Info

X-COM is a series of computer games, started by MicroProse in 1994. The first installment, released as UFO: Enemy Unknown in Europe (and as X-COM: UFO Defense in North America) was written by a team led by Julian Gollop. After the success of X-COM: UFO Defense, The Gollop brothers went straight to work on X-COM: Apocalypse, which would end up being the third in the series when released in 1997.

MicroProse quickly had an internal team create the sequel X-COM: Terror From the Deep in under a year as a quick cash in (hence the amount of uncanny similarities between the first two games). These first two games also show strong similarities to games such as Rebelstar and Laser Squad for the ZX Spectrum, including names of organisations such as 'Marsec'. The fourth title, X-COM: Interceptor was an action-based space combat/strategy game.

All titles were developed for the PC, with ports to the Sony PlayStation and Amiga. The first three titles were originally developed to run under DOS, and have subsequently been ported to run under Microsoft Windows using DirectX. X-COM: UFO Defense was the best selling computer game of 1995 and is considered a true classic, and despite its age, still has a large following.

Series standards

The premise for the series is fairly simple and straightforward, with variations among them: armies of hostile aliens have begun invading the Earth, killing and enslaving the human race. The style and theme of the game closely mirror those of the classic BBC television series UFO.

In each game of the series, the player is put in command of "X-COM": the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit. By defending countries from enemy invasion, the force gains monetary support. Any nation may quit, if X-COM's service is deemed unsatisfactory or the nation's government has been infiltrated by the invaders. Through research of recovered alien artefacts, X-COM is able to develop better and more powerful weapons, armor and vehicles to combat the alien menace and eventually uncover their true nature.

The game takes place within two main views: the Geoscape and the Battlescape, a dichotomy that's the hallmark of the entire series. The Geoscape is where the player waits for enemy alien activity and makes strategic decisions.

While in the Geoscape, the player can view the X-COM bases (located in various locations on Earth), make changes to them, equip X-COM craft, order supplies and personnel, direct research efforts, schedule manufacturing of advanced equipment and sell alien artifacts to raise capital. The Geoscape is continuous and not turn-based.

Gameplay switches to the isometric combat view of the Battlescape whenever X-COM personnel come in contact with alien units. This can result from investigating downed enemy crafts, combatting alien terrorist activities or attacking alien bases discovered during play. Aliens may also be encountered if they manage to attack and infiltrate one of the X-COM bases.

In the Battlescape view, X-COM combatants are pitted against the alien enemies. In addition to personnel, the player may have vehicles such as heavy weapons platforms outfitted with powerful weapons ranging from rockets to plasma beams. The Battlescape mode is turn-based and each combatant has a number of "time units" which can be expended each turn. When all alien forces have been neutralized, the mission is scored based on number of X-COM units killed, civilians saved, aliens killed or captured and the number of alien artefacts obtained.

The X-COM series is known for its difficulty. Third party programs have been developed to modify the game files to make playing the game less frustrating, and to increase replay value. Those third-party programs can also make the game more difficult for highly skilled players. The most complete of these tools is XcomUtil.

Ports

• Amiga
• Amiga CD32
• DOS 1.2, 1.4
• Windows CE
• Playstation (both PAL and NTSC formats)

System Requirements

Minimum

• 386 processor
• 4MB RAM
• Hard drive (10MB free, game alone)
• MS-DOS 5.0 or higher
• VGA Graphics

Recommended

• 486 or better
• 8MB RAM
• Hard drive (15MB free, game + manual)
• SVGA Graphics

Sound Cards Supported

• PC Internal speaker
• AdLib compatible cards
• Sound Blaster compatible cards
• Roland LAPC-1

Working In Windows

• The Collectors Edition of XCOM works in all versions of Windows natively.

• The DOS version can be finicky in WinXP. While it's probably possible to subdue it manually, many people use DOSBox as a WinXP DOS emulator, with a high degree of success. It does have some minor inconveniences, but they're a lot less than figuring everything out manually! A tutorial for DOSBox can also be found here.

