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.

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.