Tiviachick Loves Laser Tag

In the Words of the Creator: The Evolution of the Photon Pods and Phasers as told by Inventor George Carter III

This article is a first-hand account of the evolution of the Photon pods and phasers, as told by inventor George Carter III.

The following notes about the various Photon pods and phasers were transcribed from a phone conversation with inventor George Carter III on December 13, 2025.

(Photon first generation pod used in Dallas, TX Photon center)

This pod was the very first generation, one of the ones built with a fiberglass helmet that was painted and well used. The scars and marks are from the helmet being run up against walls and phasers. These first pods were only played in Dallas.

These pods didn’t work very well, but they functioned well enough to play. The gear was spotty, but the good players still won. Everyone had fun and everyone was overwhelmed by the show in the arena. The sound and light were state-of-the-art. We had subwoofers, Roscoe fog, molecular lights and everything looked good in the arena.

Jim Dooley designed the hardware and software. The first pods were made with a fiberglass helmet and a polycarbonate shield, which really never changed. The pod is made with opaque ABS plastic and was vacuum formed using inexpensive tooling. The two cables that came up to the helmet, led to the antenna that picks up the radio system that would go from the player to the main system. The circuit board was located inside the top of the helmet. We were forced to use a radio hobby frequency with a wavelength of approximately 20 feet. What that means is that an ideal antenna would have been 20 feet. However, you could do increments of a wavelength and a fraction of the wavelength was on the printed circuit board inside the helmet. This was one of several reasons for using a helmet in the first place. Other reasons included players would hear sounds inside the helmet as they were shooting and getting shot and it was obviously protection for the face and eyes against running into walls and other players. The coil cord you can see with the bare wires is where the phaser would go. It was on the right side because most people are right-handed. The other cable with the connector went to the battery belt and charging happened through that same cable. We accomplished two things with this first gear. Running the units proved that the concept was popular and it also showed that technically it could be made to work. We just had to execute it better. The issues with the equipment were primarily related to radio communication. The boards were not properly mounted and there were poor connections. Radio frequency failures meant signals were not getting to the right place at the right time. Using a Faraday cage with standing waves means there were peaks and valleys in the radio waves, which made for areas of good or poor communication with the gear. We minimized this by moving the antenna at the top of the arena around to adjust for those peaks and valleys. This affected whether the score was properly recorded in the system, but a player would never know it. It didn’t change the outcome that much.

(Photon original first phaser style)

The original phasers had an aluminum barrel and a fiberglass handle.

The next version of the equipment would have shown up roughly about six months prior to the opening of our earliest franchise, just outside of Toronto.

(Photon first production model pod made available to franchises)

The next version of the equipment was what we would consider the first production model, meaning not “prototypish” like the first gear and it was the first version to go out to the franchises. This generation of gear was when we added the new vacuum formed helmet. The pod went to a clear polycarbonate front. The whole pod was clear and painted on the inside except where wanted clear.

(Photon first production model phaser, assembled from two halves)

The phaser was formed from ABS plastic and made in two halves that screwed together. This was the first properly built phaser. This was our first production model, franchise-worthy system. It was all re-engineered by Kirk Gay, who was an administrative engineer and his staff as well as Dan Salari, who is primarily a software guy. Jim Dooley still worked for us then, but there was friction over changing Dooley‘s original stuff. However, it started to work. There were constant upgrades from this point forward and all the changes were logged with internal changes being made to the circuitry. With our budget, I don’t know how we ever did it! The arena didn’t need very many changes. Dallas would have released and used this equipment before our first franchise, Toronto, followed by our second franchise in Kenilworth, NJ. Kirk kept track of the updates. It would’ve been hard to ID different versions because they were constantly getting updates. Kirk made everything downwardly compatible as new internal upgrades and components were developed.

(Photon pod with player logo and second surface painting)

On this pod, you can see the pod is vacuum formed from a different material, back painted on the inside with second surface painting so that it wouldn’t scuff. This version has the player logo on the front of the pod.

(Photon phaser – third design, second-to-last-released)

The second-to-last phaser style we designed is the one with the cross hatching on the handle and the logo on the side. The internal components would have changed along the way, and all versions would have had component upgrades. Any of the phasers up to that point would have been interchangeable.

(Light phaser – final phaser design – V4)

The light phaser was introduced as we were nearing the end. The one thing we couldn’t do was have a laser beam come out of it because the government wouldn’t allow it. No laser beams were allowed. My opinion is that this was always the missing piece. For anything to show up visibly in the arena, you would need to have fog in the air. Our original reason for the fog was that it made for a cool atmosphere. The light phaser was mostly my own design. It used a xenon flash, like you would have on a camera, and a little tube that made a bright light was added. A bright aluminum reflector behind it would reflect the light with the light going forward out of the tube. We surrounded 180° with a cup-shaped bright surface to collect and bounce the light forward, which increased the brightness substantially. What we learned is that a certain duration of the flash (in milliseconds) made a retained image on the retina so it appeared to be a beam traveling across the room. Unfortunately, colored filters would have cut it down too much, so that is why we kept it white light. The person shooting and the person receiving had the easiest time seeing the beam. These light phasers had batteries. This was the last big development we did as we were heading towards the end.

Sincere thanks to George Carter III for providing this first-hand account of the evolution of the Photon pods and phasers.

Comments or Questions?

https://open.spotify.com/show/0xzXT3aqGa2edIlXpcaJBS

Friday, December 19, 2025

Tivia’s 2025 Recap: Podcast Edition

This week on Laser Unfocused Tag Talk I am recapping some of my own personal laser tag highlights from 2025 as a precursor to my annual year in review blog article. Here I’ll share a few of the things I’ve been busy doing in this past year.

