who remembers X-COM?

"c h i e f y" is alive!

I remember it - still have it for the Amiga. Loved it.

I remember it, I also remember playing it on the amiga a couple of times, and that it took ages to complete a single turn. (A500)

QUOTE: it took ages to complete a single turn

Perturbation on the playstation version when you completed a turn, it then moved to the ALIENS TURN and a screen came up saying 'HIDDEN MOVEMENT'

THIS is when the really annoying WAITING part of the game set in, sometimes this 'HIDDEN MOVEMENT' screen would stay for a minute or two, even more - as if the playstation was desperately clicking through a million possible options as to where/ what the aliens could do - what the HELL was taking it so long I have no idea, is that what you were referring to?

hey puki!!! top man ;)

I got 87% :)

Nope, it just ran dog slow on the amiga, same with civilization and dune II.

I sucked at this game... I like it, though...
I have X-COM 1 and 2 for PC...

I just bought the original box from Ebay for my Amiga 1200 ^^
Its still a bit slow though.
The quiz up there is not working for me, would have loved to try it :(

AshMantle, direct link on this post - the first post is indirect

I got 94% :D Is this a new edition or something? I don't remember some of the images in the quiz.

new quiz Erik, flippin hard work too :-)

94% hehe nice going!

I remember Lazer Squad! Also Xcom and Terror of the Deep. Those games all rocked and were played for many months by me.

Alright I'm on it! Um, where exactly?

click the picture which is a massive link!

Misclicked once, and the "NOT LIKELY to happen" question threw me off :)

Although, too many questions had the first alternative as the correct answer.. lazy :p

I couldn't get it to work in Firefox, but IE could do it..

Firefox ran it perfectly for me... hmmm...

I got 94%.... would have gotten higher but some of the questions are trick ones.

@Eric - they put in some screens from the playstation version.

Hands down, X-COM is the best video game ever.

100% first time. Too easy! Of course, I still play the game (PC version) regularly. Have yet to beat it on Superhuman difficulty, but I came damn close recently!

You almost had me with identifying the Cannon, but the only reasonable alternative was the Plasma Beam - the best craft weapon in the game.

By the way, Missile Defenses are not entirely useless. I've had them save bases from early attacks when playing on Superhuman. Of course, they're only useful if you have quite a few of them.

Yeah, I have to agree with you Octo´, it´s been a while since I played it (when it came out for PC) but must have played it for 3 months solid. The Gollop brothers are legendary indeed.

Hi Chiefy m8!!! How are you? All the best anyways.

hi plant - not too bad thanks!! good to see you're still on the official site :D octo - thanks for your very interesting views on the quiz - I quite agree with what you said, but also, I have got to say that IMHO playing the game on anything more than the middle difficulty has got to be a SADO experience ;) - even at the middle difficulty the aliens shown wicked intelligence so I dread to think how you can possibly play it beyond that, I would never even consider doing so - so you must have unbelievable tactics and non-stop awareness - I have used missile defences and they have never stopped ANYTHING but I bow to your experience :-) orca some of the questions are "trick ones" ? octo is this true? :-0

I love X-Com!!


Also:
PC Remake (Free & Open Source): http://ufo2000.sourceforge.net/

I remember playing this game, good. Although I hated the way after a while it suddenly got SUPER HARD and then it was impossible to do any missions.

I'm talking about the underwater one, that was the sequel wasn't it?

One of the best game ever.

Chiefy: I don't think any of those questions were tricks. I think you mean maso, not sado.

Hints for the X-COM challenged:

1. On your first turn, throw a smoke grenade just outside the craft. Wait a turn for it to explode before moving your team out. Note that if you're fighting a snakemen terror crew, this strategy will backfire quite badly and turn into a George Romero film (Ach, zombies!)

2. Unless it's a terror mission, conserve your time units. Finding an alien with a scout and having the rest of your team able to fire upon it with full time units is great (especially since aliens can't react to being fired at from out of their visual range, but you can still hit them sometimes from much further away.) If you don't have enough time and covering fire left to kill whatever's around that next corner, don't round it - move everyone to cover and end your turn.

3. Don't fight Ethereals.

Don't fight Ethereals? Jees!! what happens if you go to a base that contains Ethereals or go on a terror mission that has these aliens? are you saying ABORT on the sight of Ethereals? I don't get it :-)

interesting hints, especially no 1 - that is SOLID!! I might try 'em Octo, yeah maso, I think you're right :D

I had no problem with etherals, but that might be because I encountered them quite late in the game and my crew had LOTS of psionic skills.

One thing that bothered me though, is that in my version, when a soldier gets TOO good, ie. his time units goes past a certain point, they wrap around and suddenly he only has like 10 timeunits.
Then you gotta just keep him around until he has earned enough timeunits to be playable again. Same goes for every other stat, suddenly he's über weak and can't carry a pistol.

Sigh, I used to and indeed still do lob explosive charges everywhere :)

"Sooo, yoo hide behind the wall huh?"

Lob explosive

bye, bye wall, hello alien.

oops sorry Mrs smith, I will call an ambulance

hehe fun times, but it did clear the area fast.

oh..

Priming a grenade to zero then running out of time is good too...well maybe not :)

Cheers

Garion

yeah psionic skills are certainly a help

wow chiefy is practicing thread necromancy o_O

anyways... I'm slightly intoxicated, and very bored. X-Com = win.

