Laser Dinosaur Wars
I've noticed that comments have been kind of sparse lately. I can take a hint, things have been a little bit boring, so I cast my mind backwards for some really interesting story, something really exciting to blog about, and I eventually it came to me, "Laser Dinosaur Wars"! You may think that nothing could be as exciting as this title indicates, but you would be wrong!
As with all things really exciting, Laser Dinosaur Wars (hereafter referred to as LDW) started while I was in college. 7-11 was giving away little (2 inches or so) glow-in-the-dark plastic dinosaurs. My friend Josh managed to acquire over 100 of these little dinosaurs and that's how LDW was born. The core idea is simple, turn off all the lights and throw dinosaurs at one another. But it turned out that there was a hidden depth to the game. Your initial instinct is to horde your dinosuars, but having a big pile of glowing dinosaurs gives away your position. In fact just the act of throwing the dinosaurs reveals approximately where you are. This might not have been a big deal if the dinosaurs were softer, but they were made of relatively hard plastic, so getting whacked by one hurt quite a bit (and yes I suppose that it is possible that someone could have had their eye put out).
So as you can see the core dynamic of LDW was that your ammunition was also your only source of light, and not a very good source of light at that, this made gameplay actually pretty dangerous (from an "Ow! that really hurt! standpoint, not a "911? we've got a man down with dinosaur in his jugular" standpoint). The "run and gun" offense was very effective (immediately moving after every throw) but it was very easy to run into someone else, or a desk, or the wall... My career ending injury ended up taking the form of that last obstacle. Josh had just bought a new house and the basement was totally empty. By this time we were out of college (that should have been a clue right there) and we decided to take advantage of all the open space to play LDW one more time. I was running the fire and leap offense, and didn't realise that I was only about two inches from the wall. So when I flung my brontosaurus and immediately dove forward, the top of my head impacted into the wall with considerable force. In fact I think I must have hit a stud because otherwise I'm sure I would have gone through the dry wall. My wretched gasping sobs brought the lights up, to never go off again...
Laser Koosh Wars might have worked better
As with all things really exciting, Laser Dinosaur Wars (hereafter referred to as LDW) started while I was in college. 7-11 was giving away little (2 inches or so) glow-in-the-dark plastic dinosaurs. My friend Josh managed to acquire over 100 of these little dinosaurs and that's how LDW was born. The core idea is simple, turn off all the lights and throw dinosaurs at one another. But it turned out that there was a hidden depth to the game. Your initial instinct is to horde your dinosuars, but having a big pile of glowing dinosaurs gives away your position. In fact just the act of throwing the dinosaurs reveals approximately where you are. This might not have been a big deal if the dinosaurs were softer, but they were made of relatively hard plastic, so getting whacked by one hurt quite a bit (and yes I suppose that it is possible that someone could have had their eye put out).
So as you can see the core dynamic of LDW was that your ammunition was also your only source of light, and not a very good source of light at that, this made gameplay actually pretty dangerous (from an "Ow! that really hurt! standpoint, not a "911? we've got a man down with dinosaur in his jugular" standpoint). The "run and gun" offense was very effective (immediately moving after every throw) but it was very easy to run into someone else, or a desk, or the wall... My career ending injury ended up taking the form of that last obstacle. Josh had just bought a new house and the basement was totally empty. By this time we were out of college (that should have been a clue right there) and we decided to take advantage of all the open space to play LDW one more time. I was running the fire and leap offense, and didn't realise that I was only about two inches from the wall. So when I flung my brontosaurus and immediately dove forward, the top of my head impacted into the wall with considerable force. In fact I think I must have hit a stud because otherwise I'm sure I would have gone through the dry wall. My wretched gasping sobs brought the lights up, to never go off again...
Laser Koosh Wars might have worked better
posted by DireKobold at 11:09 AM
1 Comments:
A good story to promote the Nerf series of games! Are there glow in the dark nerf toys by the way? You could be onto something here.
The minimal comments weren't intended as personal. Just too much of the day job game of late. Recently I've been assigned to play with a co-worker who I suspect is part Neanderthal: He's been around since shortly after the dinosaurs disappeared, is thickheaded and hostilely impatient with any answer that can't be summed up in two grunts or less.
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