If you’ve not already sampled the retro delights of Battle Squadron, and want to give it a try without buying the full version, Cope-Com has been thinking about you, and has come up with a great universal iPhone/iPad Lite version of the game.

Unless it’s a freemium game, Lite versions can be handled like the poor cousin, and developers just slap an early level – or worse, the training section – in and hope for the best.

Cope-Com has avoided this problem by only making the upper levels of Battle Squadron available to Lite players.  To complete the game, you normally must enter the core of the planet when the opportunity arises, but when you give that a try here, you’re prompted to pay for the full version.

Approaching the Lite version like this provides a complete picture of what Battle Squadron is like to play, including the gently increasing difficulty level.  Should you decide to pay for the whole game (and you should), the price has recently been dropped to $1.99/£1.49 for a limited time too.

You can read our full review of the game here, plus our look at the innovative two-player mode added in a recent update.