X-COM: UFO Defense
-
2K Huge Game Pack
(2009) -
Power, Corruption & Lies
(1995) -
Telstar Double Value Games: Syndicate + UFO Enemy Unknown
(1995) -
UFO: Enemy Unknown / X-COM: Terror from the Deep
(1997) -
Ultimate Strategy Archives
(1999) -
X-COM Collection
(1999) -
X-COM: Collector's Edition
(1999) -
X-COM: Complete Pack
(2008) -
X-COM: Unknown Terror
(1996)
Description official descriptions
In the year 1998, the amount of reports of UFO sightings has been drastically increased. Stories about abductions and alien attacks became more and more widespread. Finally, after various nations of the world have failed to intercept the UFOs, their representatives met in a conference of global importance in Geneva, Switzerland. It was eventually decided to organize a secret paramilitary group, dubbed Extraterrestrial Combat Unit (X-COM). Starting with one base, two fighters, one transport, and a few soldiers, X-COM must locate the aliens, learn about their origins and technology, find out where their base is, and destroy it.
X-COM: UFO Defense is a strategy game featuring separate but interlinked elements. On the strategic side, called GeoScape, you get a rotating view of the globe, where you see all visible UFOs (those that are within your detection range) as well as major cities and your base(s). You order movements from here, such as sending out fighters to intercept UFOs, transports with soldiers to assault/recover UFOs, and perhaps assaults on alien bases (if you find any). You also control your research, as you must invent better weapons (the Terran weapons are just no match against the alien weapons) quickly, not to mention all the other cool tech you can recover from the aliens. You also need to control your budget, as you can't afford to overextend your reach. Researchers need to be paid, engineers (who build the new toys) need to be paid, base(s) need to be be built/expanded, planes need to be bought/maintained, supplies need to be replenished, and so on.
You can earn money by selling unneeded stuff, and you receive funding from the nations of the world; however, a nation can decrease its funding if it decides you aren't operating efficiently enough within its region. It's even possible that a nation gets so fed up with you that it signs a pact with the aliens and ceases funding altogether.
Once you join a ground battle, the game switches to Battlescape, which is an isometric view of the battlefield with realistic line-of-sight calculations and turn-based combat. Your mission is usually extermination of all aliens on the battlefield, though if you can capture a few it would surely help your research efforts. If you win, you also recover any alien artifacts left on the field, which can then be researched.
In combat, each of your soldiers has a specific number of Time Units. Doing anything (moving, shooting, turning around, rearranging objects in the inventory etc.) costs a number of TUs. Once a soldier is out of TUs, he cannot act any more this turn (he gets all his TUs back on the next turn, though).
Spellings
- X-COM 未知なる侵略者 - Japanese spelling
Groups +
- Console Generation Exclusives: PlayStation
- Gameplay feature: Squad management
- Games made into books
- Games with manual lookup copy protection
- Powerplus releases
- Setting: 1990s
- Setting: Earth's orbit
- Setting: Future now past
- Setting: Mars
- Setting: Space station / Spaceship
- Video games turned into board / card games
- X-COM series
Screenshots
Promos
Credits (DOS version)
24 People (22 developers, 2 thanks) · View all
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| Graphics / Artwork | |
| Music | |
| Sound | |
| Packaging | |
| Documentation | |
| Producer | |
| Project Manager | |
| Quality Assurance | |
| Special Thanks To | |
| Publishers | |
| [ full credits ] | |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 86% (based on 48 ratings)
Players
Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 385 ratings with 26 reviews)
Definitely tops in my book for classic gaming.
The Good
Innovative concept, outstanding graphics for 1994, excellent turn-based combat engine. This game was the first I played that put me in control of an entire military operation, from management and logistics to strategy and tactics. It was up to me to keep my guys alive! And the steadily improving stats of your soldiers made you very attached to them, so you'd give them names and keep up with their progress! Needless to say, many an hour has been wasted, erm, I mean spent, defending the earth from extra-terrestrial terrorists.
The Bad
Jerky mouse interface in the equipment and battlescape screens. Will sometimes evilly corrupt my latest savegame and make me start from the last one.
The Bottom Line
A must-play for anyone who considers themselves a serious PC gamer.
