If you haven’t yet heard of Airblade, brace yourself: It’s pretty much the greatest idea ever.

Airblade is basically a modified version of hockey played on a life-sized air hockey rink. That’s right…instead of the table game you’ve grown to love playing in game rooms, you’ll (hopefully) soon be able to experience air hockey in a rink on your own two feet.

From MLive:

The sport will be played on a rink made of 4-foot-by-8-foot high-density polyethylene boards, with holes one-eighth of an inch wide drilled to allow air flow for the puck to hover on a frictionless surface. When adjusted for a full-size rink, Sendo said there will be more than 2.2 million airflow holes in the floor.

A lot of traditional inline hockey rules will apply, but the major differences with the new sport are in the flooring, the puck – which will resemble an air hockey puck – and the scoring. Traditional goals will count for one point, but like table air hockey, there will be a slot in the back of the net. If the puck passes through that slot the goal is worth two points.

As you can see in the video above, the makers of Airblade are currently testing the idea out on a prototype rink but envision full-sized rinks in the near future. They’ve got a Kickstarter campaign aimed at raising $700,000 to start making the 85-by-200-foot rinks a reality. They’re also planning on pitching the idea on the ABC entrepreneur show ‘Shark Tank.’

Mockup of the full-size Airblade rinks possibly on the way.
Mockup of the full-size Airblade rinks possibly on the way.

If I had $700,000 to spare I would be screaming at these guys to take my money and put one of these things in my basement right now. Unfortunately, my bank account won’t allow that so it’s up to all of us to make Airblade happen. Don’t let me down, people.

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