By Evan Ackerman

Hard on the heels of the Nerf Vulcan EBF-25 is the Nerf Raider CS-35, a semi-automatic Nerf gun that makes use of an honest-to-goodness drum magazine, which manages to cram 35 darts into a single mag, letting you fire for a long, long time without having to reload. And the reloading system is modular, so that you can quickly swap the drum out for spring clips holding seven darts each.

The CS-35 is powered in the traditional Nerf manner, by you. Pulling the front grip back ‘charges’ the gun, while pushing it forward cocks it and chambers a dart. Squeeze the trigger to fire, or if you hold the trigger down, you can fire as fast as possible by just slamming the front grip back and forth. A big button on the side of the gun lets you easily release ammo clips, and Nerf thoughtfully included a port on the other side that opens to let you clear out jammed darts. The CS-35 is made of plastic that feels solid and durable, and easily accessible screws suggest that this Nerf gun should be simple to open up and modify.

The one thing to keep in mind is that loading systems aren’t completely modular across all of the guns, and neither are the darts. The drum mag takes only “streamline” darts, and you can’t use it in (for example) the Vulcan. By the same token, you sadly can’t use the Vulcan’s ammo belt in the CS-35. Aww.

The Nerf Raider CS-35 officially goes on sale today for a mere $30; you can find it at most major toy retailers nationwide.

[ Nerf ]

Special thanks to Nerf for sending me one of these bad boys to play with.