When asked about my favourite game series, I’ll stumble around trying to think of one. All the usual ones fly off… Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat (The early years at least), Grand Theft Auto. Then you get to the lesser known ones: Syndicate, Life & Death, Emergency. But everytime, I forget one. But its one I shouldn’t, its one of the most stand out games I’ve ever played. The first game perplexed me so much as a youth, that despite not actually succeeding at the main aspect of the game for months I was still drawn into it as I kept trying until eventually I completed a mission
UFO Defence (Or X-COM: Enemy Unknown as I’ve always known it) started the X-COM (Extraterrestrial Combat Unit) series. A turn based isometric team based shooter. That was for the missions anyhow, the rest of the game was made up of a world map where you had various different tasks: base building, researching, manufacturing. There was so much to it. You start equipped with the best that Earth has to offer in the face of an increasing alien menace, your clearly under equipped and have your arse handed to you on numerous occasions. Eventually you’ll kill some aliens, win a mission and retrieve some items you need to research to known what to do with. So you take it back, do some work and you start getting better equiped and can start taking the fight to the aliens
To most this would probably be one of the most boring concepts you could talk about, I mean combat is essentially a dodgy looking tabletop boardgame but its due to this design that it allows you to be more strategic than other games. Even with its somewhat limited repetoire of abilities and equipment you’ll find yourself flanking the enemy, proceeding with standard room to room clearance and charging into suicide runs with naught but a primed grenade. The latter of which I think was more of poor forethought by myself. A similar technique is achieved by running into a downed UFO to find you’ve used all your action points and in trying to flee the craft, you end up ending your turn with your back turned on 4 aliens with Heavy Plasmas
The second title in the series, Terror From The Deep (A very B-Movie title) is kind of like the first. In that it is the first, but its been reskinned and is stupidly bugged. For instance, if you research a certain item before another you can’t complete the game. I don’t know the items because I’ve never bared with the title long enough to do it justice. Basically to make some quick money, the publishers had a team sit down and make a sequal based off the original in a matter of a few months. Had TFTD been done by the original team it could have been a completely different prospect. One day I’ll play this game on its own merit, but I can’t help but feel it insignificant in comparison to its older brother
After ending the 1st alien war and everyone settling back down, a second menace was discovered that had been lying dormant under the oceans for decades. X-COM was called back into action, having somehow lost all knowledge of everything gained from the 1st war (A careless oversight due to its rushed nature, though in fairness I can’t imagine Plasma weapons being of much use underwater, but to have them still recognised as existing would have been nice. Or at least some of the items that would have worked still in use) your in the same boat (lol) as in the 1st game, under equipped, outnumbered and failing miserably. Kill, research, kill things better, kill the aliens, save the world
Number 3, Apocalypse. Oh noes, more aliums! Times moved on again and most of the world lives in these sprawling metropolises called Mega Cities. UFOs are being sited and people are panicking! X-COM reforms, under equipped, badly funded, still lacking all the equipment from previous wars. Although this game at least has alien sympathisers in so acknowledges the games history somewhat. Bit more of an interesting affair this one, combat got a real time option to appeal to a wider audience. There were more vehicles to purchase such as hovercars and craft, and they were upgradable with new engines and stuff like that which was fairly swish. Kill, research, discover some drastic twists regarding the aliens, travel through their portals, gradually destroy their homebase, discover another big twist, research, kill them all, save the world and be happy ^_^
Number 4, X-COM Interceptor. A space fighting sim with base building. Instead of a world map, you now have a galaxy, with solar systems and what not. Kill, research, kill better, discover some twists, go through some portals, blow up a sun and be done with it. I remember this game quite fondly despite it being, well… pretty shit. I managed to complete the game relatively easily and get the good-bad ending (There of course being “YOU FAILED!” and the good-good ending) which in my eyes was better than the other one. I blew up the aliens solar system but by launching the final missile strike from my craft I had taken too much damage to my engines and was unable to move to get back to my carrier to be warped back home. So I had to watch for 5 minutes as the missile headed into their sun before the end sequence cut in and it nova’d everything to shit, me included. Thus followed a broadcast to everyone on Earth of my final moments and how I’d saved the world but taken my own life in the process, dying a hero :’) The good good ending involves firing, back to carrier, back to base, everyones happy, yay, dullness
