Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Centurion Unveiled!

Big surprise, but Hasbro has officially unveiled the N-Strike Elite MEGA Centurion!  Popular Science has a "360 degree view" of the blaster, as well as some other pictures of firing demonstrations and such.

From PS: "Sniping our fellow editors is a much-beloved and long-standing tradition here at Popular ScienceHQ. Trouble is: our long hallways put us at an uncomfortably close range to our all too well-armed victims. That won’t be the case for much longer. We got a sneak peek at the longest-range Nerf gun in history, the 100-foot-firing N-Strike Elite Centurion.
The Centurion is the first in a new line of Nerf guns that use MEGA darts. The darts are about twice the size of typical Nerf darts, which engineers say helps them get the momentum they need to fly further. The also whistle, an oddly satisfying addition to long-range shootouts  To get the velocity necessary (nearly 55 mph) to catapult ammo one-third of a football field, the designers had to supersize the typical Nerf launch mechanism. With a dart-filled magazine in place, you pull back on a loading handle to allow the top dart to pop into the firing chamber. Pushing the same handle forward sets the firing mechanism in place, and pulling the trigger releases a spring-loaded piston that launches the dart.  As for the gun itself, we’ll be blunt: this thing is freaking huge. It spans 40.7 inches from nose to heel, and at least 2/3 of that length is barrel. As with any gun, the longer the barrel, the straighter – and hopefully the farther – shots will soar.
The Centurion will go on sale this fall for $49.99."
Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot of "new" information here, although at this point... if you've been following Nerf blogs, you pretty much know all you need to except for how much it'll cost and when it's release date will fall.  Looks like we should expect this fella on one of Nerf's usual "09-09-09" dates or something like that. Seems to have been a popular trend for them to use. Expect this to start hitting shelves late summer for those retailers that generally jump the gun (Target, Wal-Mart, etc).

5 comments:

  1. Why on earth would you not want a direct plunger system? It's the most efficient way of delivering air, short of an airtank (which we always knew wasn't the case here, as there's no air pump). Are you thinking of the reverse plunger, and mixing up the terms..?

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  2. It's entirely possible to install an air tank in something with this much draw length... just have to use a big enough pump diameter, and make it pump on both the forward and backward stroke. With something this large, you could easily outdo the pressure that the Range Master gets with its several pumps, and this has the possibility of having much more sealed breech than that, too.

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  3. Noted. However, the question wasn't whether you could install an airtank or not, but why one would consider a direct plunger system a bad thing, as opposed to flywheel or reverse plunger

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  4. How could I remove the sniper sights of my nerf?

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  5. There aren't "sniper sights" on the Centurion

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