Review: Lazer Tag LTTO Deluxe Tagger

Lazer Tag LTTO Deluxe Tagger. sets your VCR too.

Lazer tag never really took off in Australia, but that's not to say I didn't work around that:)  Hasbro's Lazer Tag Team Ops (LTTO) line from several years back brought all the cool elements of Lazer Tag from the 80's back into a home environment...but were only available in the US. Sooo.. after a crazy early morning impulse buy on Ebay, I ended up with 12 of these LTTO Deluxe taggers..

The LTTO Deluxe pack comes with two taggers (originally green and orange, but they also come in blue and yellow) and two head up displays (HUD). I however have a really fat head so I struggled wearing these HUDs- luckily they're not essential for gameplay and we mostly find they get in the way, which is a shame because the concept of them is awesome.

The HUD serves as more as dumb eye protection, but the taggers are connected to them via a cable that sends hit and ammo information to you via a lil LED light and a speaker. Yup, it projects on the inside of your eyewear so you can see your current status, as well as hear when you're hit or in trouble. Without them, you're sort of in the dark when it comes to your status.. but for us.. noone really cared. HUD- gone!

The guns are very accurate and can be customised with how many shots you can let off, indoor or outdoor play and shields. No vests here, all you do is aim at the opponents' dome on top of the tagger and fire away. These taggers even let you know when an opponent is in the vicinity with a loud audible "DANGER" from a rather pleasant female voice!

The guns can just be set easily to free for all and everyone can just go nuts and shoot away, but for the die hards, the LTTO Deluxe taggers can do a WHOLE lot more. We're talking scoring, functionality changes for different games (Capture the flag etc) handicaps, it's all in here. The taggers can allocate players to different teams, and send the game results to individual taggers to let you know whether you're the team's sharp shooter or the goober liability. This is all awesome stuff, but for the casual player who just wants to shoot stuff, it's too much and is the best way to lose their attention. Trying to get 4-6 guys to stand still and pay attention is a challenge at the best of times, let alone when they're just doing pretending they're out of Predator. 

Taggers are compatible with all Lazer Tag toys, which is cool because in a following impulse buy on ebay I ended up with a whole bunch of IR-2 Drones and some Master Blasters. Even cooler is their compatibility with the Phoenix LTX's, although the slightly different systems mean you have to adjust your play accordingly.

These were unfortunately discontinued, but you can probably still find them on Ebay. They go for anything between $30 US to $120 depending on the seller.

Usability: 5/10
Out of the box performance: 8/10
Cool factor: 9/10
Price point: 7/10 (if you go with the 50 buck average mark)