Nerf fans, it’s time to get excited. This time it’s got nothing to do with the announcement of a Nerf Gun; no, today we’re talking about a new patent that Hasbro has filed to utilise its Nerf Guns as controllers for VR gaming systems.
And yes, you did read that right. Hasbro has filed a patent to take their wildly popular toy blasters that many of us have been playing with since the 90s and bring them into the 21st century by allowing you to use the guns in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality gaming spaces. I told you it was exciting.
Since the 90s, the popularity of Nerf Guns has remained relatively high. Over the years, fans have modified these toy guns to upgrade their darts or up performance. The brand has also seen a series of tie-in video games that revolve around the toys and tie-ins with other games such as Halo Infinite and Minecraft.
Now Hasbro is looking to further build on the popularity of Nerf Guns. A patent filed at the United States of America Patent Office shows Hasbro working on an attachment system to turn its regular Nerf Guns into a game controller compatible with traditional, AR, and Virtual Reality gaming.
The patent also shows that this attachment will hold a screen that will be attached to the Nerf Gun and a series of second attachments to the controller so that the gaming systems can detect the movement and triggers of the toy guns being pulled.
The patent explicitly outlines that this proposed attachment system would be used with NERF gun and blaster toys sold in stores, meaning Hasbro isn’t working on a new set of Nerf Guns but rather an improvement for the current models.
What do you think about all this? Personally, I was looking for an excuse to run around shooting my family and friends with Nerf Guns again, and this might just be that excuse.