I've been playing X-COM games for ten years now, and I still can't get enough. I even showed my friends how to play the games, the hard way. When I teach X-COM tactics, it feels like boot camp. Suit up! because you're in for one hell of a ride!

Those who don't play these games cannot understand how deeply this game genre affects us. Strategy, cunning, instinct, even reflexes are affected. I'm the kind of person that really sinks in a movie, and X-COM is even worse... it feel real to me. I know it's only a game, however it becomes real in my head.

Throughout this website, I mentioned on several occasions the expression " X-COM syndrome ". Basically, it's the strategy X-COM games that can affect us in this way. Whenever I speak of the strategy games, I speak of UFO: Enemy unknown, Terror from the Deep, Apocalypse, and the newcomer UFO: Aftermath . What are the symptoms?

The first symptom is the most noticeable: you cannot stop . It's like having a LAN party, but you're the only one participating (Unless you have friends sleeping over waiting for their turn). You also eat while you play (or you eat as fast as you can to return to your computer), you bring a pitcher of water or your favorite drink to make sure you don't have to get up, and you go to sleep when the sun's about to rise. You get so much into the game, and you know that it's not real, but in your mind, it is . You know how to make the difference between the two worlds, however most X-COM fans have a penchant for blending them together. Being assigned a serious role in a game, in a scenario that is highly probable, is not that far fetched. Personally I believe that X-COM becomes a fantasy, almost utopic, and even being able to live it as a simple soldier or seamen is an offer we simply cannot refuse. There is no end to it. Even if you stopped playing, there's always something that will make you recall X-COM. You think of it sometimes at night before going to sleep, and you certainly dream about it... that's what the syndrome is all about...

Another symptom is that everything becomes serious. You don't want to be disturbed when you play, and you are so concentrated that you jump out of your chair when someone talks to you (because you don't hear them coming into the room). Loosing men doesn't leave you indifferent, because you become attached to them. An X-COM tradition that has been honored since it's beginnings 10 years ago is to rename soldiers to bear name of friends, family members, and close ones. I cannot say if this last statement is true in majority, but I can tell you that all the people that I know that plays does it. That way you become even more attached to the game, because now killing aliens becomes personal.

A true X-COM fan always imagine (or wishes) that the new sci-fi movie is about X-COM. Seriously, when is it going to happen? I mean we've seen Wing Commander, and Resident Evil and tons of other movies based on computer games. Movie producers are starting to admit that they cannot ignore the gaming industry. I've heard a producer state that either they look into producing a game with their movies (Like "Terminator 3:Rise of the Machines" or "The Matrix"; just to name a few), or simply make a movie based from an existing game.

If producers are looking for a franchise that had success to make a movie out of it, why not X-COM? Correct me if I'm wrong, but X-COM 1, 2 & 3 were best strategy games of 1993, 1995, and 1997. The reason why the licence is forgotten in the bottom of a drawer? The answer to that one is simple... bad marketing. And on top of that, it didn't help to have a company sold to another company that got sold to another company that have themselves been bought by another one. Following me so far? Well, that explains it. (see Game development history)

Now the owners of the X-COM licence is Atari Inc. Personally, I've seen great games coming out of their studios lately, and If I had to put my money now, I'd place my bet on them. If someone will bring out X-COM from grandma's dusty closet , it's them. Hell, they made a series out of Stargate, and it rocked! so why not X-COM?

One thing is for sure, is that X-COM is NOT dead. Out there are hardcore fans that are spending hours and hours working on their own version of the game. Here we don't call this "Nirvana", we call it "Genesis" . Genesis was a project led by Dave Ellis, lead programmer for X-COM games back at MicroProse (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA). He had the ingenious idea to peep into the forums and ask what the fans wanted. He got his answer real quick, let me tell you that. I remember being in College at the library to surf Rakki's Apocalypse forums. Those were the good old X-COM days...

Whatever we say about X-COM, it always comes back to the same: it's a classic. It doesn't matter if the graphics are old, and that the game crashes from time to time because it wasn't meant for today's computers, people still want to play it. I get emails from fans asking for help on where to find the games and how to run them on a recent computer. Others want to put their skills to the task and try to recreate a similar version of the series, and without doubt this keeps everything in gear. There was a lot of deception when we all saw that game developers weren't able to produce another X-COM game, even if there were on the level as the fans. So now we take manners in our own hands.

That only reinforces my beliefs that X-COM is not dead and that it's not about to fade away anytime soon. Somehow, as life will go on, people will still buy new games but will look back, remembering the saga of X-COM and say:

Those were the good ol' days.

-Arky