Some great news about Laser Squad on the iPhone, in fact it’s great news for fans of Julian Gollup games.

Now on the appstore you can find zx spectrum:the elite collection (click here)

Download it, and you’ll see an in app purchase for the “Julian Gollup Collection” – for just £1.19 you can be the proud owner of :

• Laser Squad (7 missions inc Stardrive and Laser Platoon)
• Lords of Chaos (5 mission version)
• Chaos
• RebelStar I
• RebelStar II
• Hopping Mad (which i’ve never heard of, and is a bunch of arse)

They play really well in the app and it’s an absolute bargain for the price.

Now if someone would just do iPhone Xcom – my life would be complete

How Laser Squad Works

it’s the start of an in-depth look at the code behind laser squad with the first article will focusing on the sprite and map details.

Thanks to Steve for letting me know

it contains 5 missions : Assassins, Moonbase, RFTM, Cyber Hordes & Paradise Valley. It features sound and full screen play, and allows you to continue play if you quit out of the app.

It’s the c64 version in all it’s glory, and even if it costs a few quid for the app, that’s got to be worth it to be able to fire rockets at Sterner Regnix’s head whilst sat on the loo.

I hadn’t a clue who did the artwork – but if anyone does know, it’d be interesting to find out as the guys work has always remained uncredited.

I believe it’ll be in Issue 80 – no idea when it’s out yet, i”l update when i do.

In case anyone wants to play the best version of Laser Squad, here’s the C64 version in all its .d64 format. I haven’t got a C64 emulator installed at the moment so i can’t check which missions are included – i think it’s just the first 3, but feel free to correct me.

The zip has been updated to contain 2 .64 files the first with 5 missions and the second with expansion kit 2 (or kit 1 depending on which version you first bought) – which is Laser Platoon and Stardrive – for some reason though, this has renamed Stardrive to 7th Brigade.

Edit : thanks to Arkon Who confirms this as the 5 scenario version.
Edit : Additional thanks to fierman for leading me to the missing 2 missions.

A few years later, Gollup expanded the idea and came up with Laser Squad.

Laser Squad is a turn based strategy war game where the player completes objectives such as rescue or retrieval operations, or simply eliminating all of the enemy, by manoeuvering the squad’s team members around a map one at a time, taking actions such as move, turn, shoot, pick up and so on that would use up the unit’s Action Points. By taking advantage of cover, squad level military tactics, and careful use of weaponry, the cunning player could complete their objectives before the other player/computer AI. More heavily laden units would tire more easily, and need resting or face running out of Action Points more quickly in subsequent turns. Morale also played a factor, a unit witnessing the deaths of all his teammates in short shrift, could panic and run out of the player’s control.

Mafia is basically a bigger version of the Assassins, you get a small squad of 5 men – plus a dalek type battle droid, and you are up against a mafia leader (basically, it’s Sterner Regnix) who has a couple of Cyborgs and some more Dalek battle droids.

The map is almost a cross between Sterners house and the Moonbase, but it’s huge – certainly as big as Laser Platoon as least. Unfortunately as you’ve not got a lot of people in there though, it can become a bit long winded actaully finding them.

There’s new weapons too – uzi’s, proton, lasers, time bombs, AP80 grenades and some other interesting items like keys and batteries.

All in all, a decent mission – but the map is a little to big for the combatants available.

Love to hear your opinions on it….

1. The Assassins
2. Moonbase Assault
3. Rescue From The Mines
4. The Cyber Hordes
5. Paradise Valley
6. Stardrive
7. Laser Platoon

8. Mafia
9. Blue Planet
10. Rescue Rangers
11. The Aliens
12. Amazones
13. Coal Corp
14. Biowar
15. Dead City
16. Saboteurs
17. The Melter Squad
18. The Assasins 2
19. Hostile Takeover
20. Return To The Moonbase

My first experience of Laser Squad was an advert about 1.5 inches square in the very, very back of a magazine. I think it was in zzap64! but this was 20 years ago and my brain is old and tired.

It looked great from the single very tiny screenshot, promising a “tactical warfare simulation”. This was before the internet remember, so there was quite literally no information at all.

It was about £10, which meant that i had to save my dinner money for a week or two to afford it (i was 16-17). Cash was duly stashed away and eventually a postal order was dispatched and the wait began.

It was quite a wait, about three weeks – things moved a hell of a lot slower in 1989. Eventually it arrived in a large black box about the size of a VHS video case – this was the first edition from Target, not the Blade reissue.

I hand cranked my c64 and loaded it up.

Managed to miss school that day, because it was AWESOME. I’d literally never played a game that was so on the money, It looked great (i still like the look of it now) and it played brilliantly.

Hell, you all know it plays brilliantly – or you wouldn’t be reading this.

Eventually Expansion kit 1 was released, giving us the Cyber Hordes – which to this day is still pretty tough and when i sent off for expansion kit 2, they gave me a shiny brand new copy of Laser Squad (blade reissue) for free with it.

I think it was really only around this time the game actually begun to get noticed – all my mates loved it and played it as much as i did, everyone knew sappy doody was going to hang about in the toilets in moonbase assault, and that a las-50 was utterly useless against level 4 armour.

It’s just such a damn shame that the internet wasn’t around earlier and more missions didn’t happen – but those crazy russians had a go any way. You’ll find on the downloads page 13 new missions, all coded by russian fans – some are better than others and some are definately buggier than others but free is always good.

I’d love to hear how you lot first experienced Laser squad, get commenting.