I played the original Laser Squad (well I say "original", it's the much-later improved DOS port), it was pretty cool, only later did I make the association with X-COM (which was originally gonna be Laser Squad 2). You can find a lot of things that Gollop later reused in X-COM titles like weapon types, organization names (eg. Marsec), etc.
If you're a fan of Gollop's tactical titles you should also look at his more recent ones, Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars (3DS) and Rebelstar: Tactical Command (GBA).