DOS · by Michael Reznick (37) · 2001
X-COM is what every game wants to be when it grows up.
The Good
X-Com's is the crowning achievement for PC hybrid/genre-bending games. No other game had ever managed to combine strategic depth, resource management, rpg-ing and tactical squad-based combat into a cohesive and well-crafted package. Truly the game is amazing, even by today's standards.
By now everyone knows the story, aliens are invading earth, they are bad, they must be killed. However instead of stepping on the shoes of Captain Steroid, and shooting the hell out of the little green men, you take the role of the leader of the UN's appointed alien-retaliation unit: X-Com. The thing is, you are pretty much flying solo here. You are given a monthly funding with which you are trusted to build bases all-over the world, hire personnel, start researching alien technology, shoot down UFO's and proceed to examinate them, etc. Sounds simple enough right? Actually in a way it is, and that's probably the game's major acomplishment, it manages to blend incredibly deep and complicated (not to mention diverse) gameplay premises and merge them into a perfect amalgamation of pure genius.
When it comes to base-building you have to consider placement, defences, installations, and the like. Personnel recruitment is a mini-rpg game where each of the soldiers in the game has his/her own stats (which determine their equipment availability and their roles in combat) and must be exercised by experience, yet you have to balance each squad and have fresh recruits ready for deployment to cope with fatigue, wounds and even KIAs. And then you have possibly the best aspect of the game, which is the turn-based squad tactical combat. Combat takes place on isometric tile-based levels complete with every option now common to tactical games, such as taking advantage of cover, statistically accurate firing models and more esoteric options like sneaking around, sniping, etc. etc.
The research aspect of the game brings into the spotlight another sexy aspect that X-Com blends in succesfully: Alien lore. This provides more than just an interesting setting for the game, but also serves as the perfect means for gameplay progression. Once you salvage enough equipment your technology tree will start to grow, but more importantly so will your options. Having better airships will allow you to take down bigger UFOs (in yet another great mini-game) which in turn means bigger challenges and greater payoffs, new weapondry (like tanks) will change the rules of the game, and eventually psychic research will yield even more tactical considerations in the squad-based portion of the game.
Yet the game doesn't just rely on that gimmick to progress gameplay, with each success and improvement you make the aliens will take notice, and soon enough you'll go from shooting down tiny UFOs to big motherships, and the aliens will start to terrorize more and more cities (which add human hostages to the mix). Then you'll start discovering alien outposts and bases and eventually they'll discover one of yours and try to invade it, and that's where the base planning takes part (that and the reserve of soldiers you remembered to keep around.... right??). Eventually you'll take the action off-world in hopes of clearing the alien threat once and for all, but that my friend, is another story :)
The Bad
How can one put this without sounding like a rambling fanboy??? Well I just can't. There's absolutely nothing wrong with X-Com. All I can think about is that for the "idle" moments on tactical mode they should have added a real-time mode to accelerate things, but that's it.
Oh, and sometimes it can become overwhelming in it's open-endedness and options, but I chalk that up more to my poor attention span than the game itself :)).
The Bottom Line
Well, let's put it this way: If some bad-ass aliens come and blow the hell out of earth ending thousands of years of human evolution and cultural development, one of the many things we'll be able to think about while we are torched out of existence is "Well, at least we had X-Com out of the deal!"
Without a shadow of a doubt X-Com is one of the most imaginative, innovative, and well-crafted games ever made. A pure example of gameplay perfection and refinement. Truly a masterpiece among masterpieces and a must in every serious gamer's collection. If you haven't played it you simply are not a gamer, you are just an average jerk with a computer :) Now go, it's time to show that damned Alf who's the boss.
DOS · by Zovni (10502) · 2002
A classic game of excellence. (die sectoid scum,die)
The Good
Hell, this thing was the best strategy-tactical game out there. Researching aliens, using their technology, deploying soilders, hiring scientist, building bases and the never-forgettable GeoScape. All this was BIG back then and a milestone that inspired many games now.
The Bad
The sound wasn't too impressive. Other than that, this game rocks.
The Bottom Line
The strategy genre at its best. An instant classic.
