Q-Zar

Q-ZAR (called Quasar in the UK, Ireland, and called LaserGame in Sweden) is a type of laser tag that was developed by Geoff Haselhurst and Omnitronics in Perth, Western Australia. The rights were later sold to Leisureplex Ltd, a company based in Ireland which in turn sold them to Q-ZAR International based in Dallas, Texas.

Like other lasertag games, Q-ZAR is played with a gun (or "phaser") that fires harmless beams of infrared light that are detected by equipment worn by the players. There is also a laser pulse on firing, though it is for visual effects only. The basic mechanism of the game revolves around shooting (called tagging) each other or stationary objects.

The standard game of Q-ZAR involves two teams: the red team and the green team (Quasar Elite involves a red and blue team). Each team has a Headquarters (aka "HQ" or "base") to defend from the other team. The goal of the game is to score the most points for the team. You can achieve this by either deactivating the opponents HQ or by tagging the opposing team's players. You may deactivate the opponents HQ by tagging it twice leaving a few seconds between. Whichever team has the most points at the end of the game wins.

Upon being tagged, the following happens: the pack vibrates, makes an explosion noise and the player who has been tagged has a window of around one second to fire off a "reflex" shot (providing no shot was fired in the previous second) before the penalty sequence kicks in. After the one second has passed, the six second penalty sequence starts. During the penalty sequence, the phaser says "Defense Shield, Active Active" for the first 3 seconds. For this period, the player may not be tagged and may not tag other people. For the final three seconds, the phaser says "Warning, Warning, Warning." For this period, a player may be tagged, but may not tag other people. If a player is tagged during Warning, the entire process starts over (including getting a 1-second reflex shot).

The back of the phaser has a simple LED display. When a pack is not energised, there is a number above a "U" showing. The number is the pack's ID number. The U means that the pack is "Un-energized." When a pack is on during normal play, the top number is the number of lives remaining, the bottom is the number of shots (when a player is out of shots, they lose a life, getting a "Good Shot" resets the shot counter). When a player re-energizes, the display shows how many times the player has energised. When a player is out of lives, the display flashes the amount of time left in the game. If a player holds the trigger down for three seconds, either display will show the time remaining or a "bomb" will be triggered that can deactivate all vests around the player, including those on the same team.

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