I have a solution. All electronic guns must get tournament specific settings installed by the refs to compete. The refs also install tamper seals over the data ports to prevent tampering. Tampering with the settings or using a gun that hasn't been set to the tournament specs by the ref should be a lifetime ban.
This was awesome. I got into paintball right in 99 and didn't even know all of this was happening at the pro level. Got out before the rules change, so it came and went without me ever hearing about it. Love this doc style kind of video, not sure about another topic but I know I'll watch it!
Played paintball with friends. All mechanical, tipman's, spider, etc. Tons of fun, 5 v 5 on five acres of woodlands all with friends. That is what paintball was for me. We didn't go through tons of balls. For us it was, hunt, engage, retreat, flank, etc. more tactics than an overwhelming volume of fire. Never forget one game we did. 2 vs 15. The 2 won just from knowledge of the bore trails and being able to hit and run. Was a lot of fun.
Hellyeaeh, I had a spyder, then got thee Auto-cocker, Yees, finally, got the front valves all aftermarket, made a custom grip from oak wood in woodshop, 7th grade, autofeeder hopper,dyee 10 inch spiral barreel. and co2 linees to belt,
Yes! I bought every clever add on for my 98. I could have probably bought one nicer grail gun for the money I spent that I so sought after at the time, but looking back I am sure I had more fun with my Tippmann.
Yeah, did a lot of that back in the late '90s here around LA. Had a Tipman Carbine. Was more about tactics, stealth and smarts than "firepower". Hated all the cheaters, though that was commonly wiping off paint and cranking up the guns after the chrono before the game start. Kind of lost interested when you had to deal with this shyt at every single game we were playing (walkup teams).
Probably should have gotten into the fact that the uncapped and high capped play at the start of this video led directly to paintball's massive collapse in popularity in the years immediately afterwards, as casuals simply left due to the huge cost of firing that much paint and what it felt like to get lit up. The damage was colossal and arguably has never really been repaired.
It wasn’t really high capped play, though it didn’t help with the transition between casual and tournament play. The early part of the financial crisis killed tournament paintball as free cash dried up overnight. I miss the 200 team cfoa events though.
@@Tempest-ec2nn According to industry insiders at the time the collapse was already in progress before the financial crash happened. It was a convenient excuse, but paintball was in total freefall before.
I played from 1996 to 2008 and I think its because paintball as a culture tries to distance itself from the milsim community. Airsoft is relatively big and I think thats largely due to essentially being full on milsim play. Speedball is the lamest way to play paintball. I never understood the appeal.
As a casual I'd say it is very daunting to play with rentals/cheap markers up against 13 bps. Lots of people who would have been up and coming regulars, trying out PB get turned off after they've been humiliated.
I haven't played since 2006 and completely left the sport. Started looking back into it about a year ago. It's like I played when dinosaurs were around
Bro I was watching a video on the history of computer gaming peripherals. Now that made me feel ancient. It's ridiculous now how I remember how crazy the first razor mouse was. I forgot before that there was never a gaming mouse. 😂 Fuck I'm old
The gear that I used was so old we had to load each round manually with a 10 round tube hopper. There was this dinky little foregrip to chamber the next round like it was a shotgun. 😅
My very first job when I was 16 at the end of the 1990s was at a paintball field. The Autococker was considered a respectable marker, (and about the only thing we had to watch out for was custom thumb dials on the rear that cheaters would use to dial up pressure after being chronographed in.) …but then the Angel came along, and after that, electronic guns really ruined the sport for everyday people who didn’t devote their lives and entire paychecks to buying the latest equipment. It got to the point where some refs would only allow electronic markers if a group rented out an entire field for private play. That didn’t go over well with pro and semipro players who were frequent returning customers at the business. When I started working there, it was a fun pastime people could come in and play like laser-tag - but 2 years later it was nearly impossible to bring new people into the sport, because the semipro and pro players spending ridiculous $$$ on custom gear with cheater electronics made first-time experiences terrible for newbies. It just became a niche moneysucking pastime for hardcore enthusiasts from there on, and decreased in popularity with the general public. I wished that the leagues would return to an analogue/mechanical-rule only, and ban electronic gizmos… but the use of electronic hoppers, etc. etc. had become too entrenched with the pro players - and they had invested wayyy too much money in all that kit to ever want to give up the electronic trend. To me, IMHO, paintball destroyed its own broad appeal and accessibility because it allowed electronics to niche the sport into increasingly expensive obscurity. Just my $0.02 having been a local ref at a local field back in the day when that transition happened.
@ yeah, I started out with a used Spyder, modded it & was saving up for a nitro carbon fiber tank with hose & harness mount…when the electronic thing happened. I was still in HS, about to go off to college.. there was no way I could afford even just the massively increased rate of paint the new markers were throwing, let alone a new electronic marker itself. Players who weren’t independently wealthy or already sponsored just couldn’t stay competitive, so I walked away, like a lot of ppl did. That late 90s early 2000s electronic transition turned the sport into a weird elitist niche - it dried up the pipeline of both new league players and new fans - which shrank the industry’s customer base & audience. Manufacturers made more money on each marker -at first- but then found themselves selling to shrinkingly few diehard enthusiasts & sponsored pros.
I think your half right. I think the airsoft rise, coupled with the push to high-speed paintball play is what killed it. I used a pirana as well for years. Got a barel that was accurate enough and got better at connecting shots and did fine. But man when I would try to being people and the tourney guys showed up and started throwing paint.. it really ruined people's day. People were only. Barely getting up the nerve to get hit with a paintball. And now your being hit 8 times because there is so much paint in the air... yeah it puts people off. I hate always having to assure people I'm just in regular semi auto when I show up and they see my setup. Like I just never saw the point of out gunning people. I prefer a fun game.
@@TL-angzarr HB was one of the best settings but by Saturday the turf would have potholes and divets. Caused by the turf being layed ontop of sand with all the foot traffic and sliding
Agree, was a different time. HB was the highlight of the year. But honestly every venue was memorable for me. From QUALCOMM, PEVS, HSP, SC Village even smaller indoor like Splat Factory (which was extremely fun due to the turf being so saturated you could start your snake dive off break and make it lol) paintball from 05-09 was a wild ride.
@@mcav9459 dam man you are bringing up some primal memories of mine. i was at everyone of those fields a time or two. same time period. some of the best memories of my life
In middle school and high school in the late 90s, we would regularly have games 10-15 on a side out in the woods. Started off with a handful of guys had cheap pumps like Tigersharks but the majority were using sling shots or taking a weapon from someone who was already out. Eventually everyone had a gun, but some guys started bringing cheap semi autos like the spyder. Next thing you know there’s no more pump guns. Soon the $1,000 guns started coming and guys were going through a case of paint in an afternoon and we stopped playing in the woods and started playing in open ground because “it was more fun” according to the people with the expensive guns. That’s what ruined paintball for me. Started off being about stealth and tactics and turned into whoever had the most money to spend on guns and paint would win.
Exactly. It was always the guys that sucked at the tactical part that had the crazy guns too. That turn was a real bummer for all of us that played woodsball.
Absolutely this. Had a couple Tippman semi's, eventually a semi spyder, and a pump, forest games, sim games, etc. Hated the arena stuff, just seemed like a waste of paint, no tactics, no strategy, no team play, just run as fast as you can and waste paint.
Thats kinda how it feels now . I rock a tip man 98 and yeah it sucks but I go with friends … I have a hard time justifying more then a couple hundred bucks for a paintball gun . But that’s just the old man in me
I remember playing at my friends house in grade school who had an acre of lightly wooded trees. about 12 of us and most of us with sling shot and paint balls. We would rotate the paintball guns around since we didn't all have one. Eventually most had a gun within a year and continued to use those for another 2 years. It was a blast
I gotta say, this is the best video you’ve made. Accurate, and nostalgic. We had the electronic arms race 20 years ago, now the mechanical arms race is occurring. Interested to see how mechanical valves evolve.
Honestly the last major tournament i played was 08 chicago at 12.5 and i can honestly say 10.5 is perfect. Games are still slow at 10.5 and i was an extremely aggressive player at 12.5.
Meanwhile I still have my Automag with a pneumatic trigger frame. It may not be as gas-efficient, but not enough to matter in a match; that trigger will still keep up with semi-auto electros.
@@WardenWolfi have an emf100, mechanical, fastest gun I have ever owned magfed though. I remember the angel and shocker I also had an automag with an RT valve!
The old clips of Addicted just gave me legit goosebumps and brought back that stoked feeling of being 12 years old staying up all night watching paintball dvds with the homies before hitting the field with everyone rocking 25-30 bps. Those Team Addicted dudes were the prime era of "swag" in the game and who we all just wanted to be like.
I mean I had 12 paintball markers all together. Tippmann spider angel. Bob long. Honestly that Tippmann a5 I think? The second one they made. That was my favorite. I got so much use out of it in the woods. Everything else would break when I dove. Until I got an aka Viking. They died but their style was a lot heavier, but still modern internals. Thing was a tank. Retired with it. Mostly giant woods when I played but also college play or bunker style
@@LyleH45holy shit I forgot piranha. Yeah a5 was what I was thinking about. You could upgrade a lot of the internals swap the barrel, and it was basically a "Glock" to me lol. Just worked.
I remember the first time I ever played paintball. Everybody was running around with mechanical guns, then in the distance I heard some rapid fire. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. We got back to the staging area that's when I saw my first Angel
lol! I think everybody has an identical angel story! I was in same situation, first time out, rental spyder, too nervous and hoping I wouldn't hit a ref, teammate or shoot myself in the dick. Playing some woodsball defend the castle mode. We were being overwhelmed by the attacking team around the castle perimeter. All of a sudden I hear a "GET DOWN" to my right. Dude pops up with his shiny gloss red wundermarker and proceeds to light up all the attackers like the minigun Blaine/Mac used in Predator (1987). I found out what a WDP Angel was that day 🙂.
It was the fucking best (68 Automag powerfeed viewloader 12v Ice blue, centerflag hyperframe 4" drop forward 68 cu 3000psi tank havin ass nigga checking in!) I don't miss the prices though lol that marker alone was in the 1000's but man I miss those days.
I played competitive ball for years but finally got out when my team sponsor told me point blank that we had to start bending the rules to get more podiums. Some years later I took a group from work to a local indoor field for funsies. I left the Angel in the box and played with an SL-68 pump against the rental Automags, to keep it fair. There were a couple of walk-ons with electronic guns of some sort. I had a chat with them before the games started and made sure that they knew not to light up the nubies. They agreed. Of course, once we started playing, they couldn't resist dumping half a dozen balls into every new player. I pulled out the Angel and showed them what a pro overshoot at 16 BPS feels like. They left after that and I went back to playing pump. Good times.
Holy smokes I have a similar story using an Angel I had won off a guy in a pump only woods dual hehe. I was two urban combat tours deep (Infantry) who got invited to a local field by an high school team...they got wreaked by some very disrespectful adults with obvious autos during a semi (none electronic /mechanical ) only match - I busted out the Angle and gave them an similar introduction when they did an open match (this was a Mil Sim/air soft field so 'speed ball' wasn't a thing)
As someone who had to play front against an amateur team as a rookie in a regional tourney. . . Thank you. The 3 feet to the flag was a little too far. I figure I got shot by every member of their team for 1-2 seconds before the ref started waving his hands like crazy, even going to far as to step into the line of fire of 1-2 members of their team to walk me off the field. If my flag-pull had succeeded, they would have been knocked out of the tournament.
