The official LazerTag.Com site is up and down more than a kids on a trampoline, but there’s a lot of good information from one of the developers about new Lazer Tag toys that should be in stores now from Hasbro.
The cool thing is they ship with goggles that give a configurable HUD. Awesome. According to the developer,
(1) All scoring is completely automatic, and changes depending on the type of game played (11 basic game types in the first offering)
(2) There is no way for “cheats” to annoy honest players (other than blatantly covering the receiver).
(3) Physical areas like rooms or car-ports can become actively scored to make a zone of contention.
(4) The Host can set a whole variety of options such as: time limits, number of reloads available, number of tags until tagged-out, number of seconds of shields time, whether or not friendly fire counts, and whether or not teammates can give “medic assistance” to each other in
the event one player becomes badly tagged or needs to be “pumped-up” for a strike mission.(5) Players receive proximity warnings, “lock-ons,” and Identification-Friend-or-Foe information about the other players.
(6) Players receive audio and visual feedback as to whether or not a fired tag landed on the target player.
(7) The receiver is integrated with the transmitter in one unit — there is no extra vest or cap to wear.
(9) The LCD display allows the user to select which game information he/she is most interested in viewing at any time, rather like a soft-screen display in a modern fighter jet.
(10) Sound effects can be “muted” for stealth mode, played audibly to all, or played only through a headset worn by the player.
(11) Headset also includes a transflective Heads-Up-Display which projects images of 3 “Alert Icons” in space in front of the user — one for “Locked-On,” one for “Scored Hit,” and one for “Hit by Opponent.”
And only $60 for a 2-player set – excellent.