DOS · by Zsolt Pardi (6) · 2000
Discussion
| Subject | By | Date |
|---|---|---|
| in between ranks | MerlynKing | Jan 25, 2019 |
| The original X-COM was cancelled, but development continued in secret | Freeman (66176) | Apr 27, 2017 |
| Uh, shouldn't the title be UFO: Enemy Unknown...? | Simoneer (29) | Oct 8, 2010 |
Trivia
1001 Video Games
UFO: Enemy Unknown appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.
Difficulty level bug
DOS version of the game has a bug in the difficulty settings. Regardless of which difficulty level you choose, you always start at the easiest level. Surprisingly, the official patch of the game does not correct this problem. However, there is an unofficial patch available for solving this issue. Problem is also solved in The Collectors Edition Windows port (also commonly known as UFO Gold or CE).
The game contains many different other bugs. All of them are gathered on UFOPaedia.
Cancelled successor
A new version of the X-COM series dubbed X-COM: Genesis, focusing on some of the gameplay features found in the original, was in production at MicroProse Chapel Hill in the late 1990s. The project was cut when the studio was shut down on 7 January 2000.
CD-ROM version
The CD version may include a partial install version and a full install version, depending on the release. The partial install version leaves some datafiles on the CD to save disk space. However, the "full install" version is also on the CD in the HARDDISK directory.
The CD version of the game for DOS was not different from the original floppy one. However it contained animated introduction (the very same which was later used in Amiga CD32 version and from the PlayStation version) and the executable file was patched and some bugs were eliminated.
Creation
Jullian Gollop, designer of X-COM: UFO Defence tells how X-COM was created (taken from the Mythos Games web site):
We showed a demo of ‘Laser Squad 2’ on the Atari ST to Microprose in 1991. The idea was to produce a sequel to ‘Laser Squad’ but with much neater graphics using an isometric style very similar to Populous. They liked what we had done so far, but they explained that they wanted a ‘big’ game. I said "what do you mean by ‘big’" and they said "well, you know – BIG". They also said that it had to be set on earth, like Civilisation or Railroad Tycoon, because people could relate to it much more. So we went away, scratched our heads and thought about it. Then we came up with the idea of adding on a grand strategic element to the game, very firmly set on earth, in which the player managed an organisation that defended the planet against UFO incursions. I bought quite a few books on UFOs for research purposes so that we could give the game an even more ‘authentic’ basis.
The project started reasonably well with myself and Nick designing and programming, while the art was to be done by John Reitze and martin Smillie at MicroProse. Soon we had some problems because Microprose did not understand our game design and they asked for clarification. Several documents later we were not much better off and I had wasted a lot of time. Certain creature types were removed, including the ‘Men In Black’ and others added. Then the whole project was nearly axed when MicroProse made some cutbacks due to financial difficulties. Everything proceeded reasonably smoothly for a while until Spectrum Holobyte acquired Bill Stealey’s shares in the company. Our producer was made redundant and the game was nearly axed again. Finally we had to spend a couple of months working very long hours at MicroProse in Chipping Sodbury to get the game finished by the end of March in 1994.
Element 115
Ten years after the game was released, a real element 115 was discovered. Unfortunately, it wasn't named elerium like in the game, but ununpentium.
GeForce problems
GeForce owners have probably encountered display problems that render the game unplayable. This can be fixed though; go to the Windows Control Panel and the DirectX settings. Switch off DirectDraw hardware acceleration and the game should work fine.
Don't forget to switch acceleration back on afterwards, though.
Geoscape
The game is actually Geoscape, the rotating globe and resource management, generating the battlefield conditions for BattleScape, where you conduct tactical combat against the aliens. If you press Ctrl-C (as suggested by the hint "level skip") while in BattleScape, you interrupt the BattleScape program, preventing it from writing the "results" file. Thus you will get the same result as your previous battle. This is a result of the developement history (see the other trivia entries), whereas MicroProse decided that the tactical combat is not enough to be a game in itself, and asked Mythos to write a strategy game around it.
Influence
The game is heavy influenced from the TV series UFO. It is about a secret UFO defense base which sends out military aircrafts to shoot down UFOs, sending out squads to seek the wreckage and kill or catch aliens to analyze them.