I had nice gear as a kid and shot as fast as possible so other people wouldn’t hit me. Running around and sliding like crazy, wearing a custom jersey. People would think I was good, no I just had good gear lol
It's been a solid decade since I played. The most advanced gun I ever had was a Tippmann 98 with an e-bolt (pneumatic ram setup instead of sear and bolt) and their cyclone feed on it (the valve is gonna waste the gas anyways, may as well use it for something). One battery, shot faster than anything I faced with regularity, and gave me probably my favorite comment ever from an opponent: "What's up with the old guy with the Tippmann and how is it so good?" IDK why the algorithm brought me to this video but I'm glad I'm here. Was a fun watch. My Cyclone feed had some mods to it, was fully capable of keeping up with the board. I never formally measured the BPS but the speed demo in the video makes me think I was at the pointy end of the range, over 15 for sure. I need to get some new air tanks and go play again. Show the teenagers that you can still get it in your 40s and over.
Oh man, that 2000 to 2006 era time frame was my favorite period of paintball. It was like a reintroduction of mystique into the game that was lacking for a while. The internet forums were abuzz with rumors and speculation about every little thing ESPECIALLY when it came to electronic paintball gear.
Bruh, nights with all your friends huddled around a dusty basment computer watching the g7 fly video drop,wishing for something unique like a macdev cyborg and terrorizing neighborhood stop signs with a virtue dm6 at 2am un able to sleep on a saturday night waiting to play on sunday was golden era.
Dude right. I remember the whole team I was on standing watching video after video of how to make our karnivores shoot insane firing rates or work in general.
Would be cool to see 7 man at 15bps make a comeback as a spinoff series. The ICPL is insanely fun but truthfully the most fun I’ve had competing was in the UWL due to the limited paint, reinsertion at 10 min, and the unique roles each team got to field - scout, heavy, demolitionist, and the secret 11th stock class player. Always playing scout or stock class roles.
They dumbed the ICPL down as a washed up old man league. Most of us that played 10man in the woods -> hyperball era alongside mech guns giving way to electronic guns range from 42 at the very youngest to 65 now. Modern mech should be where the freestyingl guns blazing fun lives. It shouldnt be the diabetes, adult diaper, bad knees, obesity means you cant crawl game.
Totally relate. I stopped playing just after the Shocker and Angel came out. I alwasy wanted to shoot one. Never did. Crazy to see what happened since then.
This video just brought back a bunch of paintball memories, below is We had a core group of about 12 people between kids and dads playing on a local farmer's land with some woods, and an old building foundation. After playing multiple Saturdays in a row and inviting friends both young and old it basically became an unofficial club. I think we got close to 50 people at least 1 Saturday. We started a $5 play fee for the day, which went to 2 "club" guns, pizza delivery for everyone that day, and building collapsible barriers for a field area we could play in. I heard they even continued after the original core group of kids left for college. Hopefully someone's kept it going for all these years. The biggest shout out to that wonderful man loaning out his land for people to shoot paint at each other. You helped create some great memories for a bunch of kids and parents. And it was a great place to introduce people to the world of paintball. For me paintball will never be better than that. *edit* Cool thing to note is we had markers from the cheap $100 semiautos up to my buddy's $1000 speedball gun from when he played on a team. Mine was a Tippmann custom pro w/ the flatline barrel. The variety in the play space and gun variety basically leveled them all out; especially when someone waste their money shooting a hopper of ball into a bunch of plants.
i'll never forget being blown away by how insanely expensive the full electric guns were, with the carousel loader. i had gotten a regular style machined paintball gun for christmas and all it has "extra" was just a long rifled barrel. i still use that gun today to haze off moose, but i would desperately outmatched playing against humans with turbo machine gun rigs that shot a literal stream of balls so fast it sounded like a single ripping sound
Shit i was a wide eyed little kid looking at the brass eagle kits encased in hard plastic at wal mart. That was the first paitnball marker i ever had with a little 9oz co2 tank. We had a field down the road from us where we used to get fishing bait and i saw an angel on the wall for 1750. I thought it was only $17.50 and everyone laughed including my dad. Oh the good ol days. ❤
I still have tucked away a few tall stacks of the only 2 paintball magazines available around me. I was more of a woodsball scenario guy so high rates of fire were useless to me but I loved the tech.
I think 10.5 makes for a more exciting game - but they could limit the tank sizes to 68 or smaller so you can either drive greater efficiency or bring out less paint. Either way, the regular players win as the game will get faster or the markers will get more efficient.
Not everyone is short and guns can’t get anymore faster than it already is and there’s always a fill station in the pits so gun efficiency won’t really matter
So if we could get a case of paint through a marker that handles paint like the field 1 force v2, that wouldn’t entice you? Improvements can always be had.
Nah tank size is based on how long your arms are. Its about the only customization left to a setup you can do. Markers are so efficient that 68ccu really wouldnt make a difference at all except in player comfortability
I had an GGP Autococker in 2003 and not only had to keep it clean, but consistently tuning the timing. The gun is all mechanics and just like a machine (not as reliable as a firearm) so the bolt has to open just enough to allow the balls to enter, but not too long or it’ll chop the next ball, or fire too slowly, then the pressures had to be changed depending on weather… the trigger pull could be changed to 1/4 the length, but that made lb pressure on trigger increased by more than 4 and increased risk of too small of a window to cycle… Sorry I’m high. I went to get my tank filled 5 years ago and dude laughed at me bc it was 15 years expired hahaha
Yo! Great vid! I’m from the era of Autococker and Automag 😂 with Dye barrels being the tiddies! When the Shocker (followed by Angel) first hit shelves, I was part of the crew that first started hacking it. We partnered with an electrical engineer meganerd, who went to town making custom programming and even ground-up board builds. It was wild and awesome! I believe the engineer and shop owner & captain of our PB shop, Jon, named the final board “Archangel”. This was all done in sight of the KFC Big Chicken, in Marietta GA. Good times… I wish I still had a Cocker to play with. I absolutely loved making custom parts, machining, hacking and rebuilding them. Thanks for the memories, dude!
I am so happy that I got into the sport way before all this crap started happening. For anyone going to highschool, working at K-Mart, and trying to keep up with some other kids running a cheater board... it must have felt like this hobby made no sense at all. Glad I got to enjoy the days when the worst thing you had to deal with were talent, an Autococker, or the occasional cheater.
As an embedded systems engineer who started out his career with arduinos with the AtMega microcontrollers (back then by Atmel, they were acquired by Microchip later) and I'm now designing with 32-bit ARM micros by STMicroelectronics and having played airsoft back in the day, I designed a custom fire control board with mosfets for power control to the motor. This video seems on some parallel level very nostalgic to me .
I am also in embedded systems! Gotta love microcontrollers... Still have my old stock of Atmega stuff, maybe I'll check that out as a fun side project!
This is my favorite video you've put out. The content was fantastic but the structure, timing, graphics... The whole execution was excellent. You're killing it.
Paintball died for me as a sport when the electrics came out. I started out with pumps with auto trigger then went with F1 Illustrator as a fun gun every weekend. I would use an auto cocker in tournaments. It was fun and affordable because I didn't have to waste more than a few hundred paintballs for the day. The good old times. I was in the Great Western Series back then. Played mostly limited paint tourneys.
Brings back memories of playing on a team out of Virginia Beach in 1998-1999. I played a few nipple tournaments with an Automag w/ Z-Grip. Not the most practical gun but I loved the experience.
Lowering BPS can facilitate more movement, but I think anything more in that direction isn’t really needed. Sure, a pump or mech pro tournament might be cool, or a further BPS reduction could open up the field a little more…but the better fix is far simpler. Limit the amount of paint a team can carry. Paint manufacturers (and fields that sell it) wouldn’t love it, so idk how feasible it is. But for the sake of the game itself, a hard limit on team paint (e.g. 15 pods total for a 5-man team, split however they’d like) would be more effective. Shoot as fast as you’d like (or keep the current 10.5 cap, whatever), but you can only do it so long without harming the team.
@@58degreefpv45 yeah, something like that. A limit per person gets mentioned sometimes and would definitely work, maybe 4 or 5 pods per person? Personally I like a wrinkle in that like I mentioned above - pod limit per team, but allow them to divvy it up as they'd like. Or maybe it's a hybrid, where they have a team limit and thresholds for the players (e.g. 15 pods for the 5-man team, each player must have at least 2). Just something to limit the paint and give more strategy to the game: you want your back guys to have most of the paint for lanes, sure, but maybe don't allow them to have 7 pods...
Early 2000’s paintball was the best…I started getting serious when I bought the Ion then I got the Shocker…by far my favorite marker..I always wanted a DYE marker just never had the cash for one
Man, this video brings back memories. I started playing paintball around 2000 with my first marker being a PMI Piranha which was a direct competitor to the Spyder. But, my weapon of choice for the last 20 years is still an OG 2004 Smart Parts Impulse Vision. It was the little brother to the Shocker: open bolt vs closed bolt, ran at slightly higher pressures, but was half the cost, super easy to maintain, and was a true "tinkerer's marker". Custom bodies, bolts, rams, hammers, valves, regulators, boards, trigger frames, triggers, feed necks, you name it. One of the most famous (and is equipped on mine) is the W.A.S. (Wicked Air Sportz) Equalizer Board which would definitely fall under the header of one of these original cheater boards. Everything was adjustable: bounce, debounce, dwell, max cycle rate, multiple programmable firing modes: semi auto, full auto, burst with user defined cycles (e.g. 3 shot, 5 shot, 10 shot, whatever), ramping to include the trigger pull rate required to activate said firing modes. Paired with the eyes, which weren't beam break style, you could set an "unlimited" firing mode where the cycle rate of the marker was only limited by physics. Literally it would cycle as fast as the inertia of the bolt assembly would allow which could get over 30 BPS with the right combo of pressure and weight. Paired with the "Freak" barrel system which had adjustable sleeves to fit different diameter paintballs and the newer style force feed hoppers, you could rip unreal streams of paint with pinpoint accuracy and never worry about breaking a ball. Compared to today's markers it's a brick boat anchor with terrible gas mileage, but it still turns heads when I dig it out and roll streams with it. With that said, once electronic markers started becoming more standard, most fields I played at quickly instituted rules disallowing any type of auto, ramping, or burst firing, and cycle rates were capped at around 10-12 bps because the field markers were all mechanical Tippmann 98 or Spyders. They didn't want 10, 12, 13, 14 year olds on their birthday parties getting ripped to shreds by folks with $2000 gear setups
i still have my Piranha its great little gun with some mild upgrades. i had Dye aluminum 14" barrel and upgraded bolt and trigger and played with that for years and did all i ever needed.
I remember having a predator board and using the 20 bps full auto break out mode, super sneaky only worked on the 3rd trigger pull. Crazy cool tech for back in 2005
I took the spring out of my trigger and let it bounce. Also wiped a hit one time and felt like shit about it for years lol i miss paintball. Ultimately it was just too expensive to remain popular.
The U.K. had 14 failed criminal prosecutions of people alleging paintball were real guns, before civil servants decided on implementing new restrictive legislation.
