A droid steps into view, a trooper takes a careful aimed shot, and the bullets skitter off its armour. That was how Amstrad Action opened its review of Laser Squad in 1989, and it catches what the game is about. Every soldier has a small budget of action points, and everything costs some: turning round, opening a door, picking up a clip, taking a snap shot or an aimed one. Spend them all on moving and your man cannot fire back when something comes round the corner. Keep some in hand and he fires first.
Julian Gollop wrote it for the ZX Spectrum in 1988 and sold it by mail order through his own new label, Target Games. It was the third version of an idea he had been working on since Rebelstar Raiders in 1984, and the magazines that reviewed it gave it between 84% and 97%. Five years later a demo of its sequel became UFO: Enemy Unknown, the game known in America as X-COM.
Fast facts
- Design and programming: Julian Gollop.
- Publisher: Target Games, Harlow, Essex, on the Spectrum in 1988; Blade Software, of St Ives in Cambridgeshire, for the Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC and Amiga versions of 1989. Krisalis Software published a PC version in 1992.
- Price: £9.95 on Spectrum cassette; £9.95 cassette and £14.95 disk on the Commodore 64 and Amstrad; £19.95 on the Amiga.
- Scenarios: three in the box (The Assassins, Moonbase Assault, Rescue from the Mines), with two more in each expansion kit.
- Players: one against the computer, or two taking turns at the same machine.
A game of points
Before a mission starts you arm the squad from a budget of credits. ZZAP!64 counted 200 of them, four grades of armour from “light and cheap through to expensive dreadnought thickness”, and a shop of automatic and sniper rifles, light and heavy lasers, explosives, grenades and daggers. The tables of damage, accuracy and weight were detailed enough for CRASH’s reviewer to call them “complex enough to be bewildering”. Heavy kit burdens a trooper and cuts his action points, so the budget and the load both shape the fight.
Then the squad deploys at the edge of a scrolling map, which Target’s advertising gave as 80 by 50 squares, and play goes turn and turn about. Each trooper faces one of eight directions and sees only what is in front of him, a 90° field of view by ZZAP!64’s account. The enemy moves out of sight. A soldier left with enough points on opportunity fire will shoot at anything that crosses his line of sight during the other side’s turn, which is how a long corridor becomes, in ZZAP!64’s words, “a kill zone if a sniper is waiting”. Fire comes in three kinds, auto, snap and aimed, each dearer and more accurate than the last. A game ends when one side reaches 100 victory points, won by killing enemies and hitting the mission’s targets.
The scenery is part of the game. Furniture, gas canisters and walls can all be shot. CRASH’s reviewer blew up a canister blocking a corridor in Moonbase Assault and took his own trooper with it, because he was “standing too close”. The same reviewer found the armour tables less generous than they looked: “even level four armour offers scant resistance to the enemy lasers, with troopers almost always perishing after a second hit”.
The scenarios
The first mission sends the squad into the house of Sterner Regnix, head of the Marsec Corporation, to kill him. Moonbase Assault is a raid on the Omni Corporation’s lunar databank, and Rescue from the Mines means breaking three prisoners out of their cells in a mine complex and getting them to the lift shaft.
Target promised more from the start. Its advertisement in Sinclair User said each expansion kit would hold two “fully documented scenarios” for £3.95 by mail order, and CRASH’s reviewer was sceptical: in his experience expansion kits were “almost invariably” wishful thinking by the software house. Target delivered. Expansion Kit One added The Cyber Hordes, the defence of a rebel station against war droids, and Paradise Valley, a retreat from it under alien attack. C&VG expected it to be on sale by December 1988. Blade put both on its disk versions. Expansion Kit Two followed in 1990 at £4 on cassette, with The Stardrive and a two-sided battle, Laser Platoon, which Amstrad Action called “a real bloodbath”.
How it was received
| Magazine | Machine | Score | Issue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sinclair User | Spectrum | 89% | November 1988 |
| Your Sinclair | Spectrum | 9/10 | November 1988 |
| ACE | Spectrum | 873/1000 | November 1988 |
| CRASH | Spectrum | 89% | Christmas 1988 |
| Computer & Video Games | Spectrum | 97%, C+VG Hit | December 1988 |
| The Games Machine | Spectrum | 84% | January 1989 |
| ZZAP!64 | Commodore 64 | 83% | September 1989 |
| Amstrad Action | Amstrad CPC | 91%, Mastergame | October 1989 |
| Amiga Format | Amiga | 93% | December 1989 |
C&VG’s Tony Dillon was the most taken with it: “Aside from the rather naff packaging, Laser Squad is one of the best games I have ever played on any computer. One-player it’s great, two-player it’s unbeatable.” Your Sinclair’s reviewer, who admitted he had “never been interested in strategy wargaming before”, called it “mega fab” and put it “on a par with Elite for thinking warmongers”. CRASH thought it took Rebelstar “much further without losing any of its playability”.
The Commodore review was cooler. ZZAP!64 liked the tension of hidden movement but thought that “in the long term the game may not be as strong or complex as your average SSI wargame”, naming the American publisher of serious computer wargames. Amstrad Action made the CPC version its Mastergame. Its reviewer, Trenton Webb, liked the two-player game most, where each side directs its forces while the other looks away “and a truly intriguing battle of wits ensues”. In the same issue Gollop said he had got as much out of the Amstrad as anyone could, adding a scanner and extra detail in its four-colour mode.