DOS X-COM in WinXP

Here are the only things that I (MTR) changed for DOSBox (v. 0.65) DOSBOX.CONF. It works fine for X-COM DOS 1.4:

fullscreen=true # Switched for XCOM
frameskip=2 # Changed from 0 to 2 for XCOM
cycles=8000 # Changed from 3000 to 8000 for XCOM
cycledown=500 # Changed from 20 to 500 for XCOM
mpu401=none # changed from intelligent to none for XCOM
core=dynamic # I (OVNI) noticed dosbox runs much faster with dynamic cpu alocation on WindowsXP with Amd Athlon cpu
             # (not tested with others cpu and/or operating systems)

And the command line of my desktop launch icon reads:

D:\Games\DosBox\DOSBox.exe d:\Games\X-COM\GO.BAT -exit

Adjust per your locations, and you're good to go. (I haven't touched X-COM's GO.BAT except to skip the intro vid, and everything works fine.)

I'm not sure the extent to which some of them matter, but Cycles is the most important... push Cycles as high as it will go without causing odd freezes in your game (usually on a new screen), in which case you hit Control-F11. (If it happens a lot, decrease DOSBOX.CONF Cycles to make it permanent.)

Recently my background music has gone out, no idea why... it worked fine forever. But since I'm into deep testing these days, I don't care... I put on my own tunes, anyway.

Screenshots

Taking screencaps (screen captures):

• For the CE version, use F12. It will make a .TGA file in your game directory.
• For DOS 1.4, it's more complex. I (MTR) use DosBox (see above). Once I could simply hit PrintScreen when in fullscreen XCOM, then switch out and paste to a graphics app. At some point in time that stopped working (makes for a garbage screencap), so instead I now switch out (Alt-Tab, not Ctrl-Enter), take a PrintScreen (of everything on the WinXP desktop), paste this to a graphics app, and crop the graphic to the XCOM window. (And x2 it, if wanted.)

The Makers

Published in 1994 by Microprose (bought by Atari), developed by Mythos Games, chief designers brothers Nick and Julian Gollop.

Mythos preceded X-COM with Laser Squad and have recently produced Laser Squad Nemesis.

Created by:

• Microprose (1994)

Owned by:

• Atari (2004)

Credits

Primary Credits (DOS, Windows)

Game Design and Programming
Mythos Games Limited
Julian Gollop
Nick Gollop

Graphics and Animation
Julian Gollop
John Reitze
Martin Smillie

Music
John Broomhall

Sound Effects
Andrew Parton

Quality Assurance
Peter Woods
Andrew Luckett
Richard Bakewell
Darren Kirby
Philip McDonnell
Jason Sampson

Manual Author
Kristian Ramsay-Jones

Managing Editor
Alkis Alkiviades

Packaging and Manual Design
John Emory
Joe Morel
Cesar Novoa
Sarah Warburton

Producer
Tim Roberts

Publishers
Paul Hibbard-Teall
Peter Moreland

Additional Credits (Amiga)

Programming
Scott Johnston
Steve Legg
Bob Koon

Graphics
Michael Baxter

Music
Matthew Simmonds

Additional Credits (Playstation)

Producer
Stuart Whyte

Quality Assurance
Darren Kirby
Craig Lear
Daniel Luton
Justin Manning
Philip McDonnell
Jason Sampson
Klaus Starke
Donald Witcombe

Programming Conversion
Graeme Ashton
Bob Koon

Additional Programming
Tim Cannell
Paul Dunning
Nick Thompson

Playstation Design Implementation
Andrew Williams

Additional Artwork
Drew Northcott
Martin Severn

Original Game Music Composition
John Broomhall

Original SFX Design
Andrew Parton

Playstation Music Conversion & Additional Music Composition
Allister Brimble

Audio Post Production
Matt Vowles

Audio Producer
John Broomhall

Publisher
Rob Davies

Packaging Design
Sarah Warburton

Manual Design & Layout
Sarah Kerr

Managing Editor
Alkis Alkiviades

Manual Writer & Editor
Rick Haslam

Brand Manager
Adrian Turner

Thanks To
Sheila Boutin
Valentina Britten
Marc Curtis
Gareth Davies
Steve Hickman
Laurie Sinnett
Scott K. Tsumura

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Some of the material in this article was adapted from Wikipedia's X-COM page.

See also

• Background -- a timeline of events in the X-COM story line and other connections to the "real world"