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In its short history there have been hundreds things that have influence
technical achievements, to trend-setting ideas, to incredible team winnin
game, an inspiring industry and an unpredictable and ever-changing sto
this game is what it is today. Enjoy!
July 30, 1985: The NSG
Splatmaster Unveiled
After the first game of paintball was
played in the woods of New Hampshire
with Nelson bolt-action pistols, Bob
Gurnsey, Charles Gaines and Hayes
Noel, three of the founding fathers of
paintball, scraped together investment
money and sketched a business plan to
market paintball, then known as “The
Survival Game,” to the world. Lionel
Atwill’s initial article about the game
introduced it to the populace, and with
some of the last of their investment
money, National Survival Game, or
NSG, later placed an advertisement
about the game in Sports Illustrated,
and the phone began to ring. Thanks
to such innovations as the water-based
paintball from PMI/R.P. Scherer and
NSG/Banner Gelatin in 1983, the Survival Game began to grow. The initial
success of the Survival Game pumped
money into the fledgling sport, and by
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1985 NSG was able to design and produce their own paintball gun, the Splatmaster.
The Splatmaster was a green polymer
pistol, firing paintballs from a tenround tube magazine placed horizontally above the barrel, which was plastic.
To cock the paintball gun, a plunger at
the rear of the receiver was pushed in,
chambering a paintball. Air was supplied from a twelve-gram CO2 capsule
inserted into the bottom of the pistol
grip. Retailing for approximately seventy-nine dollars, the Splatmaster was, at
first, sold only to official Survival Game
dealers. After approximately one year
of dealer-only sales, National Survival
Game made overtures to major firearm
and sports shows, and began developing relationships with reps and distributors that helped move the Splatmaster
into mass merchants such as K-Mart,
Wal-Mart and Sports Authority. The
Splatmaster became a hot seller, and
was the first mass-marketed paintball
gun ever created.
Eventually, over one hundred thousand
Splatmasters were manufactured, and
by 1987 a successor, the double-action
Splatmaster Rapide, was introduced. It
too was extremely successful, with over
twenty thousand selling out quickly.
The Rapide featured the ability to fire
as quickly as the trigger was pulled,
and a gravity-fed magazine that held
twenty paintballs in four, five-round
tubes. As each tube was emptied, the