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Published April 12, 2026 1:00am
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Laser Squad is a timeless classic (LaunchBox)
A reader explains why he’s been playing the same ZX Spectrum game for almost four decades and what it’s connection to XCOM is.
Over the last week we’ve had a lot older fans reminiscing over the 8-bit and 16-bit years from a very British perspective. That means lots of talk about the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amiga, and Atari ST. These are formats that almost never get brought up nowadays because none of them were particularly popular in the US and I’m not sure any of them were even released in Japan.
The Spectrum was low tech even at the time, so nowadays it’s very off-putting to anyone that didn’t experience it the first time round (I deeply regret showing the games to my daughter as her utter disgust pained me). So while I appreciate the viewer talking about Ant Attack I’m not sure it’s going to gain the game many new fans or that it would be any different if he had talked about any of the Speccy’s other classic games.
One reader did mention Rebelstar and Chaos in the Inbox though, two excellent strategy games by the amazing Julian Gollop. However, I am surprised that they didn’t also mention Laser Squad (it came out a bit later so maybe they’d moved on by then) which was also by Julian Gollop and to this day is one of my favourite games ever.
For me, as a kid in the 80s, the ZX Spectrum was everything. It was the most expensive thing I owned and often the focal point for when friends would come round or inspiring idle discussions in the playground or huddled round the latest games mag (Crash, ideally).
There weren’t that many multiplayer games back then, and even less that were actually good, but Laser Squad worked perfectly because it was turn-based. Some may recognise the name and know that it was basically the predecessor to XCOM, with very similar combat but not meta strategy angle.
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XCOM is purely single-player but Laser Squad was primarily multiplayer. You can play it on your own but it’s much less fun and very hard. There are multiple different scenarios, each with their own map, but they all have you controlling a small troop of soldiers as you try to assassinate bad guys, blow up computers, rescue prisoners from a mine, and other fun action movie clichés.
It came out in 1988 but while it was ported to other formats they always just looked like the Spectrum version, even on the Amiga. That didn’t matter though because gameplay is king with Laser Squad and the turn-based nature only helps your imagination to fill in the blanks the graphics aren’t showing.
If you’ve played XCOM, the combat in Laser Squad is very similar, with action points, overwatch, and permadeath being just the same. It’s a bit fiddlier and less streamlined, as you’d expect for something nearly 40 years old, but the basics are pretty much exactly the same, which tells you everything you need to know about how timeless they are.
Playing against the AI can be frustrating but the reason I still play it is the multiplayer. I use The Spectrum mini-console from Retro Games to run the emulation and that works very well for me. So one person takes control of the human soldiers – the ones you’d be in single-player – and the other person is the defending force of robots or mercenaries or whatever.
Back in the day you just swapped seats when it was your go and promised not to look when the other person was taking their go, which I did 95% of the time back then and 100% now. I know how old fashioned that sounds, and it literally is, but it’s genuinely a ton of fun and very social as you argue and complain about the other player getting your man.
Would I play a remake if there was ever one? Yes, probably, just for things like online multiplayer, which I would assume it’d have. But I’d still go back to the Speccy version if I was playing with someone locally. Not that it matters though because I don’t think a remake will ever happen.
Which means one of the best games ever made, and one of my personal favourites, is trapped on a bunch of dead formats. Or maybe they should be called living dead formats, because the Spectrum still rules in my house!
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By reader The Bishop
There’s never been any sign of a remake (Wikipedia)
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