DRAGON
05-30-2007, 03:52 PM
Just reminiscing the past and realized I have been playing paintball for 20 years now...
Was at lunch from work and somehow eneded up at a magazine store and saw an APG on the shelf. Thumbed through it and said, "OMFG I have got to try this!" :eek: Took the mag back to work and showed it to teh boys and it seems I wasn't the only one enthused -
There was an ad in APG for Hell Survivors in Pinkney, Michigan. I ended up calling them and asked if they'd send some info to me. Once I got the info I realized if I got 20 players together I could play for free(wowie zowie!). :o Between my friends and people from work I ended up getting 30 people together for our first day of 'splatball'(what we called it then) -
We all showed up on the field looking as noobish as was then. If you were an experienced player you were camo'd down. Most of us had blue jeans and t-shirts on -
Since there were so many of us we ended up playing against a regular team and all the walk-ons. We could have played a private game but chose to endeavor the experienced players cuz we wuz some baaaaaad doods from Detroit! :cool:
The field markers were .50 cal. Crossman Spotmarkers which resembled a .357 Mag handgun. We bought .50 cal paint in 100 round baggies for $10. We had no tubes so we had to carry the baggies in our pockets. Worse yet the Spotmarker only had cylindrical 6 shot chambers that had to be reloaded by hand in the field when you ran out of ammo. Another conciliation :dodgy: of the Spotmarker was the grip had to be removed at around 25 shots to add another 12 gram C02 cartridge. There were no full face masks then, just these Uvix goggles that resembled shop gogles. If you took one in the face, throat or ear, it was just tough patooties. I had plenty of fat lips in the day......but that's all in the fun of things right? -
So here we are, 30 baaaaad doods from Detroit with these little Spotmarkers looking at our opponents which had PMI 1's, 2's and 3's, Tippmann pumps and .60 cal Smig's, constant air, 50 rd loaders and the rest of technology at that time. Suddenly me tinks we were looking bad in a literal sense lol -
So to make a long story shorter, we never had so much fun having our asses handed to us all day as we did then. The regular team even had girls pwning us but who cares in such a state of paintball grandeur? -
Before my next day of play, I had a PMI 68 Magnum with all the buzzers and bells as I was surely not going to have my ass handed to me every time I stepped on the field. Pump marker, constant air, 50rd loader and camo's WOOT! The other 15 or so that were instant addicts did the same. We continued to play as a team and got much better at this game of splatball. We played through the summer and by fall the season fizzled out with the oncoming snow. By the next spring there were about 7 of us diehards left. I'm quite sure I'm most likely the only addict left playing to this day -
That 1987, now 2007. It's very interesting how things have changed since then. If I had a Spyder e-marker then, I'll bet I could have sold it for $3000 lol. You have no idea how much we wanted even a semi-auto. With technology so advanced and paint prices so low now, it's almost unbeleivable how much things have changed. Wonder if any of you will still be playing in another 20 years? Just imagine the technology then. I'll most likely be playing in a wheelchair some day. Hee hee, teh AARP/NPPL Senior Wheelchair World Cup Orlando lol - :D
Was at lunch from work and somehow eneded up at a magazine store and saw an APG on the shelf. Thumbed through it and said, "OMFG I have got to try this!" :eek: Took the mag back to work and showed it to teh boys and it seems I wasn't the only one enthused -
There was an ad in APG for Hell Survivors in Pinkney, Michigan. I ended up calling them and asked if they'd send some info to me. Once I got the info I realized if I got 20 players together I could play for free(wowie zowie!). :o Between my friends and people from work I ended up getting 30 people together for our first day of 'splatball'(what we called it then) -
We all showed up on the field looking as noobish as was then. If you were an experienced player you were camo'd down. Most of us had blue jeans and t-shirts on -
Since there were so many of us we ended up playing against a regular team and all the walk-ons. We could have played a private game but chose to endeavor the experienced players cuz we wuz some baaaaaad doods from Detroit! :cool:
The field markers were .50 cal. Crossman Spotmarkers which resembled a .357 Mag handgun. We bought .50 cal paint in 100 round baggies for $10. We had no tubes so we had to carry the baggies in our pockets. Worse yet the Spotmarker only had cylindrical 6 shot chambers that had to be reloaded by hand in the field when you ran out of ammo. Another conciliation :dodgy: of the Spotmarker was the grip had to be removed at around 25 shots to add another 12 gram C02 cartridge. There were no full face masks then, just these Uvix goggles that resembled shop gogles. If you took one in the face, throat or ear, it was just tough patooties. I had plenty of fat lips in the day......but that's all in the fun of things right? -
So here we are, 30 baaaaad doods from Detroit with these little Spotmarkers looking at our opponents which had PMI 1's, 2's and 3's, Tippmann pumps and .60 cal Smig's, constant air, 50 rd loaders and the rest of technology at that time. Suddenly me tinks we were looking bad in a literal sense lol -
So to make a long story shorter, we never had so much fun having our asses handed to us all day as we did then. The regular team even had girls pwning us but who cares in such a state of paintball grandeur? -
Before my next day of play, I had a PMI 68 Magnum with all the buzzers and bells as I was surely not going to have my ass handed to me every time I stepped on the field. Pump marker, constant air, 50rd loader and camo's WOOT! The other 15 or so that were instant addicts did the same. We continued to play as a team and got much better at this game of splatball. We played through the summer and by fall the season fizzled out with the oncoming snow. By the next spring there were about 7 of us diehards left. I'm quite sure I'm most likely the only addict left playing to this day -
That 1987, now 2007. It's very interesting how things have changed since then. If I had a Spyder e-marker then, I'll bet I could have sold it for $3000 lol. You have no idea how much we wanted even a semi-auto. With technology so advanced and paint prices so low now, it's almost unbeleivable how much things have changed. Wonder if any of you will still be playing in another 20 years? Just imagine the technology then. I'll most likely be playing in a wheelchair some day. Hee hee, teh AARP/NPPL Senior Wheelchair World Cup Orlando lol - :D