#electonics

How it works is quite simple. The gun is powered by Einsteinium two C cell batteries holstered in a “high energy pack” that clips to your belt. Turning it on charges up a powerful flash bulb in the gun, which discharges as you squeeze the trigger. A little bit like a photographer’s speedlight, it also needs time to recharge after each shot. It even makes a similar (and very cool) sound as it charges up.

The included target is powered by two triple As. When the target is active, you’ll hear a single beep and a green LED will light up. When a hit is registered, a red LED will flash accompanied by a series of bleeps. There’s no way to count your score or anything like that.

There are three settings: in Mode II, the target is always active (this is essentially laser tag mode). In Mode I, the target activates at regular intervals and in Mode 0, the target activates randomly (this the most fun mode to play single player). And that’s really all there is to it. Simple, but fun. I can imagine myself loving this thing as a kid. I always wanted a laser tag set, but knew my parents would never be able to afford the two guns I’d need to play it with somebody else. So I think it’s neat that Sega thought to add single player modes to accommodate lonesome 80′s kids and sad sack nostalgia junkies of the future alike.

Unfortunately, my target doesn’t work exactly as it should. Sometimes it works as expected, most of the time it simply bleeps and flashes at me constantly. Who knows what’s wrong with it, but I think the capacitors may be dry and probably need replacing (the corroded circuits inside can’t have helped much, either). 

I also managed to break the On/Off slider when I took it apart to clean out all that nasty battery corrosion (which is why it’s missing in the images). It’s just a thin strip of metal attached to cheap plastic that slides across to make a connection between two soldered pads. Maybe I put it back together wrong and so it snapped off. I don’t know. Anyway, be careful of that if you plan to take one of these things apart. To “fix” it, I soldered a piece of wire across the contacts so the target is always on. Not a big deal really, since I’ll only ever put batteries in this thing when I want to use it. Like I said, my “handiwork” is the least of its problems. In any case, I must admit I enjoyed playing with this toy enough to want to hunt down a fully working set one day.

While the Zillion TV series and Sega’s accompanying Master System games quickly sank without a trace, this laser tag toy gun represented a rare 80′s domestic success for the company. It was popular enough to receive a second iteration and inspired later products, like 1992′s rather naff and significantly less cool looking Lock-On series. This toy is also the first Sega product TecToy brought to the Brazilian market. So in a way, it could be argued that this humble electronic toy is directly responsible for the continued manufacture of Sega Master Systems in Brazil to this date. Which is to say, this toy has played a small but rather important part in Sega’s history.

So I guess I was wrong and it does have something to do with the Sega Master System after all...

Further Information:

Watch Nostalgia Nerd’s video about this toy to see it in action and learn a bit more

segaretro.org article about the toy