Target Games and Blade Software
CRASH announced Target Games in June 1988 as a company Gollop had founded that March. Amstrad Action, interviewing him in 1989, named its founders as Julian, Nick and Peter Gollop and quoted their aim of “producing high quality strategy games designed to go beyond the middle mark”. Gollop later told Retro Gamer that he had started Target with a partner who then left, and that the name had been the partner’s choice.
Target sold the Spectrum game itself, by mail order from Harlow. The other versions went through Blade Software, which ZZAP!64 described in 1989 as a new company, “an offshoot of a deal involving programming team Teque and The Software Business Ltd”. Blade’s advertising that autumn listed the game for the Amiga and Atari ST at £19.95 alongside the 8-bit versions. Amiga Format gave the Amiga version 93%, and The Games Machine called it “the best tactical strategy game on the Amiga at the moment”. The later PC version came from Krisalis Software of Rotherham, which Computer Gaming World reviewed in February 1993 with five missions.
From Laser Squad to X-COM
Laser Squad came out of Rebelstar, which Firebird had sold for £1.99 in 1986 and CRASH had given 93%. Rebelstar in turn rebuilt Rebelstar Raiders (1984). The action points and opportunity fire were already there; Laser Squad added the shop, the detailed maps and the scenarios that could be loaded as add-ons.
After Lords of Chaos (1990) Julian and Nick Gollop, now trading as Mythos Games, went back to squads. “The next thing we made was a demo for Laser Squad 2 on the Atari ST, which ultimately became UFO: Enemy Unknown,” Gollop told Retro Gamer. MicroProse published it in 1994, and PC Gamer noted that it had begun life as the sequel to Laser Squad. Its soldiers spend time units instead of action points, on walking, kneeling, turning and shooting, and a soldier who saves enough still fires during the enemy’s turn. Gollop returned to the name in 2002 with Laser Squad Nemesis, a play-by-email game sold over the internet by his company Codo Technologies.
Sources
- Sinclair User issue 78, September 1988, p. 52: Target Games advertisement (Spectrum from August 1988 at £9.95, C64 and Amstrad planned for October, 80 by 50 maps, eight-directional facing, expansion kits of two scenarios at £3.95, the Harlow address).
- CRASH issue 53, June 1988, p. 113: Target Games founded by Gollop in March 1988. CRASH issue 59, Christmas 1988, pp. 103–105: Laser Squad review (Target Games, Julian Gollop, £9.95; the weapons tables, level four armour, the gas canister, the expansion kits; 89%).
- Sinclair User issue 80, November 1988, p. 61: review, 89%.
- Your Sinclair issue 35, November 1988, p. 76: review (“never been interested in strategy wargaming before”, “mega fab”, “on a par with Elite”); score 9/10 as recorded in the ZXDB database of Spectrum software (web, secondary): https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/2813/ZX-Spectrum/Laser_Squad
- ACE issue 14, November 1988, p. 67: review by Andy Smith, ACE rating 873.
- Computer & Video Games issue 86, December 1988, p. 89: review by Tony Dillon (Target Games, £9.95; 97%, C+VG Hit; C64 version due mid-December; Expansion Pack One).
- The Games Machine issue 14, January 1989, p. 76: Spectrum review, 84%. The Games Machine issue 26, January 1990, p. 93: Amiga version (Blade Software).
- ZZAP!64 issue 53, September 1989, p. 40: Commodore 64 review (Blade Software, £9.95 cassette, £14.95 disk; Teque and The Software Business; 200 credits, four armour types, the three missions and the two disk scenarios; 90° field of view; Amiga version planned at £19.95; overall 83%).
- Amstrad Action issue 49, October 1989, pp. 50–51: review by Trenton Webb (Bladesoft/Target Games, £9.95 cassette, £14.95 disk; AA rating 91%, Mastergame); p. 69: Jeffrey Davy, “Target renegades”, interview with Gollop (the founders of Target Games; the Amstrad version).
- CU Amiga-64, October 1989, p. 54: Blade Software advertisement (versions and prices).
- Amiga Format issue 5, December 1989, pp. 52–53: Amiga review (Blade, £19.95; 93%).
- Amstrad Action issue 56, May 1990, p. 52: Laser Squad Expansion Kit Two review (Target Games, £4 cassette, £6 disk; The Stardrive and Laser Platoon).
- Computer Gaming World issue 103, February 1993, p. 74: the PC version from Krisalis Software of Rotherham.
- Retro Gamer issue 112, March 2013, pp. 44–51: Martyn Carroll, “The King of Chaos” (Target’s first partner and its name; the Laser Squad 2 demo that became UFO: Enemy Unknown).
- CRASH issue 31, August 1986, pp. 49–50: Rebel Star review (Firebird, £1.99, 93%).
- PC Gamer (UK) issue 5, April 1994, pp. 62–63: UFO: Enemy Unknown review (“began life as the sequel” to Laser Squad; time units). See the X-COM entry for the tactical system.
- Edge issue 109, April 2002, p. 79: Laser Squad Nemesis review (Codo Games).