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Paintball history

Robbo

Owner of this website
Jul 5, 2001
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My good friend has it on VHS, he was playing with Shades Of Grey at the time :)
My brother John created the Shades of Grey and also thought of the name; he was actually a great player, a fact that was overlooked by many people...... And he was most definitely the better half of the Robinson siblings, a fact that wasn't overlooked by many people :)
 

Dusty

Don't run, you'll only die tired....
May 19, 2004
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Northern Ireland
It was that event that changed paintball forever because it showed everybody that paintball was an exciting spectacle; the only oversight that Ged Green and the rest of the WDP guys made was to fix the 'bunker' positions.

This was something that Laurent Hamet had realised when he attended because he went away and created Sup'Air on the back of what he saw at this HyperBall event ...basically he stood on Ged's shoulders and saw a slightly different future for paintball whereby the sport would be better served by having inflatable, movable bunkers.

It seems ironic to me at least that it was us Euros that showed the Yanks where to go in terms of putting on a show; historically, the Yanks are past masters at the showbizzy stuff and we are normally scurrying around in their shadow but this was an era of European revolution headed up by WDP and Laurent Hamet.

Paintball owes an enormous debt to those guys, an enormous debt.
Somewhat ironic considering inflatable bunkers led to X-ball which led to the financial demise of many teams. I wonder if tourneys were exclusively played in quarries and forests again with a certain element of fieldcraft and team tactics would paintball be every bit as popular?

to me the buzz of a tourney is the actual feeling of trying to better an opponent, doesn't matter to me what the bunkers are made of. The skill sets of speedball will naturally transfer to any woodsball scenario, whereas the reverse is not necessarily true.
 

Robbo

Owner of this website
Jul 5, 2001
13,116
2,157
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London
www.p8ntballer.com
Somewhat ironic considering inflatable bunkers led to X-ball which led to the financial demise of many teams. I wonder if tourneys were exclusively played in quarries and forests again with a certain element of fieldcraft and team tactics would paintball be every bit as popular?

to me the buzz of a tourney is the actual feeling of trying to better an opponent, doesn't matter to me what the bunkers are made of. The skill sets of speedball will naturally transfer to any woodsball scenario, whereas the reverse is not necessarily true.
The evolution from HyperBall to Sup'Air, leastwise in Laurent's mind was little to do with players satisfaction and everything to do with Laurent's vision of televised paintball ... this vision had crystallised at the HyperBall event thus giving rise to what we play on now.

Some paintball skills do transfer as we know, things like staying tight and accuracy of shot which by the way are the two MOST important aspects of paintball play even now, no argument !!!! ... and if you do wanna argue that then go to the corner of the class and put a dunce's hat on :)
 

3L1TE hax

Platinum Member
Jan 20, 2009
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Is there any way someone can digitalise a copy of the VHS hyperball final, just watched the first 3 minutes of the first video, and to be honest i really want to watch the rest :D