N-strike Elite update

Procrastination always gets the better of me. A few days ago, some pictures were leaked of the upcoming Nerf N-strike Elite Retaliator and Rampage, which has revealed some very interesting information. Urban Taggers, back in fine form scored the leaked pictures from a reader and has the full lot of photos of the ACTUAL blasters on the blog, posted here.

Add caption

There's a bunch of things that I've found interesting about these leaked photos which you will need to go to Urban Taggers to view so that you know what I'm on about (I'm not going to take all the photos and take readership away from UT.)

First, I saw that both the inner barrel of the barrel extension on the Retaliator and the inner barrel of the Rampage are rifled. I can't really see this having much effect on the darts, but maybe it will give them a slight spin keeping them from going out of control. Next, the plungers. they look smaller at the back when compared to a normal recon. Perhaps a kind of direct plunger? Maybe a smaller plunger to allow for a spring that's thicker and therefore has a smaller I.D? Who knows, but the plunger system is definitely different. Now look at the clip for the Retaliator, 12 darts max, as suspected. Unfortunately, the Rampage looks to have no stock or shield as previous concept art had hinted at, but it does feature a 25 dart drum which looks great. The "elite" darts look like they are thicker and longer, but still use the same clips so it may just be the angle of the photo.

Finally, the one thing that got my attention big time, was that in one of the box art images, there is what looks like an elite Nitefinder, with the annotation next to it that says "look for FIRESTRIKE blaster in 2013 subject to availability". 2013? Subject to availability? C'mon! it's a re-done Nitefinder, get your act together Nerf! Do I also have to mention the fact that they also still have a blaster called the Strikefire? That said, it looks like the shell has actually been redesigned on this one, it looks like the light beam targeting has been done away with, with something else (dart storage??) in it's place.

Interesting. in other news, Urban Taggers ACTUALLY RECEIVED their promised pinpoint sights, after all that drama. +1 to Hasbro Australia, I guess. Let's hope things can all start getting back to normal among the blogging circles now!