UFO

[NKF]

Ah, Syndicate Wars, still on a look out for a copy. Enjoyed that immensely.

 

I recall that you could have multiple players on one machine. i.e. one operated an agent with the mouse, one with the keyboard and another one with any joystick that was plugged in. Lots of fun, but the only problem was that all your agents had to follow the one the camera was tracking. They ought to have developed a split-screen thingy to track different agents in the same team.

 

Speaking of the original, I really enjoyed how your agents themselves were incredibly deadly weapons, even without guns. Just needed a couple of medikits and you could keep self destructing yourself for quite a bit...

 

- NKF

[ApOcaLyPSe_1985]

Lol, I thought they where dead after a self destruct. Or can you do that after you upgraded your bodyparts to V3 ?

[NeO_MArKOD]

Thats a interesting story... HI!, im mark from argentina!!... im 19 years old and y started to play UFO about 4 years ago... i find this game on an illegal argentinian BBS (sorry!) and really shoks me out... i been playing UFO since that day and never stop... i never will.

 

I wrote a novel and a script for a comic, but there's no good spanish sites of X-com, so i can't post them... sad story... i hope someday i'll make the comic for all the fans of X-com in the world...

 

Well, thats it... sorry about my english, but stinks...

 

BYE!

[NKF]

It's always nice to see more fans of the game. The best I ever did was a scribbly storyboard of an alternate ending for Apocalypse. Something about a bicycle and camera-4... um, nevermind.

 

And Apocalypse_1985, I think as long as you can self destruct and you've got an unused medikit on you, it'll do.

 

See, my agent had just self destructed and was running about on fire as... well, you get the idea. And it just so happened that I noticed that I had one more medikit that I hadn't used. So feeling silly, I clicked on it, and it worked. The soldier survived to fight another day... plus there were dozens of charred enemy agents lying about.

 

Fantastic what you can do with a bit of duct tape... What do they put in those kits? Extra C4?

 

 

Enough off-topic banter from me folks.

 

- NKF

[Crazy Photon]

Thats a interesting story... HI!, im mark from argentina!!... im 19 years old and y started to play UFO about 4 years ago... i find this game on an illegal argentinian BBS (sorry!) and really shoks me out... i been playing UFO since that day and never stop... i never will.

Cool! otro latinoamericano por estos lados :D

 

Yo soy Crazy Photon escribiendo de Montevideo, Uruguay

 

Bienvenido a los foros y no te preocupes tanto por el inglés, se entendió bastante bien

 

PS: Sorry guys, I just couldn't help writing a little in spanish

[Solfius]

I'm always amazed how well people from other countries can speak English, compared to how I can (or can't more often than not) speak theirs.

[NKF]

Heh, tell me about it. I was born and raised in a country where English is usually a second, or even a tertiary language.

 

Even though English is my primary language (or, really a mish-mash of British, American and 'Sing-lish') , I'm constantly amazed at how some people I meet have such a fantastic grasp of the language, even though it's their third language.

 

I think a line from an old Disney film says it best: "Why can't the English learn to speak English?" Or something along those lines.

 

It's a funny old world isn't it?

 

- NKF

[The Veteran]

[Crazy Photon]

[AcidBoot]

I never learnt any languages. Early in High School I took French. Well, more accurately i was given French, and not by choice. Ultimately I found it easier to give the teacher a mental breakdown than learn more than a few words. Funnily enough I now know more French than I ever learnt in school from watching films with subtitles.

 

On Topic:

Like all top notch games, I saw it on the shelf at the store, it looked OK so I bought it and loved it, and about a month or two later all the mags started going on about it.

I bought it about a week after it hit the shelves, which was quite some time before the US ever got it. Phew! How long has it been out for? I have played it through so many times!

 

I had a go for the first time in years just a few months back. Figuring I might be a bit rusty, I played on the second to easiest setting. Well that was silly! I'd only just started encountering Snakemen when I was getting ready to build my avenger and go to Cydonia.

