Not so long ago I was looking at the spreadsheet I use to keep track of my game collection, and I noticed that I owned 798 ‘boxed’ games. With my predilection for round numbers, and despite the goals of this blog, I set about trying to think of what my 800th boxed game should be.
.My taste in games is, and has always been, very much on the action side of things. I grew up playing arcade games and the home conversions of them. I like to be in direct control; using my skill and reactions to see me through to the next boss battle.
With 30 different consoles to choose from and a self imposed budget limit to negotiate, it wasn’t easy. I’m not really fond of ‘special editions’ and that kind of thing either, I wanted a game that was somehow special to me despite having never played it.
In the end I settled for this lovely ‘boxed with instructions’ 'Laser Squad' for the Amiga, Julian Gollop’s incredibly popular turn based strategy (TBS) game originally from 1988.
.My taste in games is, and has always been, very much on the action side of things. I grew up playing arcade games and the home conversions of them. I like to be in direct control; using my skill and reactions to see me through to the next boss battle.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this all changed when I played ‘Chaos’ and ‘Rebelstar II’, but it’s definitely true that they opened up a new world of turn based strategy which I’m sure would have otherwise passed me by.
Julian Gollop’s early games, brought to me on the cover of ‘Your Sinclair’ magazine, would go on to be the foundation of the 'X-Com' series, but to me they were the foundation of a love for TBS that continues to this day.
Which is why I thought it fitting for a milestone game to be one chosen with that in mind, and as 'Laser Squad' was the only Gollop game I hadn’t played, and considering I’m slowly trying to expand my Amiga collection, this was the perfect fit.
Only, of course I have pretty much played 'Laser Squad' before, because 'Laser Squad' is basically 'Rebelstar III'.
Released on the Spectrum in the same year as 'RebelStar II', 'Laser Squad' is very much an iterative update on that game. It offers more than just a new set of campaign maps but, when I loaded it up, it felt somehow ‘less’ than a full blooded sequel, even by pre-nineties standards.
This might be part of the problem though; I’m looking at this game with 21st century eyes and it may have been that the details added to the formula, of which there are many, was more than enough to satisfy the audience of the time.
Adding further weight to this argument is the very fact that I’m playing this game on my Amiga 600.
The 'Rebelstar' Series was very much a ZX Spectrum affair. There were ports to Amstrad, but you get the impression this was often like porting from Google Docs to MS Word. Laser Squad appears to have been Gollops launch pad with releases appearing on home computers right up to 1992, just a couple of years before UFO (the start of the X-Com series that was originally conceived as ‘Laser Squad II’) would come along and raise the bar even higher.
When I knuckled down and started playing ‘Laser Squad’ the aforementioned small details started to make a big difference.
Selecting you squad’s hardware adds a whole new tactical level from the outset. There’s line-of-sight that complicates matters immeasurably, armour attributed individually to the four sides of your squad member - and this, paired with the new ability to rotate your character on the field, can be a life saver should you barely survive an initial assault from the front, back, left, or right. Opportunity Fire returns better than ever, and a scanner that enables a view of the entire play area is perhaps the most welcome update of all.
After a few failed missions spent picking up the nuances and idiosyncrasies of the mechanics, I’m starting to see why this was the game that elevated Julian Gollop into the position he holds today as the Godfather of TBS.
Each of the 'Rebel Star' games iterated on its predecessor until, with 'Laser Squad', the concept was perfected. Half a decade’s work that began with 'RebelStar Raiders', a game written in Basic (imagine programming a game in excel), culminated in this finely honed product that stood at the pinnacle of the genre for 5 years - until it was toppled by its own, re-branded sequel.
Personally, 'Laser Squad' is the missing piece of the puzzle. Had I played it at the time, it would have made the jump from 'Rebel Star II' to 'UFO: Enemy Unknown' far easier to negotiate.
It’s impact is so huge that it makes the generations-wide gap between these two franchises seem tiny.
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