About 30 years ago, I was fascinated by
Photon. It was the original lasertag, and better than the later "Lazertag" brand. It had a TV show and everything. I still have my Photon watch somewhere, and it was very nice (think Rolex quality, not Timex!).
But there were issues:
- home gear was not very good; arcades (lasertag arenas) had the best gear in malls
- the closest mall was 35 miles away -- about an hour in the days of 55 mph on the highway
- most of my friends did not want to play
- you could never reserve it for just your group, so others could ruin your fun
Its popularity quickly climbed, then fell, in just a few years, so I never got to play. No lasertag for me.
But
paintball was close! So I played that a few times. And unlike the lasertag arenas, you could reserve the field for *just* your group. However, while I liked the wargames aspect, I didn't care for the paint. The balls were messy, and hurt like hell.
Some years later, by now the 90s, a few friends played
Amtgard, a type of medieval wargame involving padded PVC pipe weapons. Now that was fun! You still got to beat the crap of each other, but without the mess and sting of paintballs. I played that, and was known as "Smurf" because I've always liked the Smurfs. I was a simple name to say on the battlefield, which was sometimes important!
I'd already been online since 1993, and had new usernames every few months, because of ISP trials (remember those?!). I went from ISP to ISP, using free trials to get online. The username I selected didn't really matter, as I never used ISP emails anyway -- and they'd disappear as soon as the trial was up. I forget what I did for mail back then.
A year later, we broke off from the official Amtgard, not happy with its asinine rules and nerdy little dictators. We wanted medieval wargames, not D&D dress-up in mom's basement. In the new system, I eventually rose to "Lord" status,
and thus "Lord Smurf". (Only 3 made ever it to that level, during the years I played. I quit in my first senior year of college. Last I knew, the game was still being played!) I played a thief/assassin, and I was a good one because of my then-excellent night vision.
Around the same time, I signed up for the brand new Geocities email service, and used that as my name. It stuck. (Geocities was later bought by Yahoo. I actually have the old
LS@yahoo email address, but rarely use it. Geocities email used to forward to Yahoo, though I doubt that's still the case.)
Everntually it was "LordSmurf" and then just
lordsmurf.
So my username is very, very ground in the 80s. And I've had it since 1996.
________
Trivia A: One of the oldest traders I know is a member of this forum,
Dan D, and we met in 1998 on Yahoo Auctions. I've not seen him on here for a while (or Facebook for that matter), but I'm sure he's still around. He's seen the evolution of my name, my email addresses, and much of my online life.
Trivia B: Forum member
Naga was also a member of the same games years ago, and is actually how we met (through his brother, who played with us for several years). So I've known him for a long time.