I have a great idea for a twist on x-com... if only I could find a team to do it... *thinking aloud*

When you are going to fight Ethereals, (like when you want to acctualy win the game), only give your troops those "knockout gass guns" and power armour, cos then if they take you over you cannot actualy hit your own troops.

As long as your real guns are not on you, the taken over Xcomer wont use them

Thats a good strat... I never thought of that.

Though I do remember for the assault on the last level, I kept most of my guys with laser rifles for 2 reasons: mainly due to the equipment limit on the transport, but the secondary effect is similiar to what your saying.... cuz if they get mind controled, its hard for them to critically wound or kill a soldier in power or flying armor.

Other misc strats for me:
-Try to avoid night missions if possible
-use a rocket tank to scout, knock down walls, act as an initial damage sponge...
-laser pistols = uber way to raise funds.
-proximity grenades rock.

The amiga version was bugged/unfinished and didnt have any night missions, rocket tanks where way too expensive to scout (Unless as you said you went into mass prodution), use a new man.
Laser cannon (for craft), was the best pertime profit, so better than pistol

Whatever you do DONOT put all you alien alloys into one base, and then not defend it.

X-Com 3 (Apocalips sic) was best. A lot better than Aftermath and aftershock

I started with LAser Squad on Spec/C64 then Amiga, it rocked. Then Xcom which entertained me for months every day, then Terror of the Deep which I played at lunchtime at work for months.

RebelStar Raiders on specturm here. Loved LaserSquad. Second thing I wrote was a lasersquad clone

Yeah, fond memories of moonbase and starlingale, back when your imagination accounted for most of the games processing power.

I always thought it would bee fairly easy to remake a game like this. Then I tried making my turn based strategy game. It took a year, and then I realized I was only half way done and I quit. It's sad that no one will remake this awesome game.

too right Craig, I'll second that

but the original PC version can still be played on PC - so not all is lost

the amiga version was bugged? wow - the playstation version played like a dream! I'm still playing it

FFS chiefy.

Hey Chiefy,

What about "UFO Alien Invasion" (haven't tried it myself, yet).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXw_V6I7qKw

http://ufoai.sourceforge.net/

No it can't. You can't even play Terror From The Deep, or Apocalypse.

Yes you can. There is a patch to update it and you can buy a fully working X-Com multi-game pack off of Steam :D

Excellent games BTW.

Which is ran from DosBox, and it is therefore the original version. There is also a Gold version which runs on windows, but it is too fast on today's computers (in DosBox you can adjust the speed at least).

On a side note, there is also PocketPC remake called PocketUFO which is done exceptionally well: it's so faithful that it could have been an official conversion.

EDIT: when I saw it on Steam, for a moment I hoped that they did a revamped version.

The only problem I had with the amiga version was the time it took to do things (A500 = slooooow).

I still play the PC version (which is buggy).

Well I got a PC version which works just fine without dosbox and it's just the right speed.

Funny, I posted this 1 year ago:


And here we are again. This thread is like some kind of weird time/space vortex. o_O

*waits patiently for thread to be revived next year*

The version I have runs at the proper speed on XP, without DosBox.

Why would they release the DOS versions of X-COM on Steam? That doesn't make any sense at all.

I would like to know either what are your specs, or which version it is then (I only know of the original one from 1993, the CD version which came out shortly after, and the Gold version, and all go lightspeed when scrolling on current pc's).


At the moment the original game emulated with DosBox is the only way which I am aware of to be able to play it on any machine and any OS with little hassle (and the same goes with the Steam guys it seems). Anyway, it is confirmed, these are not rumors. In fact, Terror from the Deep uses the Windows version and it is said to be incompatible with Vista. Even Apocalypse is said to be emulated with DosBox, though it should be a little heavy on it even for the average specs of the steam userbase (I'm almost curious to take the original from my dusted shelf to try it myself :) ).

I just purchased X-Com UFO Defense through Steam. ;) It seems to automatically start DOS Box and so far it runs fine, it said on Steam that Windows 2000 or XP is required (I have XP). I still have to get into the first fight with those aliens but it looks cool. :) Used to be this at a friend's house a lot, many years ago.

edit: I alt-tabbed from the game to type this, and now it is in windowed mode and I can't see how to make it full screen again? Well maybe there's some manual for DOS Box somewhere or else restart I guess.

Oh ok it's Alt + Enter. ;)

If people really want me to I can zip it and put it online, my friend sent it to me I don't know where he got it.

Maaaan this game is hard... haha.. I walked my crew outside the plane and one by one they got shot. So I bought a new aircraft and put the remaining 4 soldiers in it for the next UFO. I took a rocket launcher with me this time for revenge. However, it hit a fence just in front of the guy that fired it and killed him and a few others... then the remaining soldier got hit by an alien grenade.

>If people really want me to I can zip it and put it online, my friend sent
>it to me I don't know where he got it.

Are you out of your freaking mind. Pirating and distributing a game using the Blitz forum.

Jesus Christ....

...probably best not to post when it isn't your turn with the family brain cell...

Oh dear what a massive mistake. I wasn't talking about X-Com at all, I thought we were talking about some freely downloadable game. >_>

Have you tried changing the scroll speed to 1?

Are you kidding?

No? I'm confused. I'll leave now.

Bought it as a trilogy, will get around to installing it one day :)