Original: Jan. 02, 2010
I’ve been in and out of the sport of Paintball for almost 18 years now, and I’ve seen a lot of changes and a lot of products come and go. It never fails that every few years as a new batch of players typically enter the sport, a lot of the old ideas are recycled again. Although after taking a good look at the sport as it is now, there are some things on the comeback and trends that I haven’t seen in years!
We stopped using horizontal pods on our packs since they stuck out too much when playing tournament paintball (back in its infancy), and went to a vertically mounted one. Now I hear guys talking about going to a horizontal pack since the pods are easier to get to. Remote systems fell by the wayside in favour of marker-mounted tanks, but remote lines now seem to be making a comeback as well.
We’ve had 50 calibre paintballs before, and they were phased out in favour of the 68 calibre since they worked better. Now they’re attempting to revive the 50 cal like it’s something new, and telling us it’s going to work better than the 68 cal?
Air tanks used to come straight out of the back of markers, and it was hard to get your masks behind to sight your shots. We went to the bottomline and now could get a batter sight down the back of the marker. Tanks are still bottomline but now they have stocks on the back of the marker (and some stocks hide the tank. Where have I seen that before? Hmmm...) and it's hard to sight down the gun again, unless you spend a chunk of money on a sight that will raise up your level of vision.
In the 90’s, Viewloader had the VL 3000 which was a 300-round hopper which I affectionately remember as the “Whaler”. Now we have Pinocchio loaders.
There’s something in the technology of the Q-Loader that I swear I’ve seen before, but at the moment I can’t quite place where.
Paintball started off with the 10-round tubes. Then we had the “stick” feeders. Then we had the bulk hoppers of 50 or so; then 100, 150, 200 and so on. You could get hoppers piggy-backed on to hoppers. Next came the agitated loaders and eventually the force-feed loaders. Now we’re going back to low capacity and low tech hoppers, from a revival of the 50-round hopper to the new modified 50 round loaders to fit Cyclone systems. I wonder how long until someone shows up on the field with the stick feed system again!
Tiberius Arms recently released a gravity feed loader that's supposed to help channed the paintball and stop jamming. Indian Springs did the same thing in the 90's with the Maxi Loaders with the channel in the bottom.
I saw in an APG recently an article on how to be stealthy, which included advice on lining you loader with foam to cut down on ball noise. Uh… yea, already did that back in ’93 with felt material. If it wasn’t for all the porting on barrels nowadays (and the fact that the BAFT made them illegal), we’d probably see the return of true silencers too.
But to me, the biggest sign that Paintball has come full circle is the emergence and growth of the scenario style of play over the last few years. Way back when, we did everything in our power to try to keep the “military” aspect out of Paintball. We still wore the camouflage, but tried to keep the markers from looking anything like a real gun. Conversion kits were available but replicas were generally frowned upon by the community. Eventually we emerged from the woods with the development of speedball. We dropped the camouflage for coloured jerseys, and used markers with colourful anodizing. As our visual presence grew, so did our exposure to the public, and our popularity increased. The markers got faster and the game got more intense. At some point, the markers got too fast and stalled the game. It got too expensive for this faster style of play, so people went back into the bush for the slower pace but just as thrilling game. The camo came back, and with our general (although sketchy at times) acceptance from the public, it became Ok to use the replica markers, which fuelled a higher demand for them. Our acceptance is still fragile and we still need to watch our image and how we present ourselves, but that’s another post for another time.
Any of you other old-timers see products or trends coming back into play after a long hiatus? I'd like to hear your observations and add to the list.
SNIPER BOB, 2000-20010