It’s 1999 and the earth is under attack by aliens. Fortunately there’s a United Nations funded defense force known as X-Com who are equipped to deal with the invaders. And fortunately for X-Com, you’re in charge. Defend your homeworld and beat back the aliens. Mulder and Scully only wish they had these sort of resources!

UFO was a a turn based strategy and tactics affair. The main game required you to take control of a squad of soldiers who would deal with crashed UFOs or, rather, UFOs that you’d shot down. As well as eliminating any aliens that survived the crash, capturing live specimens and retrieving any weapons or equipment was also prudent as they could be researched back at your base and reverse engineered to provide better weapons and gear for your team. Clever, huh?

The appeal of the game was the variety. Although the main part of the game required you to shoot down alien craft and clean up, there was also a fair probability that they would land at a terror site that you’d be required to defend (as well as save civilians). Do a good enough job and countries would give you more funding. Fuck up and countries were likely to withdraw their funding - funding that was necessary to carry out research and develop your base. Oh, and there was always a chance that the aliens would find your base and attack that, putting you on the defence.

UFO is a game that I’ve had in mind as being ripe for a film adaptation for quite a while. There have already been at least two novels directly written about the game, one in Russian. (In fact, I’m sitting here right now watching Torchwood, the Doctor Who spinoff, all about an agency that’s set up to protect the planet from alien invasion, acquire alien technology and use it to defend the earth. Hmmm… maybe I was a little slow off the mark. Then again, Gerry Anderson created the series ‘UFO’ back in 1970 about a secret organization that defends the planet against the aliens.) I’ve still got in mind. I’ve mentioned many times that I don’t think there’s been a decent alien invasion film for a long, long time.

X-Com was extremely popular. It spawned a couple of direct sequels, including the heavily Lovecraft influenced “Terror from the Deep”, which was as good, if not better (but as I never finished it, I didn’t choose it) and recently a series of inspired games have been released although so far, none of them have apparently quite achieved the same level and quality of gameplay as the original. It’s still a classic game and should be ranked up there with the best of them.