The Deal

• $42 for two rounds of laser tag and one round of mini golf for four people, valid Tuesday–Friday ($84 value)

Laser Tag: A Battle of Beams

Laser tag transports players to a world where futuristic armies do battle with harmless lasers. Read on to learn more about the technology.

The year was 1984, and while George Orwell’s visions of a dystopian future hadn’t come to fruition, a new kind of futuristic reality blossomed: laser tag. In the original immersive experience, known as Photon, players wielded guns equipped with infrared LEDs and scrambled around a darkened 10,000-square-foot arena, firing at each other to amass the most points. Since then, the basic design hasn’t drastically changed. Most systems still use infrared light—encoded with information about the shooter—to hit a target on the opponent’s vest, which then sends a radio signal to a central computer to update the tally and deactivate the “dead” player’s equipment for a few seconds. Actual lasers, if incorporated at all, usually only serve as a visual aid for aiming.

A Long Time Ago in a Very Specific State . . .

It isn’t quite accurate to call Photon the first version of laser tag. The same year that system took Dallas, Texas, by storm, another version, Star Laser Force, sprung up in Houston, Texas. Neither system has a definitive claim on being the first, but Photon’s method of central scorekeeping makes it a more worthy progenitor to modern laser-tag arenas. (Star Laser Force later became a popular home version known as Lazer Tag.) In either case, the system struck a nerve with a nation still enchanted by Star Wars. Photon’s founder, George Carter, even credits the movie franchise as the inspiration behind his invention—specifically, the scenes of our heroes volleying blaster fire with Stormtroopers.

Bonus Points

• The original Photon experience was set among a digital soundtrack produced by Ken Caillat, who also produced Fleetwood Mac’s iconic sci-fi soundscapes.