Info (Alliance)

Earlier in 2001, the Unreal-powered X-COM: Alliance was officially cancelled. The game was originally concieved in the mid 90s at the Microprose UK (Chipping Sodbury) studio. However, in late 1998/early 1999, after internal studio problems, the project was moved to the Microprose Hunt Valley studio, located in Maryland, United States. The game was reworked, and the development really started to look impressive, winning acclaim from many gaming websites. However, in April/May of 2000, development came to a crashing halt. The exact nature of what happened isn't totally known, but it is believed that a key team member (possibly Lead Programmer) left the studio. It's not known whether the person was sacked or quit. The loss of this member caused issues with development, leading to Hasbro Interactive stopping the project and asking the X-COM: Alliance team to create X-COM: Enforcer.

Early in 2001, the public relations manager of Infogrames UK announced that the game had been cancelled (basically because of it's development history). The public relations at a previously owned Microprose/Hasbro studio claimed it wasn't cancelled (and still presumabely do), but seeing as the person who claims it is, is a public relations manager, at the main Infogrames UK studio, then there's obviously been lack of communication between studios, and the game is officially cancelled.

Anyhow, here's what the game was going to be. This is the biggest X-COM: Alliance 'preview' (memorial?) on the internet. XCommand was the first X-COM fansite to acknowledge X-COM: Alliance's existance, and I (Byron) was the first person in the X-COM community to discover it's existance. A long time ago (1998?) I typed 'X-COM 5' into a Lycos search, and across across a stocks/shares forum which mentioned an Unreal powered X-COM game, called X-COM: Alliance. It was a very cool moment to come across a game previously unknown about! =)

Here's an excerpt from a press release about X-COM: Alliance.

"The year is 2062. X-COM is returning to the ruins of the alien invasion base at Cydonia on Mars. Their mission: to search for any technology overlooked at the end of the first alien war fought in UFO: Enemy Unknown. As X-COM reaches orbit around Mars, an abandoned dimension gate flings them 60 light-years from Earth into the middle of a war between X-COM's original foes and a race called the Ascidians. Attempting to return home, X-COM allies join with the Ascidians to defeat the alien threat.

X-COM Alliance is a first-person point-of-view action game that plunges the player into the X-COM universe to take on the alien threat. The explosive battles take place on numerous unique 3-D worlds in a 15-mission fight to kill the aliens and find your way back to Earth. Utilizing a new and exciting view of combat, in which you can also see the first-person view of up to four troopers in your X-COM strike team, the player commands an X-COM squad as they fight their way to the enemies' home world to prevent the decimation of their allies, the Ascidians. On board the X-COM ship, the Patton, the player controls the resources scavenged from the alien craft during combat missions, handpicking squads and arming them with the latest technology researched from both alien and human technologies."