This one is just for fun. I'm a newcomer to LTTO but not to the sport of Laser Tag itself. I've been an ESS fan ever since its first run in the US and was aware of its origins in Japan as the Psycho/Saiko Blaster (Saiko in Japanese means, Ultimate, Powerful, the Best, etc. Which is why you hear a lot of things being translated here to Psycho --anyone remember M. Bison's/Vega's Psycho Crusher in Street Fighter?)I got to selling my old stuff and found some of my old ESS gear. I remember thinking how much fun it was and decided to do a search on how I can find *more* ESS gear so I could get my friends to play, even see if Tony ever released a new model.
Googled and found the thread about ESS on THIS forum. Kept seeing all these threads on the new Lazer Tag gear. I looked it up on Amazon and found the picture of the drone. The photos for that made it look like a child's toy (the 3/4 view IMO is really a bad angle for the drone) I thought to myself "Why are these people playing this game? The taggers look like toys compared to ESS. Don't these guys know how much better ESS is compared to that childish Lazer Tag?" Boy was I wrong as I was about to find out.
I kept reading and did a search on Lazer Tag Team Ops reviews... Every single one was extremely positive. Then I found a LTTO review on Gizmodo (being a gadget-head, I was excited to see them reviewing it) Side note: At the time, I thought the review was from a Gizmodo columnist but of course now I know it was Flux who wrote it. (I knew it was a Laser tag fan that wrote it but not *that* big of a fan!) had I known that I might not have been so excited to read the "objective" Gizmodo review 
Anyways it was Greg's review mentioning the HUD and the features that really got me thinking. I go back to reading about LTTO here. Found a thread about modded/painted taggers. WOW, those side shots of the drone looked nice. Even more so in black. Like TF mentioned, it had that anime inspired style look to it. I liked it. I was curious.
Then the Amazon 2 for 1 happened. That was it, I bought 2 Deluxes (not realizing they weren't the cool looking drones that I saw pictures of) and 2 TMBs. After reading I realized the Deluxes I ordered weren't the cool pistols I saw, I went to Target and purchased my first Drone. I took it out of the box, read the well-written instructions. Felt the quality of the tagger, turned it on. Wow. Voice! Wow, shields! Wow, temperature! Wow.
What happened after that was a snowball effect. Like I mentioned, I'm a gadgethead. At work people look to me to see what's new (As an example: I was MMSing and using bluetooth/GPRS & tethering *years* ago with my T68 and one of my versions of the ipaq, had my first bluetooth headset maybe 3 years ago --before people even knew what they were, had around 5 pocket pcs from the very first HPC, it was bad) I shot an email to the director of R&D with a link to Flux's Gizmodo review, and a link to Amazon's 2 for 1. He called me up, asked me what he should order. I said "2 deluxes and 2 TMBs."
We got them in at work, he showed them to upper management and the end result is: Our Company is now going to be purchasing 16 more taggers as a company "toy box" to be used for official company picnics/events! We've had company hosted paintball events before, I sold it from a "much cheaper way to play paintball, with a low-one time investment and no one gets hurt" angle. It worked.
Not to say we don't use them weekly. Almost every Thur & Fri now we hold after hours games in our office which is connected to a huge warehouse with lots of boxes to hide behind. We dim the lights, play music over the company's intercom system and combined with the office corridors and warehouse area, we have a (pardon the cliche) live-action FPS. The best part is, the company owner/president is well aware of these games and wants to join in at our next "night game" How cool is that?
All this because I was looking to buy more ESS. Combined with this board and Flux's *ahem* "unbiased" LTTO review on Gizmodo. (just kidding Flux, it was actually a very objective, well-written review) And of course TagFerret's dedication to making a high-quality product. I remember reading somewhere that it was a "labor of love" --it shows my friend. And I tell people that when they grasp a Drone, Deluxe or TMB and marvel at the design and features "The guy who did it did it as a labor of love, so he can make stuff he wants to play with"
Well it worked for me and my company, we're sold. Good job Brian, you've really started something 
(sorry for the rant, just sharing my "discovering LTTO" experience, I'd like to hear from others)