[Bomb Bloke]

I can speak Japanese

 

But not in this font

[Ion Mage]

Heh, i'm (trying to) learn japanese

[Asmodai]

When I was like 14(18 now), my dad retired from the military and went to a vocational school to learn computers. Ever since then he's been the biggest comp nerd ever, and he buys every game he can find. He got me Apoc and I loved it. So one day I went over to his h00se and I was looking through all the games he had bought, and I saw UFO and TFTD, so I checked them 00t. I was used to Apoc and nobody dieing, so I ditched it for a while. Then I got Interceptor, and i got back into all the games.

[Orac]

My first encounter with the wonderful world of X-Com was the PC Gamer demo of X-Com: Terror From The Deep.  I was about 14 at the time.

I got introduced from that very exact same demo (PCgamer) of TFTD. Then the next week I went out and bought the floppy version of TFTD. Somehow I got sidetracked from it for awhile, then came back to it again.

 

Are you sure it was 11 years ago though? I could swear I was somewhere in my mid or early 20s when that demo came out and I'm only 29 (practically 30) now.

 

Anyway, I remember thinking how great TFTD was, then I later found out how great UFO was (sometimes I think how much better UFO is). I too liked how you could open doors in TFTD better though.

 

I never realized they didn't react to grenade tosses in TFTD. That doesn't really bother me all that much though. Actually what bothers me is how too many of the aliens in TFTD have insane reaction in general. It's like in TFTD if you have to attack at a door, you can almost count on that soldier dieing most of the time. Unless the alien is weak enough that your weapon will definitely kill it in one turn, and/or he's alone.

 

I also always hated those cruise liner missions in TFTD. They seems like they're just more to just put the hurt to you more than anything else if you should happen to try to actually complete them to the end. Seems like most people just touch down shoot up any nearby aliens, then get the hell out of there as to not take a huge penalty for no response. I can't say I blame players one bit for adopting that policy toward those missions. Those types of missions are just no fun. They're not even that rewarding. They feel more like they're just there to punish you and ruin the fun.

 

Those cruise liners remind me of back with Doom when you'd see those maps that new designers would make that were no fun. Like where they'd go overboard with making them difficult (i.e. put the player in a square room with 20 cyberdemons and no cover). You'd pretty much load up those maps and play for like 10 second and figure that it was pretty stupid and pointless and delete the terrible map immediately. You'd also ask yourself, why they expect anyone to play such a map. That's how those cruise liner missions are in my opinion - what's the point of having them? They detract from the the game for mere novelty.

 

I can forgive the developers though, because afterall they made UFO defense. They're obviously excellent game developers. So what if they made a few mistakes in TFTD.

 

Don't get me wrong though, I like TFTD. It's just there was a few things about it that just weren't right. Probably not the developer's fault. I always got the feeling they were rushed to releasing it before they wanted to. They probably wanted to polish and refine it more, but it just wasn't an option.

 

I definitely never regretted ever buying TFTD. They more than earned that money between UFO and it. If anything, in hindsight, I wish I would've bought more of their games so they'd still be developing games today.

 

UFO beats the crap out any game that even comes out to this day. Maybe they have prettier graphics, but they don't have anything remotely close to xcom where it counts - gameplay and the ability to hold your interest for what seems like forever. Xcom is so good that even in this day and age, I don't feel the antiquated VGA graphics detract from it in anyway. They feel totally adequate since the game plays so well. I guess I don't even notice that the graphics are considered antiquated.

[usmarox]

My first experience with UFO was the coverdisk on the April '94 copy of PC Gamer (the UK one). IIRC, it was a snakeman terror site. Went and bought it, played it to death (I did actually kill my first disk set, I installed it so many times ). Saw the TFTD demo in April '95, bought it, immediately had my first 24hr gaming marathon, and then sat around twiddling my thumbs until Apoc came out (I had Apoc on preorder for about 9 months )

So I've been doing the XCom thing continuously since I was 13, all those years ago (I'm now an old man....turned 21 in september )

[Tansy]

I bought UFO defense when it first came out because I really liked Microprose games. I loved the game but found it really hard to get started. I bought TFTD as soon as it came out, but was frustrated trying to play it, because it was so dark on my monitor. About a year ago, my husband and I saw the collectors edition in a bargain bin. Since it was redone for windows we purchased it, even though I still had my DOS games. It then sat on our shelves until I was looking for something to replay. I installed UFO defense and as soon as the music started playing, my husband grabbed the CD and installed it on his computer, too. Now we are both playing it again.

