Background information

As I mentioned at the start of this documentation, AoW is ``in the tradition of" Rebelstar and Laser Squad. I understand that many people outside of England have never heard of either of these, so here's a bit of information on them.

Both Rebelstar and Laser Squad were written by the same people, the man behind both being Julian Gollop. Rebelstar Raiders was the first game, released on the Spectrum around 1983-84, before being re-written and re-released as Rebelstar later on. This really was a fantastic game, way ahead of its time, with brilliant graphics and sound (well, for a machine with a built-in speaker underneath, the sound was good)! It was the first game I know of that used the ``action points" system.

Laser Squad followed a few years later, finally making it to the Amiga around 1989. This was still a brilliant game, and introduced the line-of-sight feature, the explosive weaponry and the concept of missions. However, for some reason it just didn't have the charm of its predecessor, or so I felt anyway.

I understand that Julian is working on Laser Squad 2 at the minute. I hope this game not only fills the gap between LS 1 and 2, but stands on its own. I've tried to make it as original as possible, while still obviously being ``strongly influenced" by the other games.

Anyway, I think AoW has a lot to offer of its own, apart from the influences of these games. Most obviously is the mission editor... it's possible to do a lot more with this than you would think. Units don't have to be people, they can be Battlecars, fighter planes, nuclear missiles... The three missions here are all sci-fi scenarios, but there's no reason why they have to be. I know of someone who's doing fantasy scenarios. Special Forces (SAS, Green Berets) are a possibility, and I've heard an unconfirmed rumour that someone is working on a Disney mission! I always wanted to see what the Chipmonks could do with a rocket launcher.

I have to mention Space Crusade by Gremlin here. That game has the honour of being the reason I wrote this. The game is OK, but I couldn't help comparing it to Laser Squad. It contains several things I hate:

• Completely random death (``AutoDefences"... aargh!)

• You can stand right next to an enemy, shoot him with, like, a huge Autocannon, and miss him! How realistic. It wasn't just that, it's the way that the shot doesn't hit anything else, it just disappears if it misses the assigned target. Ironically, you can still miss someone from right next to them in this game, but at least it's a) unlikely, and b) fun when the shot hits his team member next to him!

• Randomly-appearing aliens. You get the feeling that, as the game realises it's losing, it just rolls up another alien to throw at you.

These features are all the result of the game being a conversion of a boardgame, it's inherently limited. It's still a decent game, though I think the random deaths spoil it.