I was big into paintball in 2000 as a freshman in high school for about two years. My rich friends had tippman 98s with the banana barrel which ruled the remnants of 1800s farmhouses and barns we played in, I had a brass eagle silver eagle which I got made fun of for but it was more reliable than some of my friend's rigs they tried to customize themselves with expensive aftermarket mods. We had more fun building forts and courses in our our woods than actually playing bc someone always got hurt. My best friend fell from his dads second floor hay loft in mid sprint; we heard him sprinting then nothing followed by a thud. Luckily he had no serious injuries, but likely a concussion. His dad lost his mind the next day not realizing he had given us permission to play in there the night before as he had been drinking at their annual community pig roast. Those were good times
I raise my hand to take some of the responsibility for this BS.... Being the HALO guy, I can openly say I am so glad to have retired from playing before the effect of these guns really took hold. LOL
As a old guy who used to play paintball a lot this was interesting (an angel was my last gun and I stopped a couple years after that). Funny thing is, as a long time hacker I thought of a near impossible to detect "fix" for your custom firing modes pretty quick after you said the ref snatched your gun. Put an RF reader in the handle of the gun, and an RF chip in your glove (basically use the same tech as the nintendo amibos or a door entry card). Then the modes only enable when *your* hand is on the gun. The ref could snatch it instantly from you and it would never test "illegal" unless he stole your glove and put it on. And it your *REALLY* dedicated to cheating then embed the chip into your palm like the body hackers do. ;)
As one of those Splatmaster-in-the-woods players from the late '80s, I still remember the shock and awe of being on the receiving end of my first barrage from a Tippman SMG-60! I can't imagine playing against modern guns...
I started Paintball in 1985. My team took 3rd in the Nationals Tourny in Pittsburg PA in 1987....with Nelspots. That was when skill was valued, woodsmanship, camo and teamwork. I got out in the mid 90s, when arena ball took over and firehoses replaced skill. Last serious time I played was mid 90s, helping a buddy open a field in SE Indiana. After the first match, (30 v 30), a kid ran up to me with his shiny new angel and told me that he had spent 2000 rounds had gotten a kill! I replied I had fired 200, and had gotten 6. Long story short, I'm not impressed with where the sport has gone.
As a former NPPL Division 1 professional player I can confirm the downfall of the sport for us was when they started trying to regulate and change the rules every year. Exceptionally few players actually got paid well enough to do it as their only job so the constant need to change the markers was expensive and it killed a lot of the top teams. Sponsors rarely paid much at all and often only offered discounts at the best.
I do miss the older days of paintball at it's peak, your team was incredibly tight nit, in my case to the point where some of us lived and worked together. Had events most weekends and we were all obsessed with it, the shit talk and controversy that came with it all. I'll never forget those days
OMG the woods with splatmasters!!! That is how i started. With hockey masks and sports goggles, we painted the hockey masks also!! then came the tippmans, than automags, autocockers, then the shocker, angels! i still have my custom 2005 shocker nxt! :) I helped start the Texas A&M program back in 96! :)
Cheap true electropneumatic guns (not just mechanical guns with electronic triggers) are what killed paintball. What a lot of the "Get good" crowd don't understand is that the game is a LOT less fun as a casual player when you get lit up from head to toe every time you're eliminated. The pain-to-pleasure ratio starts shifting heavily towards pain, and the learning curve gets a lot steeper. This tends to turn off both younger people who are getting into the sport and older players who just want a casual game. If you wind up with 5-10 welts every time you're eliminated instead of 1-2, you tend to call it a day a lot sooner and seriously consider whether you even want to go back. Once these guns got so cheap that a middle-class 10-12-year-old could reasonably get one for Christmas or birthday, it basically killed the stream of new players entering the sport because overshooting became the norm instead of the exception.
Played a some in 1990s and 2000s. There was definitely 2 schools of thought in my experience. Those that loved the tactics and stealth of the woods and the ones that sprayed and prayed in the open areas with $1,000+ guns. I liked the idea of having tactics not who can get a lucky hit spraying an entire area at 20+ balls a minute.
In my day I rocked a blue/black fade ‘05 Proto Matrix with Virtue Board installed, blade trigger, Dye Throttle tank, blue/black Freak barrel with insert kit, and a rip drive Halo B. Good times. If I remember correctly my Virtue Board allowed me to fire up to something like 35 bps or something, and tourneys allowed ramping, but capped us at 15 bps. Ollie Lang was everyone’s idol. It’s been years lol.
I ran a Tippman 98 with a reactive trigger and a flatline barrel. Although I ran an electric hooper, it wasn't as fancy. I actually came up with the idea of extending the neck of the hopper a few inches. I achieved this by using 1 inch pvc water sprinkler pipe and wrapping it in electrical tape. This decreased the chance of exploding paintball. I was called out a few times, but nothing was ever done cause I was like 15.
I used to love paintball when I was a kid. I bought my first paintball gun in like 1998 or 1999 and I believe it was a greshish black swirled looking anodized Kingman spyder SE with an upgraded long silver and black barrel on it. It shot so straight and clean.
I’m 32 now. Started young. Played with a local team. Toured the country for free. Practiced with active military members. Paintball was life! Fast guns didn’t bother me. My fingers and feet were fast enough to get into the snake and work up the field. I didn’t love getting shot 10-20 times each time but that was paintball. I still have a scar on my knuckle from playing with nearly frozen paint. Love paintball. Still got an old jersey in my closet.
5 man Uncapped semi 3 people with 4 pods each as 'front' players 2 people with 6 pods as 'corner' or 'back' players Try to make the game interesting and ramp up action while relying on skill rather than just dropping lanes across the field in the hopes that one or two players get a lucky break
My favorite paintball marker was the Tippman A5. It was a gas operated full auto marker, that integrated a force feed mechanism into the hopper. It was fun to shoot since it gave feedback to your trigger finger, it was reliable (with compressed air, i cant remember how reliable it was with CO2), and easy to clean. I have a lot of memories of paintball. We lived on 5 acres and had two paintball fields, a woods ball field and a speedball field (speedball was by far the more popular pick by our players).
The only thing that makes sense to me for a pro paintball league is that dedicated specific markers would be used for tournament play. Each tournament or league would need to supply the official markers for the players as rental markers. Providing the website and availability to purchase your own for recreational use of practice. Modification of a stock official marker would not be allowed during tournament play. Hoppers, tanks, and barrels would be acceptable. Before walk-on players would have to enter a staging area allowing them 1-2 minutes setup time (putting on barrel, hopper, and tank). Big brand paintball like dye and eclipse would need to pay the league to use their sponsored markers as sales would skyrocket specific markers. The league would be funded by marker brands. As well as league fees.
So my 2cent is that even with the nxl europe limit that is hopper + 4pods on 10.5 bps ramp well yes limit play however à break out at 10 and à break out at 20/30 balls is really hard to make for obvious reason. Now sure you may be out of paint faster but youre team can also advance faster as 30bps lane is not something i know im getting tru
Paintballs don't break easily. Volume of fire makes up for it, they're also kinda inaccurate, so again volume of fire. I never took a single shot i always fired 10-20 ball bursts even without high rof guns. 200 and hopper means 10-20 "shots"
Had an eMag. It wasn't all that. Maybe for it's time, but my Sandridge Smoked it. Ugly, but far more reliable than the eMag. eMag was too fast for the hoppers at the time unless you got that force feeding abortion that AGD came up for it (had one). Worked, but what a hunk to haul around.
Some friends and I all started playing paintball way back in the day around 2004 maybe about 14 years old. we all had our Brass Eagles or Spyders and we would just go into the woods behind my house and had an absolute blast. Around 2005 we transitioned to speedball fields for some reason, and they all loved it while I found myself enjoying it less. This video really brought it full circle for me. I assumed speedball was always this way when it turns out we walked right into the BPS wars. I am very happy to hear that it has changed and plays around 10BPS which is more than enough, won’t need to buy paint as often, and games become more tactical again rather than just roping paint non-stop.
Love this!! I started in 2005 and all the way up to the financial crisis it was basically Paintball golden era. Now I mostly enjoy the time I had in the crazy sport of paintball having worn many different hats. It's been a big part of my life and I will always have great memories from that time.
bro I still have a spyder shutter with a modified E-frame trigger. It was my first marker before I got my timmy and after I stopped using it my little brother ran it until he quit playing. talk about a wild setup for back in the day
I remember being at NPPL Tampa in 2004, and seeing a friend from LA in the chrono area with a new DM4, pulled the trigger back 3 times slow, and it went 24bps basically full auto, pull the trigger once slow and it went back to normal. Also the robot was in Tampa, and it caught 0 people out. It was a total laughable failure. It just couldn't be programmed with all the permutations that existed with all the boards.
I played in Tampa in 04 & 05. I got pulled in 05 because they thought I was cheating. My fingers registered 22bps in front of 11 refs. Majority of them yelled “holy shit” when I cursed them out and ripped half a hopper showing them how fast my fingers were. I used to rubber band fishing weights to my fingers & tap pens/pencils against my thighs in class all day waiting to go to the field after 😂 I would kill to get my 05 ego back.
I started playing paintball in the late 90s and the first rate of fire shenanigans I can recall are the Shocker Turbo and Automag RT. I quit playing in 2006 and just recently started looking back into it, the changes are pretty crazy with guns shooting so much slower, but the biggest thing I noticed is how much the sport has shrunk. Way less people play now than did in the heyday of the BPS wars.
Agree, after my recommendation my grandson just started looking into paintball I had an old tippman 98 custom I reworked and now we cannot find air! Back in the day you could fill up tanks just about everywhere! Crazy!
Yeah, getting lit up by people with full auto guns at the height of the BPS Wars will do that to younger people who played once and said never again. There's a reason airsoft rose just as quickly as paintball fell.
No idea how I got here as I am not into paint ball. The break down on this video was very well done. There is some people who are horrible at explaining things and it makes you leave immediately. The way you did it made me want to stay and watch the whole video. Good job sir!
Thanks to the algo for randomly sending me down paintball memory lane. My main markers in the 2000's were a side feed Autococker pump conversion w/ a 50 round hopper and a Carter Buzzard. $20 in paint a day was all it took to embarrass all the Angels, Intimidators, tadao board modded Dye's. Thanks to the local pump legends and team Blowfish for teaching me the way of stock class...NGL I had the modded, ramping, Halo hopper setups too. Dumping paint was fun occasionally.
Not at all, the problem was that back then the meta was that the guns would fire so fast that it led to needing to buy paint more often. The frequency of buying the paint was the issue not the actual price of a case of paint. If you’re playing a slower game your paint goes further and you might not feel like the price is so bad. To be fair could it be cheaper? Possibly, but it wasn’t the main issue.
I remember back in the early days I could shoot a ridiculously high rate of fire using the responsive trigger system on a tippman 98 custom, and I very regularly had refs at my local fields checking to see if I could even fire a single shot because they couldn't believe how fast I was able to shoot. I was definitely a field dominator with that gun, it was heavy but it was accurate and it could rip off some pretty precise high rate of fire. I eventually would move on to the Dye Matrix 2004, and played many tournaments with that, but I was not really a high rate of fire player with that setup. I regularly wouldn't even bring extra pods for reloads, knowing I could finish the round with just my hopper load. I played division 2 with the DM4, and won first place in a few 3 man tournaments during that era. My two teammates would lock down the field, our back player would pin down the left side so the other team couldn't cross to the left, and my other teammate would bump up the center while I would work my way down the right side of the field, I would move into position and take slow accurate timed shots at them from the side while my teammates laid down suppressive fire the entire round. Fun times man, wish airsoft never became popular, because paintball was just a million times better.
I’ll never forget the day I went back to my folks house for the first time. My Angel is in a landfill somewhere. Along with my green spider with the electric trigger, I loved that gun.
I remember lending a teammate my custom Naughty Dogs Intimidator at a tournament when he got spot checked going to the field. He was DQ'd for the match and the gun was confiscated until the end of the tournament for bouncing. The gun was so hard to stop bouncing, I gave up. Couldn't tune it out but I didn't want a horrible trigger pull either. Compared to today's paintball, I think it is fine where it's at. I do like semi 15bps cap but I'm ok with 10.5bps ramp as well. I do miss shooting lanes at 15-20bps knowing the other player isn't making it through without a hit. Things got spicy back then at those speeds. Lots of overshooting. Lots of bonus balls for whining to the ref.
