The Airsoft Skirmish Game

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The Airsoft Skirmish Game has it is roots in the greater-energy skirmish game of paintball. There is some contention in the Airsoft community, as to when the very first true 'Airsoft' model was marketed, but what is known, is that an American air gun manufacturer, Daisy, marketed what they named a Softair gun in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which fired a miniature 6mm hollow plastic shuttlecock-like projectile, and incredibly low speeds, from a toy gun. The intention, it would appear, was to develop a new marketplace for its merchandise. They succeeded, and a new generation of rifle shooters was born.

This series of softair guns are typically believed, on balance, to be the ancestors of what we now know as Airsoft models.

Shortly immediately after Daisy marketed their softair guns, Tokyo Marui, then advertising self-assembly plastic replica gun kits, modified some of their designs to fire the similar form of projectile. Within five or so years, they had all but halted production of the 1:1 replica kits, and gone into full-time production of virtually 1:1 self-assembly low powered 'ASGK' Airsoft kits, firing a new 6mm spherical plastic projectile. Inside a further five or so years, in the early 1990s, spring powered Airsoft models became 'old news', as the very first generation of Automatic Electric Airsoft Guns, or AEGs, were marketed, not as self-assembly kits, but ready to use out-of-the-box models, of remarkable realism and accuracy to the actual-globe counterparts that they represented.

The rest is history, as nicely over ten key-stream manufacturers in Japan, Taiwan, and other p art s of the far east, have sprung up to supply a brand new hobby sport, that utilizes these models in mock-combat games, referred to as Airsoft Skirmish Games.

So, now we know the history of the models, how about the game?

The original hobby sport combat game is, of course, paintball, and this has been so well documented more than the years, that it would be redundant to go into its origins here. Nevertheless, paintball is illegal in Japan , which has probably the strictest firearms laws on the planet. This indicates that no-1 may perhaps own any form of firearm privately, without a superb deal of red tape to comply with, producing it, for all intents and purposes, a non-starter. The same applies to paintball markers, which, as I recognize it, are classified as firearms in Japan .

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