Hardcore Laser Tag

Mike Yates plays laser tag. But we’re not talking about the kind of game you might find down at the Family Fun Center or around your neighborhood using some toy.

Yates is at the center of a group of hardcore laser tag players who prefer to play their games in warrens of bunkers below abandoned military bases, using highly modified custom taggers.

From his home base in Washington state he’s been hacking laser tag gear for a decade or so, and his latest project, the Scorpion, is a custom sniper rifle and RPG launcher based on Hasbro’s newest-generation Lazer Tag Team Ops (LTTO) platform.

Photography by Steve Lodefink

Since Yates moves in the shadowy world of underground tagger developers, he was able to obtain a pre-release prototype circuit board for the Hasbro LTTO tagger, called the Tag Master Blaster, from its developers, Shoot the Moon Productions. The TMB is a laser tagger that also fires a foam-tipped, IR-emitting RPG round. To fire the rocket, the player hand-pumps the gun to pressurize a plastic pneumatic tank, which propels the rocket

20– 40 feet. Very cool, but not very Yates.

For ten months, Yates and a fellow laser hacker built the ultimate LTTO-compatible IR weapons system. The Scorpion is mil-spec from top to bottom. The most obvious feature is the four-rocket magazine that attaches to the top of the weapon.

Four Mac pneumatic solenoid valves control the airflow from the 3,000-psi aluminum tank to the rockets through stainless steel plumbing. The trigger grip for firing the rockets comes from an actual tank and was found on eBay. In addition to being a rocket launcher, the weapon functions as a high-powered LTTO sniper rifle with a 1,500-foot range, thanks to the big 4-inch adjustable-focal-length lens.

There’s a big element of one-upsmanship motivating the development of these guns. Everybody knows that when they show up at the annual NW TagFest, there will be some new showstopper there. More often than not, Mike Yates is behind it.

—Steve Lodefink

>> Mike Yates’ Custom Tag: mysite.verizon.net/resobodw

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