High-Tech Tag Zaps the Campuses : Cal State Long Beach Is No. 1 Nationally by a Lazer’s Edge

The scene looked like something out of a science-fiction cartoon.

On one end of the court, resembling space-age Viet Cong in their black tights and yellow sashes, the four Lensmen of Cal State Long Beach danced back and forth, dodging invisible light beams and looking like marionettes dangling in a wind tunnel. At the other end, smartly Spartan in their gray shorts and white sweatshirts, the Seattle Pacific University Falcons earnestly pressed their attack.

Armed with foot-long plastic ray guns, the two teams--each two men and two women--aimed frantically at the red-and green-flashing targets mounted on each other’s chests. For most of the 14 short games, the competition was too close to call. Then the Lensmen put on a burst to win the tournament by two games and take the title.

Thus ended the first national collegiate championships--held this week at the Bonaventure Hotel--of an exotic new sport that’s gaining popularity on college campuses: Lazer Tag.

‘I Tagged You.’ ‘Did Not!’

Ironically, America’s latest college craze was originally created for children aged about 8 to 10. “The idea came out of reminiscing about our childhoods,” said Paul Rago, 40, vice president of marketing for Worlds of Wonder Inc., creator of last year’s hugely successful computerized talking bear, Teddy Ruxpin, and now of Lazer Tag. “We would play tag and there’d always be arguments about whether or not you’d actually been tagged. We decided to create a game of tag where there would be no question.”

So the company spent 18 months developing a technology that now seems deceptively simple. Armed with toy guns called Starlights that emit narrow infrared beams, players also wear four-inch light-sensitive targets called Starsensors that register “hits” with a series of digital red lights. The object of each 90-second game is to score more hits on members of the opposing team or their carefully guarded goal post. Six hits and a player is out; two outs and a team loses the game.

Though a similar product is being marketed by at least one other company--LJN Toys Ltd., which sells a gun and target set called Photon--Rago says his firm expects to gross between $75 million and $100 million this year alone on Lazer Tag, which has been available since September at $49.95 a set.

NBC has developed a Saturday morning cartoon based on the product, which of course has greatly enhanced its sale among children.

Young Adults Too

What company officials didn’t expect, however, according to Rago, was the appeal of the game to young adults. It was the perception of that interest, he said, that prompted them to begin approaching college intramural sports programs earlier this year with the idea of entering teams in a national competition. “It’s all part of a marketing mix,” he said, “to get people to know about it and become little missionaries for the game.”

The response exceeded even their fondest hopes. At CSULB, according to Bill Vendle, the university’s director of recreational sports, no fewer than 17 teams vied for the honor of representing their school in the national competition, and 60 more have already signed up for future tournaments. And at Seattle Pacific, said sports director Howie Kellogg, 32 teams competed in this year’s championship eliminations, with 40 new ones already on a waiting list for next year.

Eventually 16 campuses nationwide fielded official Lazer Tag teams. Regional competitions narrowed the field to eight. And this week, the semifinalists--including Georgia Tech, University of Pennsylvania, University of Massachusetts, University of Houston and DePaul University--were flown to Los Angeles for the last elimination bouts, from which Long Beach and Seattle emerged to meet in the finals.

Celebrities Compete

The showdown at the Bonaventure on Wednesday proved a spirited event, complete with noisy rooting sections featuring pompon girls in pep uniforms, referees wearing red shirts and a celebrity bout pitting Laker superstar Magic Johnson, former Rams quarterback Vince Ferragamo, Olympic gold-medalist Valerie Brisco-Hooks and former Dodger outfielder Jay Johnstone against a team consisting of the members of the Oingo Boingo rock band.

“When you’re playing short people like that, they’re hard to hit,” Johnson said in explaining how Oingo Boingo managed to win one of four exhibition games from the super-athletes.

Members of the CSULB Lensmen later attributed their narrow victory over Seattle to good teamwork, lots of practice and the liberal use of cross-fire tactics. “We coordinated our actions real well,” said team captain Perry Porter, 23, a finance major with a longtime interest in science fiction and games like Dungeons and Dragons. “I’m real thrilled about this. When we first started, nobody took it seriously.”

‘Like Playing Chess’

To prepare for the bout, team members said, they practiced together in the school gym three nights a week since early October, as well as at least an hour a day individually. Practices, they said, were coordinated by their coach--Mike Munson, campus coordinator of intramural events--who, among other things, ran them through drills and helped with strategies.

“It’s kind of like playing chess,” Porter said.

For their efforts, the team won an all-expense-paid trip to New York City to attend a New Year’s Eve party put on by MTV, the rock video station. “If they’re looking for a new blond Lazer Tag model, I’m ready,” said team member Hope Jensen, 18.

Vendle, meanwhile, said he expects the game to become a permanent fixture on the CSULB campus where he predicts there will be 100 active Lazer Tag teams by spring, when he is planning the next local tournament.

“It meets all our criteria,” he said of the game. “It requires mental ability and it’s aerobic. From a health point of view, it’s great, and from an emotional point of view, you can let out a lot of frustration. A lot of us want to pull out a gun and shoot somebody.”