There was a third-party multiplayer upgrade pack for one of the Quake games back in the ’90s that included a whole slew of non-standard weapons. Among them one of the most memorable was a gravity well, that when thrown into the middle of a crowded room full of warring players would suck them into a vortex. Assuming its user had made it to safety in time, they would then be left the victor. The hyper-violent make-believe world of a first-person shooter is probably best left in a Pentium server from the ’90s, with few direct parallels in the real world. Maybe laser tag, or Nerf battles, are the closest you’ll get.
If you are a Nerf enthusiast, then you’ll appreciate [Giaco Whatever]’s CO2-powered remote-control Nerf bomb as an analogue of that Quake gravity well. It fires twelve darts at the press of a button on an infra-red remote control. The firing tubes sit in a nicely machined manifold connected via a solenoid valve to a little CO2 gas bottle. In the hectic world of a Nerf war it is slid out into the field of combat, its operator takes cover, and the other participants are showered in foam darts. There are probably kids who would sell their grandparents to own this device.
The build is detailed in the video below the break, along with a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek movie segment demonstrating it in action.
We’ve given you a lot of Nerf projects over the years, but perhaps a couple of guns are best to leave for your enjoyment. One partially 3D printed, and the other fully.
Via Gizmodo. Thanks [Itay Ramot] for the tip.
Cool stuff, although I think he may want retire that LiPo battery soon.
“Among them one of the most memorable was a gravity well, that when thrown into the middle of a crowded room full of warring players would suck them into a vortex.”
One of the Saints Row games has a black hole gun. Fun.
Hollow brass tubes in every direction… Looks like a bleedout hazard if you fall on it… Not good in a Nerf battle situation….
Dammit! What is happening to our society? We used to do things way more dangerous as kids and never had a problem. Might as well lock our kids in virtual reality so that there is no possibility of every feeling the real world.
Ha! That’s rich! Have a great time with that Darwin Award!
There is a difference between having fun ‘while’ being safe, and “Hold my beer. I’ll be fine. I haven’t died yet.”
Good lord, I grew up with Lawn Darts and hours wasted by shooting arrows straight up over and over. We survived. Sure, there’s a part of a finger somewhere on the south shore of Pigeon Lake, the victim of a too-large saw being wielded by a too-small JohnnyCanadian sometime in the early 1970s but I can’t imagine growing up in today’s bubble-wrapped world. Yes, I sound like the old man yelling at a cloud but back in the day it was an embarrassment to have your mother or father drive you to school… now it’s the norm. Yuck!
Build up plastic pipes around it, like the Nerf Nuke that ThinkGeek did for April Fool’s Day a few years back
That’s an awesome idea! Or along the same line of thinking, make the tubes out of the same size plastic straws.
A plastic straw can pierce a potato so that’s not exactly safe enough either. Someone might lose an eye.
Had no idea there were so many pampered baby boomers on Hack a day. I guess safety is stupid to you? Eh, I guess if I was dying of natural causes soon, safety wouldn’t be a high priority for me either.