@@anarchyamp I don't think you played back in the early 2000s. Paintball then was extremely aggressive and very not defensive. You need to shoot lanes like that because you most likely had 2 people running down the field to bunker opponents almost immediately. Also, we didn't play for points in most tournaments like today. Most tournaments where a round robin system with an elimination finals. It's ok though. You had to be there to appreciate what is was then and how it got to where we are now.
I remember when the Shocker came out the Angel then All American...back then I use to use a Micro Mag on a remote system with a tiny 48tank in my pack. Our team actually placed 2nd at the Worlds in Orlando in I think 95' . We all had AutoMags, Rtmags, and I run a MicroMag. The Eguns really changes the game by players just laying paint . I think the skill levels of players would have been higher today if there were all truly semi auto
I miss the old days when you had to take care of guns and know what you were doing. I enjoyed messing with o-ring sizes and materials they were made out of, adjusting my hpr/lpr, and dwell. It was almost like a gate to keep people who didn't care out. I remember having different acceptable +/- depending on the paint that I shot. You had different grease for the temperature. It was an OCD kid's dream. The last guns I had to take care of were a DM14 and a Mac Dev GT. Now I see guns you can throw in your gear bag, change the battery once a month, and put any grease on.
I've been a paintball player since 2003, mostly in Europe, particularly in Poland. Back then, paintball was really thriving, with the excitement of rapid technological advancements every year. Every year, there was a new marker, and it was a big deal-brands like Derder were huge. There were so many brands, offering different price ranges and color options. Even beginners could get a marker for 100 dollars, which was affordable with the currency exchange rates at that time. There were tons of mods, like the Eclipse Cockers or the Ion with Lucky parts, and everyone was happy with that. The more BPS (balls per second), the more fun it was. But then, one idiot came up with a terrible idea to introduce limitations, and it started a domino effect. Other brands began to collapse. They introduced restrictions, like forcing players to buy field paint only, instead of letting us buy from shops where prices were competitive-free market gone. Now paintball has become a "communist" sport with all these limitations, and it's killing the passion, especially for the younger generation. I remember there were over 200 fields, a dozen tournaments like Centurio Circuit, Millenium, and so many teams. Now, there are far fewer. The choice of markers has also shrunk significantly. I have a lot of disdain for companies like Planet Eclipse and DYE, which killed off other companies that had contributed to the growth of paintball, like WDP, Bob Long, etc. Back then, there was a wider range of options and prices, but now the cheapest markers from those two companies are around 400-600 dollars. Where are the Spyders now? No one's producing them, and that's why, in my eyes, paintball is dying.
Dang, so glad this popped into my feed. I was obsessed with the sport from like 2005-2012. Barely look at anything for it anymore but this brought back some good memories.
2:15 just made me tear up (crying). I had this exact Bob Long poster in my room growing up, and my dad had the red to yellow "sunset" fade Intimidator. Memories I'll have forever and would never trade.
Great video, I still own so many of the old school markers in the closet all cleaned up ready for some weekend fun games! I really enjoy these historical videos. Maybe have some old school videos just showing off one marker at a time in the future and their history and use? That could be fun!
Played my first game of paintball in 1994. I was wearing shorts and a tank top. I got lit up so bad. It was the most fun I have ever had. I still to this day have my vintage Tippmann Factory F/A full auto. Play on a few local tournament teams Bad Karma, Ouch Factor, and Crimson Halo. Fun times.
My first "job" in the 90s when i was 15/16 was a paintball referee. It wasnt paid in dollars, but rather in game time and free paintballs. Seeing all these old machines really brings me back ♥️
Airsoft is a hell of a lot more fun ngl. For us full auto and electronic controllers aren't cheating, just part of the game. Theres surprisingly very little limits on guns, aside from velocity of course.
@@BamBlamboTv yeah, I agree entirely. I've honestly never tried paintball but I can definitely see the appeal in it. They're fairly similar at the end of the day, you shoot at the enemy team to try to eliminate them. The arenas and guns are where it gets a _lot_ different. Paintball has a lot more variety nowadays but still mostly the same general concept of a simple HPA powered gun that usually fires semi auto. Airsoft has replicas of real life firearms which can have drastically different roles on the battlefield due to differences in velocity/effective range, fire rate, and ammo capacity. I really like going pistol only because I can run around really fast without getting tired, flanking and getting into good positions really quickly (my main rifle is a 10lb near perfect full metal replica of an AK-12 which gets very tiring to lug around at top speed for very long). I don't think I've ever seen a paintball pistol as small as the airsoft Glock 18 I have, but idk maybe it does exist. Airsoft tends to feel more tactic and strategy oriented and slower paced in a lot of cases where paintball seems super fast paced and intense head on combat, which honestly sounds fun. Honestly might try paintball someday anyways. I like the idea of how fast paced it is and the guns all seem quite lightweight because they mostly forgo the whole realism part. Despite never playing it, I do have one negative experience with paintball already though (moreso due to the field rather than players). The field I go to does both airsoft and paintball and is split up into multiple individual arenas, some of which are literally right next to each other and separated only by some mesh barrier things which have gotten holes in them. There was a paintball match going on simultaneously and suddenly *SPLAT!* A paintball sails through the barrier and hits me right in the center of my plate carrier, splattering paint onto my gear, gun, and eye pro lol. Had to sit the rest of the match out just to clean up. Out of curiosity, do these limitations _still_ exist or have at least some been lifted? Do you frequently encounter such restrictions at the places you play at?
Seeing this pro stuff just being a walk-on at SC Village and Jungle Island in the 2000s decade really made it hard for casual players to enjoy weekend games without feeling seriously outclassed. I went back to the field for the first time in 10 years or so a couple of months ago, and I swear I had more fun then than in the past two decades. The sport's more fun when you can duck and run from cover to cover instead of worrying about crossing an 15b/s line of fire.
I’ve heard stories of magnets being used to activate a “cheater mode” on some boards. The magnets were stitched in side the gloves or jersey. When the ref would check the gun it worked fine. But when a magnet was close enough, it would activate the cheat.
13:25 Autococker mechanical, then it's Mano o Mano no more batteries😊 tournament made paintball rest was playing soldiers TA (the guard USA)) for that.
Back when I was playing we had these trigger trainers that we took everywhere to work in our finger walking speeds. i was able to get 30+ balls a second tap speed.
Back in the day I had a 03 speed angel, drop forward tank, SP freak barrel kit, volumizers, fly bolt and a warp feed with its trigger wired into the trigger switch so it didn't have any feed lag. My team really did hate me for that setup but it worked far better than anybody expected and I could shoot over bunkers and over top of the snake and surprise a lot of other teams. Sensi also worked far better than it had any right to on that marker too. Tried a 06 speed with vision but it just wasn't right and would chop paint all the time, it went out to a master tech and all but it just wasn't reliable so I sold it and went back to the 03. Seeing these videos makes me want to get my tanks hydro tested and wire a new battery into the 03 speed since it has aged out and won't hold a charge.
As somone who played div 3 and div2 as a youn adult and moved to other hobbies like car racing. From the outside looking in paintball has a huge barrier to entery which is one of the things killing car racing. Pump or mech play would lower costs for new and existing players get them at the field more
As someone who played as a kid, I loved paintball but it died off as a sport/hobby because it's just a luck game now. Shooting thousands of paintballs, having no idea where you're even hitting, yet hoping to see someone down range raise their hand. These lame kids killed it.
I still run a Halo hopper, I have a Shocker SFT, Ion, Ego…. My ion is my favorite, changed bolt, electronic eyes.. stock board ( adjusted Dwell) Reg. Consistent 300fps, 15 ball no ramp….. my other 2 have Virtue boards fire 18-22 on ramp! Great video!!!
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
If you have a topic suggestion for future videos like these, let me know!
I have a solution. All electronic guns must get tournament specific settings installed by the refs to compete. The refs also install tamper seals over the data ports to prevent tampering. Tampering with the settings or using a gun that hasn't been set to the tournament specs by the ref should be a lifetime ban.
rate all pro teams from worst to best
This was awesome. I got into paintball right in 99 and didn't even know all of this was happening at the pro level. Got out before the rules change, so it came and went without me ever hearing about it. Love this doc style kind of video, not sure about another topic but I know I'll watch it!
Research the current state of cheater boards. Never discussed these days but like…why would people stop using them haha
History of Paintball companies (JT, PE, GI Sportz, Angel, Bob Long etc.) would be cool. Or teams, what things were like back then etc..
I guarantee you the guys who were just playing in the woods with tippmann 98's were having more fun than all these teams.
Yes sir ✊️
Bruh....you just reignited 4 years of repressed high school memories LMAO
They are, i played nppl during the bps wars, it was a blast, but rec ball is a lot more fun now.
Most definitely that’s how my teenage years were. tipman 98 custom is the goat !!!
That was me and my buddies…..it was over 20 years ago a and we still talk about it
Played paintball with friends. All mechanical, tipman's, spider, etc.
Tons of fun, 5 v 5 on five acres of woodlands all with friends. That is what paintball was for me. We didn't go through tons of balls. For us it was, hunt, engage, retreat, flank, etc. more tactics than an overwhelming volume of fire.
Never forget one game we did. 2 vs 15. The 2 won just from knowledge of the bore trails and being able to hit and run. Was a lot of fun.
Hellyeaeh, I had a spyder, then got thee Auto-cocker, Yees, finally, got the front valves all aftermarket, made a custom grip from oak wood in woodshop, 7th grade, autofeeder hopper,dyee 10 inch spiral barreel. and co2 linees to belt,
Yes! I bought every clever add on for my 98. I could have probably bought one nicer grail gun for the money I spent that I so sought after at the time, but looking back I am sure I had more fun with my Tippmann.
That's awesome
Yeah, did a lot of that back in the late '90s here around LA. Had a Tipman Carbine. Was more about tactics, stealth and smarts than "firepower". Hated all the cheaters, though that was commonly wiping off paint and cranking up the guns after the chrono before the game start. Kind of lost interested when you had to deal with this shyt at every single game we were playing (walkup teams).
@@TheRealRedRooster For sure!
Probably should have gotten into the fact that the uncapped and high capped play at the start of this video led directly to paintball's massive collapse in popularity in the years immediately afterwards, as casuals simply left due to the huge cost of firing that much paint and what it felt like to get lit up.
The damage was colossal and arguably has never really been repaired.
It wasn’t really high capped play, though it didn’t help with the transition between casual and tournament play. The early part of the financial crisis killed tournament paintball as free cash dried up overnight. I miss the 200 team cfoa events though.
@@Tempest-ec2nn According to industry insiders at the time the collapse was already in progress before the financial crash happened. It was a convenient excuse, but paintball was in total freefall before.
I played from 1996 to 2008 and I think its because paintball as a culture tries to distance itself from the milsim community. Airsoft is relatively big and I think thats largely due to essentially being full on milsim play. Speedball is the lamest way to play paintball. I never understood the appeal.
As a casual I'd say it is very daunting to play with rentals/cheap markers up against 13 bps. Lots of people who would have been up and coming regulars, trying out PB get turned off after they've been humiliated.
Yup, other hobbys at least let you have stuff on the shelf after a match.
Paintballs are for stupid dicks now with to much money
Hearing the gear I used in my playing days talked about like ancient artifacts makes me feel about 1000 years old!