 

I am looking forward to trying TFTD and Apoc, too. I was really surprised to see that there were up to date forums and websites for the series.

 

Judy

[The Demi-Godly One]

About the languages, it's hard to speak any language well. (duh!)

But with most languages you can only speak it well, while with English it's easy

to speak it badly with no one caring.

[Ego Terrorist]

How did I discover UFO?

 

I came across Interceptor at a mates house, then one day I came across a demo of UFO and TFTD and I liked 'em.

 

Then it all happened I was walking around PC World and came across Collectors Edition in the bargin bin and I decided to buy it and it oly set me back £5 which was well ace as I got all of the X-Com games (UFO, TFTD, Interceptor, Apoc and Email!!) I played and play Apoc and then decided to try UFO and I fell in love!

[Blade]

Wow, you're all so young!

 

I'm a big fan of Julian and Nicks games (especially Lasersquad) and bought UFO the day it was released.

[PvT Emil Thorsell]

I first discovered X-COM when i was 7 years old (im 15 now)my friends brothers brought home a game that they started playing instantly on their 486. At first i didnt pay much antention to it, but my friend got hooked, or to say, his brothers, it was they who played, and we minors sat around the screen watching breathlesly when his brother assaulted the big battleship or killin some chryssalids on a terror mission. Boy was i scared of going home in the dark after sitting watching his brothers play. It wasnt untill i was about 8 years old that i and my friend in secret started to play the forbidden game (his brothers had said that we was not to touch the computer) X-COM. After awhile even we little kids got acces to the computer when we got to the age of 10. We had by then tired of playing X-COM cuz we couldnt kill all the brain and finish the game. It wasnt until i was 14 that i saw the game in a bargain bin with games that i bought it. I remembered the nights of watching X-COM, and i got a strong feeling of havin to play the game again. At the time we had an old computer with win 95 on it so i could play the game. But we bought a new computer as a birthday gift to me, and the old comp was thrown away without asking me about it. So here i am with a new comp that has Windows xp ( u cant play X-COM on win xp, win xp has no DOS) and no way to play the superb game, is there any1 out there who can tell me how i can play X-COM on win xp? Thx for your time.

[DragonHawk]

I think I played them out of order...

 

I acquired TFTD... back then, I was looking for "cool strategy games". I was looking at games like Dune II, games that required some thinking and organizational skills.

 

TFTD came along, I copied it to check it out. Impressive... The next copy that I saw in the stores went into my grubby little paws.

 

After that, I kept looking for the first one... never saw it in a store though. Bought Apoc, and that was fun, but still no UFO.

 

Finally, down in the states, two years later, I bought that pack that included UFO, TFTD, Master of Orion, and Master of Magic. Success.

[Ki-tat Chung]

go check the offtopic forums if you want to know about me. can't be bumed to retype.

[mirage]

I had just bought my first playstation, and my best friend and I were way into renting games.

 

we saw x-com and thought a strategy game would be cool, but we didn't grasp the whole time units and fog of war deal at first and it sat on the floor for a few days. we worked together, and completed a mission. we rented the game for 3 months before actually buying it. we took turns on missions, had our own bases and teams. with no instuction booklet we sort of made up names for everything

 

small scout = chiklet (the square 5 cent gum)

meduim scout = cross

abductor=big mac

harvester=whopper

sectoid= greys

silacoid=cruton (it's crunchy and rhymes with muton)

celatoid=kidney bean

ehterial base= massacre

reaper= Bjorn (my dog's name)

 

I prefer the sony version, but you have to save the game a lot because itfreezes sometimes. usually on battleship missions.

 

eventually 4 of us would get together and take turns on missions.. but it took a while for my best friend and I to teach others how to play and we refuse to do it anymore.. we had a lot of fun figureing it out, it's better that way. man.. our girlfriends hated it when we played.. there was only one gril that liked to watch.

[Tammy]

Yeah, us X-COM girls are hard to find.

[NKF]

If only there were more... *sigh*

 

I mean, the more people the merrier, hey?

 

- NKF