This past Sunday Corrie and I spent a small portion of the evening at Blazer Tag, a re-constituted movie theater (that Corrie remembers visiting as a youngster) in southern Austin that has an arena(?) for the activity of laser-tag.
It was my first time, and while I did understand the fundamentals, actually doing it was pretty cool. The theater area, being quite cavernous, had a multi-level structure built with ramps up and down spiraling to a peak of probably four stories. The lights were basically off, save for a disco apparatus with colored strobe effects, and accompanied by loud techno music.
Participants strap on the electronic vest--this will buzz when you're "hit"--and attached to the vest is the laser gun. Inside the arena were "mines" that would get tripped when you came too close, a sound would begin to emit from it while a timer zoomed down, and you either had to shoot it with your gun to stop the mine, or get out of range of the "blast". Being tagged by it was similar to being tagged by an opponent: your gun won't work for ten seconds or so, which is actually quite long when your chasing an opponent or fleeing from one.
Corrie and I lagged, had coupons, and got two matches each. Each match lasts for 20 minutes, which is long enough, but since we lagged, we got the 9 pm game and the 9:40 game. Also, since it was Sunday, we blasted and chased only each other both times. It was one-on-one for both rounds. Silly, but still fun.
The first round I walked around like the Terminator, looking for the red-glowing orbs on Corrie's electronic vest, and was sniped plenty more times than I got her. She won that round handily. The second round I was much more stealth about my actions, and we had plenty of good fire-fights; both popping out of corners or making nice duck-and-cover-and-pop-and-shoot moves. I was leading for majority of the round, but then I got physically wiped out, and instead of hiding in a corner to preserve my win, I started walking around. I was done, and lost my lead before the time was up.
The activity is, even for a solitary married couple, a blast, and it could be that much cooler to play with friends, or even strangers...this place had fifty or so gun-and-vest combos, so it could get crazy with some team battles.
I played lazer tag once.. I think it was a cast party after some show in Sacramento. Maybe not, anyway it was with a crowd and we had teams, the first time I was hit I had no idea what was happening, but boy was it a fun game, similar to paint ball but without the bruises from the bursting paint balls.
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