I haven't played since 2006 and completely left the sport. Started looking back into it about a year ago. It's like I played when dinosaurs were around
Bro I was watching a video on the history of computer gaming peripherals. Now that made me feel ancient. It's ridiculous now how I remember how crazy the first razor mouse was. I forgot before that there was never a gaming mouse. 😂 Fuck I'm old
The gear that I used was so old we had to load each round manually with a 10 round tube hopper. There was this dinky little foregrip to chamber the next round like it was a shotgun. 😅
My very first job when I was 16 at the end of the 1990s was at a paintball field. The Autococker was considered a respectable marker, (and about the only thing we had to watch out for was custom thumb dials on the rear that cheaters would use to dial up pressure after being chronographed in.) …but then the Angel came along, and after that, electronic guns really ruined the sport for everyday people who didn’t devote their lives and entire paychecks to buying the latest equipment. It got to the point where some refs would only allow electronic markers if a group rented out an entire field for private play. That didn’t go over well with pro and semipro players who were frequent returning customers at the business. When I started working there, it was a fun pastime people could come in and play like laser-tag - but 2 years later it was nearly impossible to bring new people into the sport, because the semipro and pro players spending ridiculous $$$ on custom gear with cheater electronics made first-time experiences terrible for newbies. It just became a niche moneysucking pastime for hardcore enthusiasts from there on, and decreased in popularity with the general public. I wished that the leagues would return to an analogue/mechanical-rule only, and ban electronic gizmos… but the use of electronic hoppers, etc. etc. had become too entrenched with the pro players - and they had invested wayyy too much money in all that kit to ever want to give up the electronic trend. To me, IMHO, paintball destroyed its own broad appeal and accessibility because it allowed electronics to niche the sport into increasingly expensive obscurity.
Just my $0.02 having been a local ref at a local field back in the day when that transition happened.
i played for years with mildly upgraded Parana, barrel, bolt, trigger. and did just fine till cheap electronic stuff came around.
@ yeah, I started out with a used Spyder, modded it & was saving up for a nitro carbon fiber tank with hose & harness mount…when the electronic thing happened. I was still in HS, about to go off to college.. there was no way I could afford even just the massively increased rate of paint the new markers were throwing, let alone a new electronic marker itself. Players who weren’t independently wealthy or already sponsored just couldn’t stay competitive, so I walked away, like a lot of ppl did. That late 90s early 2000s electronic transition turned the sport into a weird elitist niche - it dried up the pipeline of both new league players and new fans - which shrank the industry’s customer base & audience. Manufacturers made more money on each marker -at first- but then found themselves selling to shrinkingly few diehard enthusiasts & sponsored pros.
I think your half right. I think the airsoft rise, coupled with the push to high-speed paintball play is what killed it. I used a pirana as well for years. Got a barel that was accurate enough and got better at connecting shots and did fine. But man when I would try to being people and the tourney guys showed up and started throwing paint.. it really ruined people's day. People were only. Barely getting up the nerve to get hit with a paintball. And now your being hit 8 times because there is so much paint in the air... yeah it puts people off. I hate always having to assure people I'm just in regular semi auto when I show up and they see my setup. Like I just never saw the point of out gunning people. I prefer a fun game.
I miss NPPL, especially on the beach. What a time to be alive.
Thank you for reminding me of that. Playing at huntingdon Beach was the best!
@@TL-angzarr HB was one of the best settings but by Saturday the turf would have potholes and divets. Caused by the turf being layed ontop of sand with all the foot traffic and sliding
Before Chris Lasoya became a douche and that old vhs of 300fps, maaaaaaan lol the nostalgia
Agree, was a different time. HB was the highlight of the year. But honestly every venue was memorable for me. From QUALCOMM, PEVS, HSP, SC Village even smaller indoor like Splat Factory (which was extremely fun due to the turf being so saturated you could start your snake dive off break and make it lol) paintball from 05-09 was a wild ride.
@@mcav9459 dam man you are bringing up some primal memories of mine. i was at everyone of those fields a time or two. same time period. some of the best memories of my life
In middle school and high school in the late 90s, we would regularly have games 10-15 on a side out in the woods. Started off with a handful of guys had cheap pumps like Tigersharks but the majority were using sling shots or taking a weapon from someone who was already out. Eventually everyone had a gun, but some guys started bringing cheap semi autos like the spyder. Next thing you know there’s no more pump guns. Soon the $1,000 guns started coming and guys were going through a case of paint in an afternoon and we stopped playing in the woods and started playing in open ground because “it was more fun” according to the people with the expensive guns. That’s what ruined paintball for me. Started off being about stealth and tactics and turned into whoever had the most money to spend on guns and paint would win.
Exactly. It was always the guys that sucked at the tactical part that had the crazy guns too. That turn was a real bummer for all of us that played woodsball.
Absolutely this. Had a couple Tippman semi's, eventually a semi spyder, and a pump, forest games, sim games, etc. Hated the arena stuff, just seemed like a waste of paint, no tactics, no strategy, no team play, just run as fast as you can and waste paint.
Thats kinda how it feels now . I rock a tip man 98 and yeah it sucks but I go with friends …
I have a hard time justifying more then a couple hundred bucks for a paintball gun . But that’s just the old man in me
I remember playing at my friends house in grade school who had an acre of lightly wooded trees. about 12 of us and most of us with sling shot and paint balls. We would rotate the paintball guns around since we didn't all have one. Eventually most had a gun within a year and continued to use those for another 2 years. It was a blast
yup bs money pit
I gotta say, this is the best video you’ve made. Accurate, and nostalgic. We had the electronic arms race 20 years ago, now the mechanical arms race is occurring. Interested to see how mechanical valves evolve.
this
Honestly the last major tournament i played was 08 chicago at 12.5 and i can honestly say 10.5 is perfect. Games are still slow at 10.5 and i was an extremely aggressive player at 12.5.
Meanwhile I still have my Automag with a pneumatic trigger frame. It may not be as gas-efficient, but not enough to matter in a match; that trigger will still keep up with semi-auto electros.
@@WardenWolfi have an emf100, mechanical, fastest gun I have ever owned magfed though. I remember the angel and shocker I also had an automag with an RT valve!
Still have a mechanical autococker mini black magic and fired fast and accurate - only cheat there is, is how fast you can aim n shoot😂🙏
The old clips of Addicted just gave me legit goosebumps and brought back that stoked feeling of being 12 years old staying up all night watching paintball dvds with the homies before hitting the field with everyone rocking 25-30 bps. Those Team Addicted dudes were the prime era of "swag" in the game and who we all just wanted to be like.
It's been 20 years and that clip of rocky cagnoni saying "doodoo brown!" Never gets old.
I still say it to this day! Takes me back
i wonder what hes up too
I remember drooling over all the guns in my magazines while I’d take my Brass Eagle out to the woods.
Lol heck yeah brother
I think just about everyone had a Brass Eagle at one point lol. Either that, a Spyder, Piranha, Tippmann 98 or A5 or a Smart Parts ION.
@@LyleH45 nice trip down memory lane. My semi auto was the closest thing to a god gun when everyone was still using pumps.
I mean I had 12 paintball markers all together. Tippmann spider angel. Bob long.
Honestly that Tippmann a5 I think? The second one they made. That was my favorite. I got so much use out of it in the woods. Everything else would break when I dove.
Until I got an aka Viking. They died but their style was a lot heavier, but still modern internals. Thing was a tank. Retired with it.
Mostly giant woods when I played but also college play or bunker style
@@LyleH45holy shit I forgot piranha. Yeah a5 was what I was thinking about. You could upgrade a lot of the internals swap the barrel, and it was basically a "Glock" to me lol. Just worked.
I remember the first time I ever played paintball. Everybody was running around with mechanical guns, then in the distance I heard some rapid fire. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. We got back to the staging area that's when I saw my first Angel
lol! I think everybody has an identical angel story!
I was in same situation, first time out, rental spyder, too nervous and hoping I wouldn't hit a ref, teammate or shoot myself in the dick. Playing some woodsball defend the castle mode. We were being overwhelmed by the attacking team around the castle perimeter. All of a sudden I hear a "GET DOWN" to my right. Dude pops up with his shiny gloss red wundermarker and proceeds to light up all the attackers like the minigun Blaine/Mac used in Predator (1987).
I found out what a WDP Angel was that day 🙂.
@@Iscariot18 thats a badass memory
@@Iscariot18 you were lucky you had the spyder. I had a rental pump lol.
@@herrskeletal3994 Lol we always got crusty ole Tippman 98s
@@Rogan_Dorn Yeah I ref occasionally at that same field and the 98's are the current rentals. For Dorn and the Emperor!
I would give anything to go back to 2000's paintball 😢
It was the fucking best (68 Automag powerfeed viewloader 12v Ice blue, centerflag hyperframe 4" drop forward 68 cu 3000psi tank havin ass nigga checking in!) I don't miss the prices though lol that marker alone was in the 1000's but man I miss those days.
I played competitive ball for years but finally got out when my team sponsor told me point blank that we had to start bending the rules to get more podiums. Some years later I took a group from work to a local indoor field for funsies. I left the Angel in the box and played with an SL-68 pump against the rental Automags, to keep it fair. There were a couple of walk-ons with electronic guns of some sort. I had a chat with them before the games started and made sure that they knew not to light up the nubies. They agreed. Of course, once we started playing, they couldn't resist dumping half a dozen balls into every new player. I pulled out the Angel and showed them what a pro overshoot at 16 BPS feels like. They left after that and I went back to playing pump. Good times.
Ultimate sigma move. You dropped your crown 👑, king.
Holy smokes I have a similar story using an Angel I had won off a guy in a pump only woods dual hehe. I was two urban combat tours deep (Infantry) who got invited to a local field by an high school team...they got wreaked by some very disrespectful adults with obvious autos during a semi (none electronic /mechanical ) only match - I busted out the Angle and gave them an similar introduction when they did an open match (this was a Mil Sim/air soft field so 'speed ball' wasn't a thing)
You sure showed them, bro.
As someone who had to play front against an amateur team as a rookie in a regional tourney. . . Thank you. The 3 feet to the flag was a little too far. I figure I got shot by every member of their team for 1-2 seconds before the ref started waving his hands like crazy, even going to far as to step into the line of fire of 1-2 members of their team to walk me off the field. If my flag-pull had succeeded, they would have been knocked out of the tournament.
I had nice gear as a kid and shot as fast as possible so other people wouldn’t hit me. Running around and sliding like crazy, wearing a custom jersey. People would think I was good, no I just had good gear lol
It's been a solid decade since I played. The most advanced gun I ever had was a Tippmann 98 with an e-bolt (pneumatic ram setup instead of sear and bolt) and their cyclone feed on it (the valve is gonna waste the gas anyways, may as well use it for something). One battery, shot faster than anything I faced with regularity, and gave me probably my favorite comment ever from an opponent: "What's up with the old guy with the Tippmann and how is it so good?"
IDK why the algorithm brought me to this video but I'm glad I'm here. Was a fun watch. My Cyclone feed had some mods to it, was fully capable of keeping up with the board. I never formally measured the BPS but the speed demo in the video makes me think I was at the pointy end of the range, over 15 for sure.
I need to get some new air tanks and go play again. Show the teenagers that you can still get it in your 40s and over.
Oh man, that 2000 to 2006 era time frame was my favorite period of paintball. It was like a reintroduction of mystique into the game that was lacking for a while. The internet forums were abuzz with rumors and speculation about every little thing ESPECIALLY when it came to electronic paintball gear.
Bruh, nights with all your friends huddled around a dusty basment computer watching the g7 fly video drop,wishing for something unique like a macdev cyborg and terrorizing neighborhood stop signs with a virtue dm6 at 2am un able to sleep on a saturday night waiting to play on sunday was golden era.
Dude 2000 to 06 i call the the race gun days it wasn't about efficiency it was how fast can it shoot and that was all anybody cared about
Dude right. I remember the whole team I was on standing watching video after video of how to make our karnivores shoot insane firing rates or work in general.
@@nickv5131 i have a 1st gen angel speed with a virtue board that has all the cheat codes lol glad she's still alive
@@shockashoota such a mood.
