Gone But Not Forgotten – not covered in the main articles

In no particular order

15-Man Paintball: The game has changed drastically over the last two decades, becoming faster and smaller year after year. In the early days of tournament paintball, until around 1989, 15-man was the standard tournament team size. NSG and Lively (and others) ran 15-man events around the country until it was replaced essentially by 10-man and the NPPL.

Keith Idema: Good guy to be friends with, not such a good guy to have as an enemy. Idema was a hot-headed guy that would give the shirt off his back to someone he liked. And there’s no telling what he could do to someone he didn’t like. Maker of the Idema Combat Systems Vest, Puppy Paint and "giver-outer" of the Sargie awards was Mr. Idema.

Paintball Game Supplies: Owned by Caleb Strong, one of the very early paintball field owners, PGS was one of the larger mail order distributors. You may remember their hand-drawn black and white full-page magazine ads back in the early 90s.

Master Blasters (team): One of the really fun teams of the 80s and early 90s, starring Jerry Braun, Kevin Donaldson, Rich “RT” Travis, Dave Arnold and a bunch of other guys that were well-liked on the tournament circuit.

TASO (The Adventure Supply Outfitter): TASO was a mainstay in paintball in the 90s. Located in southern California, TASO was a large retailer, distributor and they had their own product line as well, including the Spartan camouflage pump marker.

Adventure Games International and Adventure Games of America owned by Tom Dolimar and Gordon Cooper, were one of the big paintball distributors of the early 80s. Their focus was the AGA 8 shot repeater and 62 caliber paintballs which were very popular for a few years.

USI: USI, owner by Ed “Fast Eddie” Dovner, was probably best known for nothing they did in paintball, but for a fight its owner (Dovner) had with Keith Idema. USI made a host of paintball products, mostly cheap knock-offs of everyone else’s stuff. The USI Eliminator was probably their best-known paintgun.

Don Crow: Don was by far the first and best early paintball ballistics guy. In the early 90s Don’s extensive ballistics testing was the best. He did velocity drop-off testing, burst strength test of paintballs, accuracy testing and everything else you could think of. His testing and results could be seen regularly in PCRI.

888 Paintball: They are, they’re not, they are again owned by National Paintball Supply. 888 Paintball caused a lot of controversy in the early 90s. How could a wholesale supplier sell directly to their customer’s customers?

John Loobey: John was the owner of Sgt Yorks Paintball field near Harrisburg, PA. A true paintball nice-guy, Loobey ran some of the best early tournaments o n the east coast.

Wolf’s Lair: So much lore and legend surrounds this field in its early years. Was it a training grounds for something other than paintball? In any event, the field didn’t last long and now, called EMR Paintball—the site formerly known as Wolf’s Lair is one of the great paintball facilities in the world.

California Magnum Paintball: Remember the first International Amateur Open in 1991? They were the title sponsor. They made some great-shooting paint, but it always seemed to be hard as rocks and rarely broke on its opponents.

ACI: Makers of the Illustrator line of semi-automatic paintball markers in the early to mid 1990s.

Unique Sporting: Unique Sporting was one of the early soft goods manufacturers / suppliers. Who could forget Rose Griffith, one of the nicest people in the game?

Ken Kelsch was one of the early paintball writers that did more than just give you PR sounding article to read. Ken was an excellent paintball writer that favored the tech side of the game. Ken wrote a lot for Paintcheck in the late 80s and into the early 90s.

Sam McBride and Aerostar, the distribution business with three warehouses coast to coast was huge in the first decade of paintball. If you were around then you probably saw their ads in the late 80s and early 90s APG issues.

Dynasty's Millennium Series win streak: Earlier this decade Dynasty once put together an 18 event winning streak in Europe. Think about that... that's 18 straight times they took home the first place trophy, not once allowing TonTons, the Russians, or Joy Division to tase the winners champagne. That's a streak that will never happen again.

Barry Solomon: Barry was very well known on the east coast in the 80s. He was the manager of Skirmish and he lived paintball. Barry played in a lot of east coast events in the 80s and headed-up the reffing at some of the game’s big early-day tournaments, like the PMI North American Championships.

Rich Plinkey a/k/a Jack Ward: Another early paintball writer, mostly worked with Paintball Sports magazine.

Do you know someone or some company that should be on this list? Emails us and we’ll get them in.