BIG GUYS SAY LAZER TAG STILL FUN : TEAM MIXES FANTASY, SKILL FOR THIRD PLACE IN NATIONAL CONTEST.

Byline: Christopher Noxon Daily News Staff Writer

With his close-cropped hair, leather sandals and Rage Against the Machine T-shirt, Mike Rini looks like an ordinary college student.

He's really a gunslinger.

Two or three nights a week, the 19-year-old dons a plastic vest, crouches in a fog-filled room and prepares for a good game of Lazer Tag. Most players are younger, Rini knows - little kids pumped up on birthday cake and video games. But Rini is one of the few trying to reclaim the game from the Nintendo generation.

``Most kids go in there to see the lasers go off and have fun,'' said Rini, whose alias in the arena is ``The Medic.'' ``We go in and add skill and strategy and teamwork. It's serious.''

Rini plays on a squad based out of Lazerstar in Oxnard. Two weeks ago, the team placed third in the National Ultimate Lazer Challenge, beating out seven others but losing to dreaded teams from Texas and Kentucky.

Competitions are held at all three Lazer Tag arenas in Ventura County. More than 50 players compete during league nights at Lazerstar alone.

The game is a mix of futuristic fantasy, rigorous athletics and theatrics. Players wear plastic vests equipped with flashing sensors, which light up and vibrate when triggered by a hit from a hand-held laser.

Players scramble around a darkened room the size of a warehouse floor, searching out opponents in a maze of barriers. Fluorescent paint glows in the black light. Thumping music pulses in the darkness.

While in the arena, players call themselves by nicknames. Players on the Lazerstar team include ``Energizer,'' ``Ice,'' ``Havoc'' and ``Sniper.''

All the assumed names and flashing lights are window dressing for what is really a legitimate sport, Rini said.

``It's not like role-playing,'' he said. ``It's like baseball or soccer or anything else.''

The strategies involved in deploying offensive and defensive players makes it a challenging mental game, said Edgar De La Cruz, a 21-year-old physical therapy student who plays three or four times a week.

With such a new and specialized game, players regularly come up with new ways of scoring.

The game is ripe with strategy, but some serious players say they still enjoy the fantasy that goes along with it. Daryl Weinberg, a 23-year-old computer programming student from Port Hueneme, started playing two years ago to act out his favorite science-fiction novels. Soon he was playing on a league team under the alias ``The Phantom.'' Eventually he became a Lazerstar manager.

The 6-foot-6-inch, 270-pound man says he enjoys the fantasy in the game, a futuristic world where car payments and scheduling conflicts are forgotten amid the shroud of fog and the streaks of laser light.

``My life is dull. I admit it,'' he said. ``I go to college and I'm a manager here. But when I play, the adrenaline rush is intense. It's a total escape. Even though you don't run, you come out drenched in sweat.''

ZAP CENTERS

Described by one tournament player as ``Chuck E Cheese for adults,'' Lazer Tag is still favored mostly by young boys and the birthday party set. The going rate is $6 per game with special day and group prices available.

Lazer Force, 59 Tierra Rejada in Simi Valley. [phone]

Lazer Craze, 30135 Agoura Road, Suite A in Agoura Hills. [phone]

Lazerstar, 921 E. Ventura Boulevard in Oxnard. [phone]

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos, Box

Photo: (1) Daryl Weinberg, left, 6-foot-6-inch, 270-pound manager of a recreation business, and Joe Flores are armed and armored for a game.

(2) Daryl Weinberg, who calls himself ``The Phantom'' in league play, says Lazer Tag keeps its excitement for adults on teams.

Joe Binoya/Special to the Daily News

Box: ZAP CENTERS (see text)