Would be cool to see 7 man at 15bps make a comeback as a spinoff series. The ICPL is insanely fun but truthfully the most fun I’ve had competing was in the UWL due to the limited paint, reinsertion at 10 min, and the unique roles each team got to field - scout, heavy, demolitionist, and the secret 11th stock class player. Always playing scout or stock class roles.
Super 7’s in Australia still fire at 15bps
They dumbed the ICPL down as a washed up old man league. Most of us that played 10man in the woods -> hyperball era alongside mech guns giving way to electronic guns range from 42 at the very youngest to 65 now.
Modern mech should be where the freestyingl guns blazing fun lives.
It shouldnt be the diabetes, adult diaper, bad knees, obesity means you cant crawl game.
This was a nostalgia trip. I had to stop playing in 02 when I went to college it blows my mind what happened after I lost touch with paintball.
Totally relate. I stopped playing just after the Shocker and Angel came out. I alwasy wanted to shoot one. Never did. Crazy to see what happened since then.
This video just brought back a bunch of paintball memories, below is
We had a core group of about 12 people between kids and dads playing on a local farmer's land with some woods, and an old building foundation.
After playing multiple Saturdays in a row and inviting friends both young and old it basically became an unofficial club. I think we got close to 50 people at least 1 Saturday.
We started a $5 play fee for the day, which went to 2 "club" guns, pizza delivery for everyone that day, and building collapsible barriers for a field area we could play in.
I heard they even continued after the original core group of kids left for college. Hopefully someone's kept it going for all these years.
The biggest shout out to that wonderful man loaning out his land for people to shoot paint at each other.
You helped create some great memories for a bunch of kids and parents. And it was a great place to introduce people to the world of paintball. For me paintball will never be better than that.
*edit* Cool thing to note is we had markers from the cheap $100 semiautos up to my buddy's $1000 speedball gun from when he played on a team. Mine was a Tippmann custom pro w/ the flatline barrel. The variety in the play space and gun variety basically leveled them all out; especially when someone waste their money shooting a hopper of ball into a bunch of plants.
i'll never forget being blown away by how insanely expensive the full electric guns were, with the carousel loader. i had gotten a regular style machined paintball gun for christmas and all it has "extra" was just a long rifled barrel. i still use that gun today to haze off moose, but i would desperately outmatched playing against humans with turbo machine gun rigs that shot a literal stream of balls so fast it sounded like a single ripping sound
I don't play paintball, but I love paintball history. I miss going to the grocery store and buying the magazines.
I think 90% of the old guys in the comments miss those days too
Shit i was a wide eyed little kid looking at the brass eagle kits encased in hard plastic at wal mart. That was the first paitnball marker i ever had with a little 9oz co2 tank. We had a field down the road from us where we used to get fishing bait and i saw an angel on the wall for 1750. I thought it was only $17.50 and everyone laughed including my dad. Oh the good ol days. ❤
You can always watch paintball videees!! Feel free to check out mine. My boys play hard!
I still have tucked away a few tall stacks of the only 2 paintball magazines available around me. I was more of a woodsball scenario guy so high rates of fire were useless to me but I loved the tech.
going down to the local shops to get the monthly facefull that they only got in because I asked and seeing it there was an event in itself
I think 10.5 makes for a more exciting game - but they could limit the tank sizes to 68 or smaller so you can either drive greater efficiency or bring out less paint. Either way, the regular players win as the game will get faster or the markers will get more efficient.
Not everyone is short and guns can’t get anymore faster than it already is and there’s always a fill station in the pits so gun efficiency won’t really matter
So if we could get a case of paint through a marker that handles paint like the field 1 force v2, that wouldn’t entice you?
Improvements can always be had.
I love 10.5. I agree it’s about perfect.
Nah tank size is based on how long your arms are. Its about the only customization left to a setup you can do. Markers are so efficient that 68ccu really wouldnt make a difference at all except in player comfortability
Tank shape could stay the same, but volume could be limited. Or, even only allowing a certain amount of psi from the certified fill stations.
Thank you for rehashing my teenage years for me. It was a wild time to be playing
Remove electronics from the competition entirely. Go purely mechanical. Problem solved. This has been my TED Talk; thank you for attending.
Plenty of cheating happened with Auto-mags too
Zero electronics
Agreed
I had an GGP Autococker in 2003 and not only had to keep it clean, but consistently tuning the timing. The gun is all mechanics and just like a machine (not as reliable as a firearm) so the bolt has to open just enough to allow the balls to enter, but not too long or it’ll chop the next ball, or fire too slowly, then the pressures had to be changed depending on weather… the trigger pull could be changed to 1/4 the length, but that made lb pressure on trigger increased by more than 4 and increased risk of too small of a window to cycle…
Sorry I’m high. I went to get my tank filled 5 years ago and dude laughed at me bc it was 15 years expired hahaha
Yo! Great vid! I’m from the era of Autococker and Automag 😂 with Dye barrels being the tiddies! When the Shocker (followed by Angel) first hit shelves, I was part of the crew that first started hacking it. We partnered with an electrical engineer meganerd, who went to town making custom programming and even ground-up board builds. It was wild and awesome! I believe the engineer and shop owner & captain of our PB shop, Jon, named the final board “Archangel”.
This was all done in sight of the KFC Big Chicken, in Marietta GA. Good times… I wish I still had a Cocker to play with. I absolutely loved making custom parts, machining, hacking and rebuilding them. Thanks for the memories, dude!
I am so happy that I got into the sport way before all this crap started happening. For anyone going to highschool, working at K-Mart, and trying to keep up with some other kids running a cheater board... it must have felt like this hobby made no sense at all. Glad I got to enjoy the days when the worst thing you had to deal with were talent, an Autococker, or the occasional cheater.
As an embedded systems engineer who started out his career with arduinos with the AtMega microcontrollers (back then by Atmel, they were acquired by Microchip later) and I'm now designing with 32-bit ARM micros by STMicroelectronics and having played airsoft back in the day, I designed a custom fire control board with mosfets for power control to the motor. This video seems on some parallel level very nostalgic to me .
I am also in embedded systems! Gotta love microcontrollers... Still have my old stock of Atmega stuff, maybe I'll check that out as a fun side project!
This is my favorite video you've put out. The content was fantastic but the structure, timing, graphics... The whole execution was excellent. You're killing it.
Paintball died for me as a sport when the electrics came out. I started out with pumps with auto trigger then went with F1 Illustrator as a fun gun every weekend. I would use an auto cocker in tournaments. It was fun and affordable because I didn't have to waste more than a few hundred paintballs for the day. The good old times. I was in the Great Western Series back then. Played mostly limited paint tourneys.
Brings back memories of playing on a team out of Virginia Beach in 1998-1999. I played a few nipple tournaments with an Automag w/ Z-Grip. Not the most practical gun but I loved the experience.
Lowering BPS can facilitate more movement, but I think anything more in that direction isn’t really needed. Sure, a pump or mech pro tournament might be cool, or a further BPS reduction could open up the field a little more…but the better fix is far simpler. Limit the amount of paint a team can carry.
Paint manufacturers (and fields that sell it) wouldn’t love it, so idk how feasible it is. But for the sake of the game itself, a hard limit on team paint (e.g. 15 pods total for a 5-man team, split however they’d like) would be more effective. Shoot as fast as you’d like (or keep the current 10.5 cap, whatever), but you can only do it so long without harming the team.
Exactly.
Interesting take-I like this idea.
I like this idea. Maybe a set amount of pods per player? Capped semi auto?
@@58degreefpv45 yeah, something like that. A limit per person gets mentioned sometimes and would definitely work, maybe 4 or 5 pods per person? Personally I like a wrinkle in that like I mentioned above - pod limit per team, but allow them to divvy it up as they'd like. Or maybe it's a hybrid, where they have a team limit and thresholds for the players (e.g. 15 pods for the 5-man team, each player must have at least 2). Just something to limit the paint and give more strategy to the game: you want your back guys to have most of the paint for lanes, sure, but maybe don't allow them to have 7 pods...
@@jesse8458 max of 4 pods per player, but can be "gifted" after buzzer?
Having lived through those times I will say the uncapped days weren’t better.
Uncapped semi was the best ever. Ramping sucks bro and I could shoot semi faster than ramp speeds
@@PEZ1514 yes and no. The uncapped days were nuts. I think it got too crazy and caused a ton of people to leave the sport.
Damn, I miss this era of paintball. Played from 2001-2008 and had all these markers, what a fun time.
Early 2000’s paintball was the best…I started getting serious when I bought the Ion then I got the Shocker…by far my favorite marker..I always wanted a DYE marker just never had the cash for one
Man, this video brings back memories. I started playing paintball around 2000 with my first marker being a PMI Piranha which was a direct competitor to the Spyder. But, my weapon of choice for the last 20 years is still an OG 2004 Smart Parts Impulse Vision. It was the little brother to the Shocker: open bolt vs closed bolt, ran at slightly higher pressures, but was half the cost, super easy to maintain, and was a true "tinkerer's marker". Custom bodies, bolts, rams, hammers, valves, regulators, boards, trigger frames, triggers, feed necks, you name it. One of the most famous (and is equipped on mine) is the W.A.S. (Wicked Air Sportz) Equalizer Board which would definitely fall under the header of one of these original cheater boards. Everything was adjustable: bounce, debounce, dwell, max cycle rate, multiple programmable firing modes: semi auto, full auto, burst with user defined cycles (e.g. 3 shot, 5 shot, 10 shot, whatever), ramping to include the trigger pull rate required to activate said firing modes. Paired with the eyes, which weren't beam break style, you could set an "unlimited" firing mode where the cycle rate of the marker was only limited by physics. Literally it would cycle as fast as the inertia of the bolt assembly would allow which could get over 30 BPS with the right combo of pressure and weight. Paired with the "Freak" barrel system which had adjustable sleeves to fit different diameter paintballs and the newer style force feed hoppers, you could rip unreal streams of paint with pinpoint accuracy and never worry about breaking a ball. Compared to today's markers it's a brick boat anchor with terrible gas mileage, but it still turns heads when I dig it out and roll streams with it.
With that said, once electronic markers started becoming more standard, most fields I played at quickly instituted rules disallowing any type of auto, ramping, or burst firing, and cycle rates were capped at around 10-12 bps because the field markers were all mechanical Tippmann 98 or Spyders. They didn't want 10, 12, 13, 14 year olds on their birthday parties getting ripped to shreds by folks with $2000 gear setups
i still have my Piranha its great little gun with some mild upgrades. i had Dye aluminum 14" barrel and upgraded bolt and trigger and played with that for years and did all i ever needed.
Man. All I ever wanted was a sweet, tricked out autococker.
If I got back into paintball that's still what I'd want.
I remember having a predator board and using the 20 bps full auto break out mode, super sneaky only worked on the 3rd trigger pull. Crazy cool tech for back in 2005
Forget which board but it had first pull full auto, then reverted back to semi/ramping. All kinds of fun modes back in the day.
Cringe cheating
I took the spring out of my trigger and let it bounce. Also wiped a hit one time and felt like shit about it for years lol i miss paintball. Ultimately it was just too expensive to remain popular.
My PMR did 33bps in 2010. 20 is pretty good for 2005!
Loser
The U.K. had 14 failed criminal prosecutions of people alleging paintball were real guns, before civil servants decided on implementing new restrictive legislation.
I swear the UK governance ran by Karen’s and Fun Nazis
Man they can't have any fun over there
@@nastrodomis They arrest people over twitter insults now, lmao.
@@kingterry6045 Yes, use one bad word in writing to another, and it’s a “Malicious Communication”.
