The Roar's weird sport series: Black light sports

What do you get if you combine all the visual aspects of Tron Legacy with the theatre, drama and athleticism of your favourite Japanese mini-sport?

Correct. The answer is black light table tennis.

Not only is black lighting visually appealing, it also adds a new challenge to sport.

However, your rods and cones – not to mention peripheral senses – will probably not thank you.

While I’m no expert in the visual cortex, it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to infer that playing a sport with no reference points for depth excluding fluorescent strips of light most likely wreaks havoc on your various nervous systems.

Also, if you spin around chances are epileptic fits will ensue.

The game was deemed so culturally significant that it has been readapted for a stage spectacular, which has been appropriately Matrix-themed and is similarly amazing.

The fun florescences, however, does not stop at table tennis.

In Whangarei, New Zealand, a squash club hosted a black light game that they labelled ‘Squashtron’ in which three lunatics played a game in the dark.

For mind squash is already hard enough without having to deal with the slight inhibitor of darkness, but a visual spectacle it does make.

Is that all, you ask. Oh no, not even slightly.

The highly entertaining, comically inspired race that refer to themselves as the Dutch have also taken to the black light crazy. This time, incorporating it into European Hand Ball.

Swing and a miss? No! Swing and a home run from Holland.

Not to be left out, Badminton has also jumped on the black light bandwagon, which has been relabelled ‘blackminton’ – inspired.

Of all the sports listed Badminton is most in need of a visual makeover. As a sport it has become old hat in many respects, but not now.

Blackminton (despite the somewhat inappropriate name) has redefined the high school favourite and has become a post-rave favourite.