Number… something. Probably 1.5 or 2.5, I’m not sure. X-COM E-mail. While not strictly a fully fledged game, it still exists. It was essentially the X-COM multiplayer, allowing you and a friend to play as the aliens or humans over the internet without having to worry about the lag of dial-up \o/ The game is still played today apparently, albeit in a hacked format that allows you to either hot seat with the game or play over the internet without the arsing about of the old email server sytem
Now this is where the original X-COM games ended. Microprose folded leaving the rights to another company which then got passed around like a bad christmas present you send to someone else the following year. A few titles were under development:
X-COM Genesis – A remake of the original which was going to bring the graphics upto a Syndicate Wars level which would have been nice, it got canned when Mythos who were making it got shelved
X-COM Alliance – A First Person Shooter! With its roots still set in the “kill, research. kill better” idealogy, again it would have been a nice addition, though it got canned and later resurfaced with all its fun gutted out of it in the form of X-COM Enforcer. Another game I never played, although I do own it
There was quite a delay and then followed the “kind of official” sequels. Aftermath, Aftershock and Afterlight. Until recently I never accepted them as being part of the X-COM universe but I feeltaking them on their own merits, they’re not actually that bad. I haven’t read all too much into them because I still kind of want to play them but don’t at the same time
Aftermath picks up “the day after tomorrow” as the game states, alien space craft appears, releases spores into atmosphere, they fall to earth and suffocate most of everything. Cue you as commander of the survivors as they band together to do what they can and defend the Earth. Kill, research, kill better
In Aftershock the survivors fled to an orbiting space station with the help of your alien menace (I don’t know the technicalities, only that its not the good-good option from the previous ending its more of the good-bad option but there you go) you lose contact with Earth and need to find out whats happened. Kill, research, kill better. Apparently this game is one of the buggiest games released, even after its been patched. Though there is a community thats done what they can to further fix a broken game
Afterlight happens at the same time as Aftershock, only on Mars. When the spore survivors fled to the space station, some were sent to Mars as well where they were to terraform it when they awoke from a cryo sleep. Only when they start they unearth something they shouldn’t have done. Kill, research, kill better, but do it slightly different than other times
On top of all that you have teams that are working on remakes of the original UFO Defence game. Games such as Project Xenocide and UFO: Alien Invasion as well as one that was released at retail called UFO Extraterrestrials. Albeit not quite being a remake, but continuing on from the original as if the aliens had defeated us. Oh plus let me not forget the 2 novels spawned from the series!
Theres a lot to the series, but in my eyes theres only one game you need to play to get the idea of it (As if it wasn’t apparent from all of that above anyhow 
) If you’ve never played UFO Defence, your doing yourself an injustice. I would seriously recommend at least trying to have a go at it, if not then read all you can about it. Its a sublime game and one I’m going to go play once I’ve finished writing this. First base will be in Russia near Novosisbirsk (sp?) to cover most of the original funding nations, then earn enough coin to setup a second base in North America to cover all that land mass, with a further well defended radar station over the Artic to trace UFOs across both continents. Researching lasers to reduce overheads and not have to worry about ammo anymore and research the plasma craft weapons to have something decent to shoot them down with. Good times
Holy shit just googled to see how much the books were to buy and discovered that the original PSX game (The NTSC version at least) would now set you back about £30 :s and to buy the book would cost you over $90. I originally got the PSX game from a second hand game store in coventry I think it was for less than a fiver not long after it was out, and I got the book from a charity shop in london for £1 :E I don’t even think I have it anymore 
Also stumbled onto LittleBigAdventure, another hard to get a hold of title I remember playing. I got stuck in the sewer when I couldn’t get on the back of that arsing turtle