@@kingterry6045they will also arrest people for spitting or saying anything bad about the royal family. Seems like communism to me over there
Great video, keep putting these out!!!
R.I.P. A.K.A who knows what those guys would have put out if they hadn’t been screwed over…
I'll never forgive the Gardeners.
Stupid parts
Agreed!
I haven't fired a marker in almost 20 years, and I still regret trading my DC Viking.
That shit ruined paintball. I had a cheap spyder compact 2k and it was fun
I was big into paintball in 2000 as a freshman in high school for about two years. My rich friends had tippman 98s with the banana barrel which ruled the remnants of 1800s farmhouses and barns we played in, I had a brass eagle silver eagle which I got made fun of for but it was more reliable than some of my friend's rigs they tried to customize themselves with expensive aftermarket mods. We had more fun building forts and courses in our our woods than actually playing bc someone always got hurt. My best friend fell from his dads second floor hay loft in mid sprint; we heard him sprinting then nothing followed by a thud. Luckily he had no serious injuries, but likely a concussion. His dad lost his mind the next day not realizing he had given us permission to play in there the night before as he had been drinking at their annual community pig roast. Those were good times
God this is nostalgic af… paintball was my life for so long I can’t believe how much I’ve forgotten already…
I raise my hand to take some of the responsibility for this BS.... Being the HALO guy, I can openly say I am so glad to have retired from playing before the effect of these guns really took hold. LOL
As a old guy who used to play paintball a lot this was interesting (an angel was my last gun and I stopped a couple years after that). Funny thing is, as a long time hacker I thought of a near impossible to detect "fix" for your custom firing modes pretty quick after you said the ref snatched your gun.
Put an RF reader in the handle of the gun, and an RF chip in your glove (basically use the same tech as the nintendo amibos or a door entry card). Then the modes only enable when *your* hand is on the gun. The ref could snatch it instantly from you and it would never test "illegal" unless he stole your glove and put it on. And it your *REALLY* dedicated to cheating then embed the chip into your palm like the body hackers do. ;)
As one of those Splatmaster-in-the-woods players from the late '80s, I still remember the shock and awe of being on the receiving end of my first barrage from a Tippman SMG-60! I can't imagine playing against modern guns...
I started Paintball in 1985. My team took 3rd in the Nationals Tourny in Pittsburg PA in 1987....with Nelspots. That was when skill was valued, woodsmanship, camo and teamwork. I got out in the mid 90s, when arena ball took over and firehoses replaced skill. Last serious time I played was mid 90s, helping a buddy open a field in SE Indiana. After the first match, (30 v 30), a kid ran up to me with his shiny new angel and told me that he had spent 2000 rounds had gotten a kill! I replied I had fired 200, and had gotten 6. Long story short, I'm not impressed with where the sport has gone.
As a former NPPL Division 1 professional player I can confirm the downfall of the sport for us was when they started trying to regulate and change the rules every year. Exceptionally few players actually got paid well enough to do it as their only job so the constant need to change the markers was expensive and it killed a lot of the top teams. Sponsors rarely paid much at all and often only offered discounts at the best.
I do miss the older days of paintball at it's peak, your team was incredibly tight nit, in my case to the point where some of us lived and worked together. Had events most weekends and we were all obsessed with it, the shit talk and controversy that came with it all. I'll never forget those days
Alot of my guys all joined the Army together, it really was a brotherhood for alot of people. Great times.
OMG the woods with splatmasters!!! That is how i started. With hockey masks and sports goggles, we painted the hockey masks also!! then came the tippmans, than automags, autocockers, then the shocker, angels! i still have my custom 2005 shocker nxt! :) I helped start the Texas A&M program back in 96! :)
Cheap true electropneumatic guns (not just mechanical guns with electronic triggers) are what killed paintball. What a lot of the "Get good" crowd don't understand is that the game is a LOT less fun as a casual player when you get lit up from head to toe every time you're eliminated. The pain-to-pleasure ratio starts shifting heavily towards pain, and the learning curve gets a lot steeper. This tends to turn off both younger people who are getting into the sport and older players who just want a casual game. If you wind up with 5-10 welts every time you're eliminated instead of 1-2, you tend to call it a day a lot sooner and seriously consider whether you even want to go back. Once these guns got so cheap that a middle-class 10-12-year-old could reasonably get one for Christmas or birthday, it basically killed the stream of new players entering the sport because overshooting became the norm instead of the exception.
Did you ever consider getting good?
Been getting lit up since 06 and im still having fun. 😂
I guess the Mini.... that has been around for idk 10+ years is new lol 😆 been this way a minute bud. Get good
@@notetaking9308 two.bery different fire rate bro. But I had both and hear ya.
Played a some in 1990s and 2000s. There was definitely 2 schools of thought in my experience. Those that loved the tactics and stealth of the woods and the ones that sprayed and prayed in the open areas with $1,000+ guns. I liked the idea of having tactics not who can get a lucky hit spraying an entire area at 20+ balls a minute.
In my day I rocked a blue/black fade ‘05 Proto Matrix with Virtue Board installed, blade trigger, Dye Throttle tank, blue/black Freak barrel with insert kit, and a rip drive Halo B. Good times. If I remember correctly my Virtue Board allowed me to fire up to something like 35 bps or something, and tourneys allowed ramping, but capped us at 15 bps. Ollie Lang was everyone’s idol. It’s been years lol.
I ran a Tippman 98 with a reactive trigger and a flatline barrel. Although I ran an electric hooper, it wasn't as fancy. I actually came up with the idea of extending the neck of the hopper a few inches. I achieved this by using 1 inch pvc water sprinkler pipe and wrapping it in electrical tape. This decreased the chance of exploding paintball. I was called out a few times, but nothing was ever done cause I was like 15.
When I got into Paintballing in 2000 We had Auto Cockers, and Spyders, and Cheapo Tippmans, And then Angel came out and changed everything!!!
I traded an original iPhone for my friends Bob Long Intimidator. I was so obsessed with that gun.
I used to love paintball when I was a kid. I bought my first paintball gun in like 1998 or 1999 and I believe it was a greshish black swirled looking anodized Kingman spyder SE with an upgraded long silver and black barrel on it. It shot so straight and clean.
I’m 32 now. Started young. Played with a local team. Toured the country for free. Practiced with active military members. Paintball was life! Fast guns didn’t bother me. My fingers and feet were fast enough to get into the snake and work up the field. I didn’t love getting shot 10-20 times each time but that was paintball. I still have a scar on my knuckle from playing with nearly frozen paint. Love paintball. Still got an old jersey in my closet.
5 man
Uncapped semi
3 people with 4 pods each as 'front' players
2 people with 6 pods as 'corner' or 'back' players
Try to make the game interesting and ramp up action while relying on skill rather than just dropping lanes across the field in the hopes that one or two players get a lucky break
Still have my old DM4 with a tadao board with all the now illegal modes haha
Illegal!? So does that mean my m6 isn't allowed anymore? I havent played in years...
They should have one tournament per season that’s an “anything goes” tournament. Lets see some insane guns out there lol
My favorite paintball marker was the Tippman A5. It was a gas operated full auto marker, that integrated a force feed mechanism into the hopper. It was fun to shoot since it gave feedback to your trigger finger, it was reliable (with compressed air, i cant remember how reliable it was with CO2), and easy to clean. I have a lot of memories of paintball. We lived on 5 acres and had two paintball fields, a woods ball field and a speedball field (speedball was by far the more popular pick by our players).
The only thing that makes sense to me for a pro paintball league is that dedicated specific markers would be used for tournament play. Each tournament or league would need to supply the official markers for the players as rental markers. Providing the website and availability to purchase your own for recreational use of practice. Modification of a stock official marker would not be allowed during tournament play. Hoppers, tanks, and barrels would be acceptable. Before walk-on players would have to enter a staging area allowing them 1-2 minutes setup time (putting on barrel, hopper, and tank). Big brand paintball like dye and eclipse would need to pay the league to use their sponsored markers as sales would skyrocket specific markers. The league would be funded by marker brands. As well as league fees.
such a quality edit! great story telling as well!
Why don't they limit paint capacity? You wanna fire 20-30bps? Well now your out of ammo, and just a target on the field.
So my 2cent is that even with the nxl europe limit that is hopper + 4pods on 10.5 bps ramp well yes limit play however à break out at 10 and à break out at 20/30 balls is really hard to make for obvious reason. Now sure you may be out of paint faster but youre team can also advance faster as 30bps lane is not something i know im getting tru
Paintballs don't break easily. Volume of fire makes up for it, they're also kinda inaccurate, so again volume of fire.
I never took a single shot i always fired 10-20 ball bursts even without high rof guns. 200 and hopper means 10-20 "shots"
Man you should have added the emag and how it got banned right away cause the rt mode was just too damn fast and provided an "unfair" advantage
Emag wasn't banned, the particular trigger pull was suspect to some people.
Had an eMag. It wasn't all that. Maybe for it's time, but my Sandridge Smoked it. Ugly, but far more reliable than the eMag. eMag was too fast for the hoppers at the time unless you got that force feeding abortion that AGD came up for it (had one). Worked, but what a hunk to haul around.
Some friends and I all started playing paintball way back in the day around 2004 maybe about 14 years old. we all had our Brass Eagles or Spyders and we would just go into the woods behind my house and had an absolute blast. Around 2005 we transitioned to speedball fields for some reason, and they all loved it while I found myself enjoying it less. This video really brought it full circle for me. I assumed speedball was always this way when it turns out we walked right into the BPS wars. I am very happy to hear that it has changed and plays around 10BPS which is more than enough, won’t need to buy paint as often, and games become more tactical again rather than just roping paint non-stop.
Love this!! I started in 2005 and all the way up to the financial crisis it was basically Paintball golden era. Now I mostly enjoy the time I had in the crazy sport of paintball having worn many different hats.
It's been a big part of my life and I will always have great memories from that time.
Remember using the spyder rocket triggers on a victor
bro I still have a spyder shutter with a modified E-frame trigger. It was my first marker before I got my timmy and after I stopped using it my little brother ran it until he quit playing. talk about a wild setup for back in the day
I remember being at NPPL Tampa in 2004, and seeing a friend from LA in the chrono area with a new DM4, pulled the trigger back 3 times slow, and it went 24bps basically full auto, pull the trigger once slow and it went back to normal.
Also the robot was in Tampa, and it caught 0 people out. It was a total laughable failure. It just couldn't be programmed with all the permutations that existed with all the boards.
I played in Tampa in 04 & 05. I got pulled in 05 because they thought I was cheating. My fingers registered 22bps in front of 11 refs. Majority of them yelled “holy shit” when I cursed them out and ripped half a hopper showing them how fast my fingers were. I used to rubber band fishing weights to my fingers & tap pens/pencils against my thighs in class all day waiting to go to the field after 😂 I would kill to get my 05 ego back.
I started playing paintball in the late 90s and the first rate of fire shenanigans I can recall are the Shocker Turbo and Automag RT. I quit playing in 2006 and just recently started looking back into it, the changes are pretty crazy with guns shooting so much slower, but the biggest thing I noticed is how much the sport has shrunk. Way less people play now than did in the heyday of the BPS wars.
Agree, after my recommendation my grandson just started looking into paintball I had an old tippman 98 custom I reworked and now we cannot find air! Back in the day you could fill up tanks just about everywhere! Crazy!
Yeah, getting lit up by people with full auto guns at the height of the BPS Wars will do that to younger people who played once and said never again. There's a reason airsoft rose just as quickly as paintball fell.
@@Clockwork0nions Agree to disagree on that point, it seems to me that paintball shrunk after the rate of fire limitations, not before.
@@hwi7114
I mean I can’t change your feelings, but the facts are the BPS Wars and the move away from woodsball killed the sport in North America.
