Category Archives: Photon

Photon

Okay been a while

Well, a little caffeine and a holiday (an actual, honest-to-god DAY OFF!) can do lots of productive things for you.

Had one of my older storage drives puff and let out its magic smoke today. NOT happy.

One of the things I’d lost were all my copies of the Photon soundtrack. Both my high bitrate MP3s and the original MP2 files they came from.

Unfortunately Rob Banz’s Photon site has been kaput for nigh-on a decade now… So no chance of getting copies again.

And while the Photon-QEI site has the soundtrack in a zipfile, the MP3s are damaged and skip badly.

Well, after a bit of grousing, I got fed up and dug back into a pile of 15 year old CDs. Lo and behold! What do I find on one of them? The original MP2 files!

Cue quick-rip session! (And good LORD is ripping to MP3 a LOT quicker than it was back then!)

So, here I have the zipped, high-bitrate MP3 files for you.
Photon Soundtrack (MP3 Format)

Also, as a bonus, I’ve zipped up the original Banz-made MP2 files if you want your own pristine sources.
Photon Soundtrack (MP2 Format)

Okay, be that as it may, it’s now 3 in the morning by me and it’s time for this Photon Warrior to hit the hay!
And yeah, it’s now been 30 years since the debut of Photon. And the light still shines!

Photon

The Light Shines!

The Light Shines!

Okay. Good news as of this morning (well, technically, yesterday morning now). Jim has spoken with a lawyer, and there are apparently some laws in place to stop exactly what Jim’s landlords are trying to do to him. And, now that they’ve been made aware of it, they’re suddenly MUCH more willing to talk for some reason.

Funny how that happens, isn’t it?

The long and short of it is, Photon itself is still alive, and still moving forward until someone manages to pry it from Jim Strother’s cold dead fingers.

The Strothershere for now. WARNING! The files are about 2MB each.

Once I get home tomorrow and have a chance to process them down to a reasonable size, I’ll upload them to
and the gallery should be able to work on them.

I’ll provide a bigger, more complete AAR after I get back home (and take a nice hot bath…)

Photon

Tulsa or bust!

Okay, earlier this week, one of the laser-tag mailing lists I subscribe to got a rather unwelcome shock.

Photon was closing…before it opened….

For those of you who haven’t ever had the privilege, Photon is a non-flashlight form of laser tag, set in a fully built out field. It’s a complete package, equipment, sound, etc. And an absolute BLAST to play. I burned an incredible amount of money (and energy) there.

Sadly, the last true Photon center closed in Harvey, Illinois back in 1995. Yes, I was there. Yes, it bummed me fiercely. And, unfortunately, the rights to Photon were hopelessly tangled up, and spread out all over the place.

Anyhoo, flash-foward to last year. I started noticing activity on the Phazzar group on Yahoo again. Apparently someone, a guy by the name of Jim Strother, had spent most of the last 12 years acquiring EVERYTHING necessary to resurrect Photon again.

And, watching the activity in the group, and the photos going up of the slowly resolving field, I grew excited again. If you want, you can find pictures of the site up at http://www.photon-qei.com. The field is, for all intents and purposes, finished. All that was needed was some fine tuning of the field antennas and some work on the pods (the gun/chestpiece unit) themselves and he was ready to open.
Anyhoo, earlier this week, we got a letter from Jim stating that Photon would be closing before it’s opening day. Apparently there were some financial difficulties with the landlord, and Jim had been served an eviction notice. Bad scene all around. I’d been hoping to pay a visit to the new center as soon as time and money permitted. As were a lot of members of the mailing list.

At this point, it’s looking like the venture is unrecoverable, and while I don’t have all the facts in the case, it appears to be really shady on the part of the landlord.

So, as a sop to the rabid Photon junkies who’d been jonesing for a fix for thirteen years, Jim is throwing open the doors of Photon for one night and one night only.

This weekend.

And my mission, should I choose to accept it. Get my ass to Tulsa, Oklahoma and play Photon.

A couple e-mails, and ten hours on the road, and I’m here. Now all I need to do is get some shut-eye before the big event.