ON SPOTIFY:

ON APPLE PODCASTS:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/laser-unfocused-tag-talk-with-tivia/id1632442213

ON YOUTUBE:

https://youtu.be/H9d9lS101F8?si=ftk6H3JvX1XVwrzq

Comments or Questions?

Monday, December 15, 2025

Store Displays That Make You Go “W.O.W.”

For Museum Collection Monday, let’s travel back in time nearly 40 years to the 1986 Christmas shopping season.

Photon and Worlds of Wonder were leading the charge in their toy category that year and here is a look at a very rare (and still somehow working!) Worlds of Wonder Lazer Tag store display from around that time.

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Sunday, December 14, 2025

Dressed To Impress

Last night some high school students walked into the laser tag lobby looking sharp and showing up straight from their West Genesee semi-formal. Love it! They had the idea to play “the guys vs the girls” while many of them were still rockin’ their dressy attire in the arena. I feel so underdressed (lol), but this team looked great!

I can remember a handful of occasions when I’ve seen similar groups show up over the years. I always think this is a really great thing. First, the novelty of wearing something cool and different while playing tag is notable, which is why we snapped a group pic before the game. Also, I have such respect for a group of young people making smart decisions and choosing to have a good time after the dance with a fun and healthy activity like laser tag. That deserves a shout out as well.

Laser tag is absolutely a great way to celebrate a special occasion. And playing while wearing a dress (or suit, as was the case with a few of the guys) adds some extra fun to the experience because it doesn’t happen every day. Yes, I’ve played tag in a dress a few times myself, and when you show up in style the game is elevated in a whole different way. It was so much fun to have this group celebrating their big night by capping the evening off with laser tag. You guys all rock!

Comments or Questions?

Saturday, December 13, 2025

Toys + Tactical Tag = Tournament Time

I really love when laser tag is the vehicle for doing something good to make a positive difference in the community. That’s why I decided to make a road trip down to Bullseye Laser Tag in Woodbridge, NJ to participate in their charity laser tag tournament in support of the Hearts and Hands toy drive to benefit the local Department of Child Permanency and Protection.

For this tactical tournament, the only registration requested was for players to bring toys to donate to this charitable cause. I can definitely get behind that! Every year I am part of the coordination of a major toy drive in my own local area, so to see a similar effort married up with competitive laser tag was definitely something that made me want to get involved. I brought several toys to donate, but the one particular thing I always like to add to a toy drive is a home laser tag set. :)

It was amazing to see that this box was overflowing with toys by the time all the tournament players had added their donations!

Kudos to Bullseye Laser Tag for mobilizing their competitive player base to make a real difference! Additionally, all the tournament players were given a free T-shirt. I don’t have to tell you how much I love tag swag!

The field of players was divided into two teams, red and blue.

I was on the blue team roster with this awesome group!

First, we headed back to the armory to be assigned our iCOMBAT irSMG taggers.

Our captain then led us back to the base area where we prepared for eight different laser tag formats played over ten games. The high achieving winners in each format would earn a bonus spin of the prize wheel at the end.

We played a variety of games, starting with Team Deathmatch, and followed by a round of Domination. Our captain pointed out the locations of the five Domination tubes scattered across the arena.

Domination format is typically my strong suit in tactical laser tag. In this scenario, the objective was not only to hold the domination tube, but to be the player who captured the most tubes during the course of the game. I was part of a three-way tie for the most captures. :)

Next up was One in the Chamber Reaper, where one shot equals one deac and you must reload after each shot. This was the third win for the blue team. For Blackhawk Down we started as the Rangers in the field and lost the game to the red team, but made up for it on the flip side when we played the same format again, now as the Tangos. Following that, we swapped sides of the field for a game of Sniper followed by Borgs vs Humans (before reversing roles, making us the Humans vs Borgs). There is a painted “blacktop” street down the center of the arena and Borgs were required to only play from this designated area. Two-tag Elimination was next and then we ended with Crossfire, where the street now served as the dividing line between sides and we played for accuracy while only tagging from our side of the street.

When all said and done, our blue team took wins in the majority games with a 6 to 4 ratio. Both teams congratulated each other, and were in great spirits at the end. This tournament was lighthearted, a lot of fun and offered quite a bit of variety!

I also enjoyed my time getting to play laser tag with some really awesome people!

Owner Vic Pellegrini had prizes for all the participants, but made it a lot of fun with a unique take on a spinning prize wheel, done digitally on the front monitor.

Those of us who were top achievers in the individual game formats got a bonus spin of the wheel. I took home a Bullseye hat for my tag swag collection and also get the privilege of being Judge Dredd on my next visit! :)

Other prizes ranged from gift cards to cash to merchandise and slices of pizza. This was so much fun and everyone walked away a winner!

Congratulations to the big winner of the tournament, SweetYams, who scored a couple of four packs of game play and dinner for two at Applebee’s. Very nice!

This was an awesome event and such a cool and creative way to support the local toy drive. Thank you to Vic and his team for organizing this!

This tournament brought competitive players together for a wonderful evening of laser tag that serves a greater purpose and will make a huge difference to children in their local community this holiday season. I feel like it was really a privilege to get to play with such awesome laser tag players at Bullseye Laser Tag.

Kudos on a well run event that was absolutely worth making the winter drive down from New York. Can’t wait to do it again and I wish you lots of success with hosting more tournaments in the future!

Comments or Questions?