mater the use of your gun. So, in a sense, it was a random invasion from another group. But after like 20 seconds, it would go back to normal. Yuo kinda wanted to shot the fraks up there for spite, but it did no good.
On the outside they had tv monitors all over the place to watch how the game was going. It was only scores, but it was live.
They also had a game room, next to the liquid and solids station (snack bar). The only thing I remember is that is had excitabike.
Modern day LT games are kinda wimpy. You can cover up the sensors on your gun so you do not get hit. This was not possible with Photon as your helmet was a target. Your chest plate and back plate and gun were targets. Much more combat like.
My hunch is all the extras that they put into the game probably were much more expensive to buy and maintain. The other thing I remember was that I think that the Photon system was based on radio frequencies, not infered beams with little laser sighting pieces. When you aligned your gun on someone and got a green light, you knew to fire. It made sniping fun because you could not see where it was coming from.
Now on the flip side, in LT, I do like the fact that you can fire off a laser and see a result. Very Hollywood.
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Topic: Photon, the original Laser Tag (Read 5573 times)
