Laser Squad
Foundation of tactical combat
Laser Squad pioneered the turn-based tactical combat genre, laying groundwork for X-COM and modern tactical RPGs.
Laser Squad (1988) is Julian Gollop’s turn-based tactical game: small squads, mission-based scenarios, and a system of action points that makes every step a decision about what you are giving up. It is the game X-COM grew out of, and it was written for the Spectrum first.
Fast facts
- Author: Julian Gollop, credited by name in CRASH’s review.
- Publisher: Target Games — Gollop’s own label, founded in March 1988.
- Lineage: Rebelstar Raiders, then Rebel Star, then this.
- Two-player: hot-seat tactical play, not an afterthought.
How it was received
It reviewed as well as anything on the machine that year.
| Magazine | Score | Issue |
|---|---|---|
| C&VG | 97% | December 1988 |
| Sinclair User | 89% | November 1988 |
| CRASH | 89% | December 1988 |
| Your Sinclair | 9/10 | November 1988 |
| The Games Machine | 84% | January 1989 |
| ACE | 873/1000 | November 1988 |
CRASH’s reviewer works through the equipment tables and reports that even level four armour offers scant protection against a rocket launcher — a complaint that is a compliment in disguise, since the game’s whole argument is that cover and positioning matter more than loadout.
Key mechanics
- Action points: every unit spends from one pool for movement, turning, aiming and firing.
- Line of sight: visibility depends on facing and obstacles, so where a unit looks is itself a decision.
- Opportunity fire: points held back let a unit react during the opponent’s turn.
- Equipment: loadout is chosen against a budget before the mission.
- Two-player mode: the tactical system holds up against a human.
Scenarios
Missions vary the objective rather than the map alone — rescues, base assaults, defensive holds and infiltrations, each with its own victory condition and its own reason to spend points differently.
Target Games and the lineage
CRASH announced Target Games in June 1988 as a company founded that March by Gollop. Its December 1988 profile of him fills in what came before: the strategy game Rebelstar Raiders had achieved cult status, and the revised version on Firebird’s Silver label — Rebel Star — earned a CRASH Smash at 93%.
The same profile records his most admired programmer, and the answer is not another Spectrum name. Gollop nominated Ada Lovelace, whom the magazine described as having written the first book about computer programs in 1843 at the age of 28. (The magazine’s characterisation is generous — Lovelace’s work was a translation with appended notes rather than a book — but the nomination is his, in print, in 1988.)
Legacy
Gollop refined the system into UFO: Enemy Unknown — X-COM — in 1994. The action-point economy, the opportunity fire and the squad-level scale all survive the journey from a 48K Spectrum to the PC intact, which is the strongest thing that can be said about a design.