Multiplayer workaround
As the game actually plays through turn by turn on both sides, it is actually possible to take the saved file right at the end of a turn, edit a pointer, and play the "other side" using the engine. If files are exchanged back and forth between different players, it technically becomes multiplayer game.
http://www.tacticalplanet.com/dl/dl.asp?xcom/multip.zip
Novel
A novelization of the game was published through the Proteus imprint of Prima Publishing. It written by Diane Duane and first published in December 1995.
Patches
The last offical patch changed the sound effects of the game.
Patch 1.4 removed the document check copy protection.
Releases
A complete version of X-COM is available on Classic Games Collection CD featured with the July 2000 issue of PC Gamer Magazine. - There was a "Limited Edition" of UFO: Enemy Unknown for the Amiga CD32 that included a MicroProse travel alarm clock.
Technology
X-COM: UFO Defense is one of the few 256-color DOS games to implement dynamic lightning. By using 16 shades of 16 different hues (16 x 16 = 256) as the palette, artists could create isometric tiles whose colors can be gradually changed simply by incrementing each tile's palette entries by 1, 2 and so on. In this way, the same tiles can be shown darker and darker simultaneously on the screen.
Awards
- Amiga Joker
- Issue 02/1995 – #2 Best Strategical in 1994 (Readers' Vote)
- Issue 02/1996 – Readers' Special Award for 1995
- Computer Game Review and CD-ROM Entertainment
- February 1995 – Game of the Year
- Computer Gaming World
- May 1995 (Issue #130) – Game of the Year
- May 1995 (Issue #130) – Strategy Game of the Year
- July 1996 (Issue #144) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame
- November 1996 (15th anniversary Issue) - #22 on the "150 Best Games of All Time" list
- November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) –#1 Top Sleeper Of All Time
- March 2001 (Issue #200) - #3 Best Game of All Time (Editors' Choice)
- March 2001 (Issue #200) - #10 Best Game of All Time (Readers' Choice)
- Electronic Gaming Monthly
- January 1996 (Issue 78) – Game of the Month (Playstation version)
- GameSpy
- 2001 – #35 Top Game of All Time
- GameStar (Germany)
- Issue 12/1999 - #73 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
- IGN
- March 2007 - #1 PC Game of All Time
- PC Gamer
- April 2000 - #15 on the "All-Time Top 50 Games" poll
- October 2001 - #3 on the "Top 50 of All Time" list
- April 2005 - #8 on the "50 Best Games of All Time" list
- Power Play
- Issue 02/1995 – Best Genre Mix in 1994
Information also contributed by Adam Baratz, Andrew Grasmeder, Der.Archivar, Entorphane, Kasey Chang, Lord FlatHead, Heikki Sairanen, Martin Smith, PCGamer77, Pseudo_Intellectual, robotriot, Rola, rstevenson, ZuljinRaynor
Analytics
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Related Sites +
-
OpenXcom
An open-source clone requiring resources from the original game. -
UFOpeadia
A whole wiki-based Database containing nearly everything one wanted to know about the game and beyond... -
X-COM Tactical Command
X-COM Tactical Command has an excellent range of content, now including information on hexediting UFO's files, as well as strategy guides and more. -
XCOMUTIL Homepage
The homepage for Scott T. Jones' fantastic XCOMUTIL utility: Re-vitalise and expand your X-COM game! :) -
XCommand
One of the most popular fan-sites for the X-COM series. -
XCommand
XCommand features various files for editing UFO, as well as strategic aids and the full contents of the UFOPedia. -
devisraad.com - X-COM Page
Download complete sets of new alien spacecraft, for X-COM: UFO Defense and X-COM: Terror From The Deep.
Identifiers +
Contribute
Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.
Contributors to this Entry
Game added by IJan.
Windows added by Shoddyan. Amiga added by Rebound Boy. Amiga CD32 added by Martin Smith. PlayStation added by Adam Baratz.
Additional contributors: xroox, Kate Jones, Kasey Chang, Josh Day, //dbz:, Alaka, Игги Друге, 88 49, BostonGeorge, Patrick Bregger, mailmanppa, Plok, Rwolf, FatherJack, Evolyzer, Silver.
Game added December 4, 1999. Last modified November 5, 2024.