No idea how I got here as I am not into paint ball. The break down on this video was very well done. There is some people who are horrible at explaining things and it makes you leave immediately. The way you did it made me want to stay and watch the whole video. Good job sir!
Thanks to the algo for randomly sending me down paintball memory lane. My main markers in the 2000's were a side feed Autococker pump conversion w/ a 50 round hopper and a Carter Buzzard. $20 in paint a day was all it took to embarrass all the Angels, Intimidators, tadao board modded Dye's. Thanks to the local pump legends and team Blowfish for teaching me the way of stock class...NGL I had the modded, ramping, Halo hopper setups too. Dumping paint was fun occasionally.
technology ruined paintball
My last ever game I used my classic pgp
Paintballs are too expensive. That's what ruined it.
It’s not that paintballs were too expensive, it’s that a 1,000 count case could get chewed through in minutes.
@@collenbrown5364 you just contradicted yourself.
Not at all, the problem was that back then the meta was that the guns would fire so fast that it led to needing to buy paint more often. The frequency of buying the paint was the issue not the actual price of a case of paint. If you’re playing a slower game your paint goes further and you might not feel like the price is so bad. To be fair could it be cheaper? Possibly, but it wasn’t the main issue.
10.5 ramping is the future. Its good at keeping a level playing field
I remember back in the early days I could shoot a ridiculously high rate of fire using the responsive trigger system on a tippman 98 custom, and I very regularly had refs at my local fields checking to see if I could even fire a single shot because they couldn't believe how fast I was able to shoot. I was definitely a field dominator with that gun, it was heavy but it was accurate and it could rip off some pretty precise high rate of fire. I eventually would move on to the Dye Matrix 2004, and played many tournaments with that, but I was not really a high rate of fire player with that setup. I regularly wouldn't even bring extra pods for reloads, knowing I could finish the round with just my hopper load. I played division 2 with the DM4, and won first place in a few 3 man tournaments during that era. My two teammates would lock down the field, our back player would pin down the left side so the other team couldn't cross to the left, and my other teammate would bump up the center while I would work my way down the right side of the field, I would move into position and take slow accurate timed shots at them from the side while my teammates laid down suppressive fire the entire round. Fun times man, wish airsoft never became popular, because paintball was just a million times better.
I’ll never forget the day I went back to my folks house for the first time. My Angel is in a landfill somewhere. Along with my green spider with the electric trigger, I loved that gun.
I remember lending a teammate my custom Naughty Dogs Intimidator at a tournament when he got spot checked going to the field. He was DQ'd for the match and the gun was confiscated until the end of the tournament for bouncing. The gun was so hard to stop bouncing, I gave up. Couldn't tune it out but I didn't want a horrible trigger pull either. Compared to today's paintball, I think it is fine where it's at. I do like semi 15bps cap but I'm ok with 10.5bps ramp as well. I do miss shooting lanes at 15-20bps knowing the other player isn't making it through without a hit. Things got spicy back then at those speeds. Lots of overshooting. Lots of bonus balls for whining to the ref.
I was almost thrown out in Atlanta for bonus balling a terrible ref playing psp
Because standing there shooting 20bps the whole round and lane locking is soooo fun 🙄
@@anarchyamp I don't think you played back in the early 2000s. Paintball then was extremely aggressive and very not defensive. You need to shoot lanes like that because you most likely had 2 people running down the field to bunker opponents almost immediately. Also, we didn't play for points in most tournaments like today. Most tournaments where a round robin system with an elimination finals. It's ok though. You had to be there to appreciate what is was then and how it got to where we are now.
airsoft is still better but cool vid
I remember when the Shocker came out the Angel then All American...back then I use to use a Micro Mag on a remote system with a tiny 48tank in my pack. Our team actually placed 2nd at the Worlds in Orlando in I think 95' . We all had AutoMags, Rtmags, and I run a MicroMag. The Eguns really changes the game by players just laying paint . I think the skill levels of players would have been higher today if there were all truly semi auto
I miss the old days when you had to take care of guns and know what you were doing. I enjoyed messing with o-ring sizes and materials they were made out of, adjusting my hpr/lpr, and dwell. It was almost like a gate to keep people who didn't care out. I remember having different acceptable +/- depending on the paint that I shot. You had different grease for the temperature. It was an OCD kid's dream. The last guns I had to take care of were a DM14 and a Mac Dev GT. Now I see guns you can throw in your gear bag, change the battery once a month, and put any grease on.
I've been a paintball player since 2003, mostly in Europe, particularly in Poland. Back then, paintball was really thriving, with the excitement of rapid technological advancements every year. Every year, there was a new marker, and it was a big deal-brands like Derder were huge. There were so many brands, offering different price ranges and color options. Even beginners could get a marker for 100 dollars, which was affordable with the currency exchange rates at that time. There were tons of mods, like the Eclipse Cockers or the Ion with Lucky parts, and everyone was happy with that. The more BPS (balls per second), the more fun it was. But then, one idiot came up with a terrible idea to introduce limitations, and it started a domino effect. Other brands began to collapse.
They introduced restrictions, like forcing players to buy field paint only, instead of letting us buy from shops where prices were competitive-free market gone. Now paintball has become a "communist" sport with all these limitations, and it's killing the passion, especially for the younger generation. I remember there were over 200 fields, a dozen tournaments like Centurio Circuit, Millenium, and so many teams. Now, there are far fewer.
The choice of markers has also shrunk significantly. I have a lot of disdain for companies like Planet Eclipse and DYE, which killed off other companies that had contributed to the growth of paintball, like WDP, Bob Long, etc. Back then, there was a wider range of options and prices, but now the cheapest markers from those two companies are around 400-600 dollars. Where are the Spyders now? No one's producing them, and that's why, in my eyes, paintball is dying.
I agree so much. The money drive and hate for fast guns severely damages paintball as a sport.
Dang, so glad this popped into my feed. I was obsessed with the sport from like 2005-2012. Barely look at anything for it anymore but this brought back some good memories.
2:15 just made me tear up (crying). I had this exact Bob Long poster in my room growing up, and my dad had the red to yellow "sunset" fade Intimidator. Memories I'll have forever and would never trade.
Great video, I still own so many of the old school markers in the closet all cleaned up ready for some weekend fun games! I really enjoy these historical videos. Maybe have some old school videos just showing off one marker at a time in the future and their history and use? That could be fun!
Played my first game of paintball in 1994. I was wearing shorts and a tank top. I got lit up so bad. It was the most fun I have ever had. I still to this day have my vintage Tippmann Factory F/A full auto. Play on a few local tournament teams Bad Karma, Ouch Factor, and Crimson Halo. Fun times.
I really love these paintball history ones you delve into. I know they're a lot of work but really nostalgic and awesome. Great job!
"ION, VIRTUE, LETS DO IT" god fckin damn that video will forever be engraved in my memory. god what a time it was
My first "job" in the 90s when i was 15/16 was a paintball referee. It wasnt paid in dollars, but rather in game time and free paintballs. Seeing all these old machines really brings me back ♥️
My buddy had a dwell ramping DM4. What a time to be alive.
Airsoft is a hell of a lot more fun ngl. For us full auto and electronic controllers aren't cheating, just part of the game. Theres surprisingly very little limits on guns, aside from velocity of course.
I think paintball is more fun but yes I completely agree these limitations are ridiculous.
@@BamBlamboTv yeah, I agree entirely. I've honestly never tried paintball but I can definitely see the appeal in it. They're fairly similar at the end of the day, you shoot at the enemy team to try to eliminate them. The arenas and guns are where it gets a _lot_ different. Paintball has a lot more variety nowadays but still mostly the same general concept of a simple HPA powered gun that usually fires semi auto. Airsoft has replicas of real life firearms which can have drastically different roles on the battlefield due to differences in velocity/effective range, fire rate, and ammo capacity. I really like going pistol only because I can run around really fast without getting tired, flanking and getting into good positions really quickly (my main rifle is a 10lb near perfect full metal replica of an AK-12 which gets very tiring to lug around at top speed for very long). I don't think I've ever seen a paintball pistol as small as the airsoft Glock 18 I have, but idk maybe it does exist. Airsoft tends to feel more tactic and strategy oriented and slower paced in a lot of cases where paintball seems super fast paced and intense head on combat, which honestly sounds fun.
Honestly might try paintball someday anyways. I like the idea of how fast paced it is and the guns all seem quite lightweight because they mostly forgo the whole realism part. Despite never playing it, I do have one negative experience with paintball already though (moreso due to the field rather than players). The field I go to does both airsoft and paintball and is split up into multiple individual arenas, some of which are literally right next to each other and separated only by some mesh barrier things which have gotten holes in them. There was a paintball match going on simultaneously and suddenly *SPLAT!* A paintball sails through the barrier and hits me right in the center of my plate carrier, splattering paint onto my gear, gun, and eye pro lol. Had to sit the rest of the match out just to clean up.
Out of curiosity, do these limitations _still_ exist or have at least some been lifted? Do you frequently encounter such restrictions at the places you play at?
@@RedVRCC unfortunately yes many limitations are still in place
Seeing this pro stuff just being a walk-on at SC Village and Jungle Island in the 2000s decade really made it hard for casual players to enjoy weekend games without feeling seriously outclassed.
I went back to the field for the first time in 10 years or so a couple of months ago, and I swear I had more fun then than in the past two decades. The sport's more fun when you can duck and run from cover to cover instead of worrying about crossing an 15b/s line of fire.
I’ve heard stories of magnets being used to activate a “cheater mode” on some boards. The magnets were stitched in side the gloves or jersey. When the ref would check the gun it worked fine. But when a magnet was close enough, it would activate the cheat.
this definitely was a thing once refs got wise of trigger pull and button sequences at the start when you took your barrel bags off.
13:25 Autococker mechanical, then it's Mano o Mano no more batteries😊 tournament made paintball rest was playing soldiers TA (the guard USA)) for that.
First paintball vid I've seen. Great video! Might get into Paintball
Back when I was playing we had these trigger trainers that we took everywhere to work in our finger walking speeds. i was able to get 30+ balls a second tap speed.
Back in the day I had a 03 speed angel, drop forward tank, SP freak barrel kit, volumizers, fly bolt and a warp feed with its trigger wired into the trigger switch so it didn't have any feed lag. My team really did hate me for that setup but it worked far better than anybody expected and I could shoot over bunkers and over top of the snake and surprise a lot of other teams. Sensi also worked far better than it had any right to on that marker too.
Tried a 06 speed with vision but it just wasn't right and would chop paint all the time, it went out to a master tech and all but it just wasn't reliable so I sold it and went back to the 03.
Seeing these videos makes me want to get my tanks hydro tested and wire a new battery into the 03 speed since it has aged out and won't hold a charge.
i started out with fully plastic 30$ pump guns playing in the woods. when people started buying semi-auto guns we all stopped.
The eye candy in this video is overwhelming love the old footage and magazine shots thank you 🙏
As somone who played div 3 and div2 as a youn adult and moved to other hobbies like car racing. From the outside looking in paintball has a huge barrier to entery which is one of the things killing car racing. Pump or mech play would lower costs for new and existing players get them at the field more
As someone who played as a kid, I loved paintball but it died off as a sport/hobby because it's just a luck game now. Shooting thousands of paintballs, having no idea where you're even hitting, yet hoping to see someone down range raise their hand. These lame kids killed it.
I still run a Halo hopper, I have a Shocker SFT, Ion, Ego…. My ion is my favorite, changed bolt, electronic eyes.. stock board ( adjusted Dwell) Reg. Consistent 300fps, 15 ball no ramp….. my other 2 have Virtue boards fire 18-22 on ramp! Great video!!!