so like, am i the only person to beat X-COM?

[jpmeyer]

X-COM UFO Defense is my 2nd favorite video game (and in my opinion, the best computer game evar) and it's never left my hard drive since it came out like 10 years ago.  However, I honestly did not know until recently that X-COM UFO Defense is considered incredibly hard by most people (even the Wikipedia says so!) and that very few people that played it were able to beat it.  Is there anyone else here that is/was a fan of X-COM and either just could not beat it or was only able to beat it after an extreme amount of practice?

EDIT: If anyone wants to know, my favorite video game is Sakura Wars 3: Is Paris Burning?

[Machinus]

I played it in middle school. I did not beat it.

[TracerBullet]

I never beat it.  I got to the point where I was invading their secret bases, but couldn't capture the necessary general/commander/whatever he was before my comp asploded.


Yes, it was a DAMNED hard game.  Fun though.

[MadManiac21]

Oh god. That game was more impossible than Ninja Guiden.

Did you use real time play or Turn style?

[nataz]

holy fuck-tard batman,

other people play this game??

I played all of the versions, with my fav being the second one underwater (nades were redic in this one).

I did beat the last one, but that was like 8 years ago. I don't even remember what happend. I do remember it being unsatisfying.

I played "real time" and my friend played it though almost all turn based.
Really, I just used the pause button to play as if it was turn based, but faster.
the one thing I hated about turn based is how much TU it cost in the early levels to load amo, and throw nades.

the addition of vehicles was so sweet. I remember being really excited when I got my first real ships.

I would put this at my all time second fav game also, being beat out only by the jagged alliance series of turn based games. So good, and so fun.

How are you guys running it though? Neither me nor my firend can get them to run in Windows XP without some serious downfalls like no sound, speeded up gameplay, and random crashes. I wish I could play these games again.   

EDIT***

OMG, you can actualy DL the games on that site?! What is dosbox, i have to get it...
JP, if this works, I <3 you long time.

You
Have
No
Idea

[Buttons]

I played the game (I THINK) on PS1.

Yeah, I was like, 15 or something.  I LOVED that game, but it was INSANE hard.  I could never beat it.  At all.

[jpmeyer]

Oh god. That game was more impossible than Ninja Guiden.

Did you use real time play or Turn style?

The first two X-COMs were only turn-based.

holy fuck-tard batman,

other people play this game??

X-COM was actually a huge commercial (sold about 500,000 copies, which is a lot for a computer game since video games outsell computer games by like about 3x) and critical success (lots of GOTY awards and usually put near the top of "best game ever" lists), actually.

How are you guys running it though? Neither me nor my firend can get them to run in Windows XP without some serious downfalls like no sound, speeded up gameplay, and random crashes. I wish I could play these games again.   

EDIT***

OMG, you can actualy DL the games on that site?! What is dosbox, i have to get it...
JP, if this works, I <3 you long time.

You
Have
No
Idea

I have an old Win98 laptop that I use for a lot of my old games, but for the games that really want to run in DOS, I emulate DOS with Dosbox.  Dosbox is kinda tricky to get the hang of, but once you learn how to fine-tune it for your games, it's awesome.  You almost need to download the D-Fend frontend or else you may never figure out how to get the damn program to work, though.  That link also has links to other important emulators, like SCUMMVM for all of you old-school Lucasarts fans.

You can also try VDMSound as your emulator.  I've used that on my laptop to get the sound to work on older games.

I also picked up a second copy of X-COM by getting the Collector's Edition (which is made to run in Windows) for $1.87 at EB a few years ago.  That said, this probably isn't a good sign

[Machinus]

I've messed with VDMsound and a bunch of DOS emulators on XP to play older games. Some things work, but for the most part I can't recreate the sound and resolution as well as I would like. A lot of my worries will be over in February, however. I think I'm more excited about that than I am about any new PC game since HL2.

Also, this is kind of OT, but if anyone knows where I can get a copy of Z! (for any OS), I would really like to know.

[Klep]

That is truly an amazing thing Machinus.  I thank you for bringing it to my attention, and can't wait to buy it myself.  C&C:RA2 is my personal favorite RTS.

[Malhavoc]

I 've played the X-COM games long long ago.. so I don't remember their single names exactly (don't remember how MANY they were) .. however I've beaten all of them, EXCEPT the one where you have to fight below the sea.. those damn lobsters were really too much though! 

However, really a wonderful game! I just hated all those missions I was FORCED to do when I was just playing building weapons..  :lol:

[jpmeyer]

I 've played the X-COM games long long ago.. so I don't remember their single names exactly (don't remember how MANY they were) .. however I've beaten all of them, EXCEPT the one where you have to fight below the sea.. those damn lobsters were really too much though! 

However, really a wonderful game! I just hated all those missions I was FORCED to do when I was just playing building weapons..  :lol:

You know, I personally thought that X-COM Terror From the Deep was harder than UFO Defense, too.  The gameplay itself was not as hard (Microprose toned down the difficulty in terms of things like the aliens' stats and AI) but it had a lot of tricky missions (like the cruise ships) and difficult research paths (like how you were supposed to get psionics).

[Saucemaster]

A lot of my worries will be over in February, however.

Yeah, but dude, EA.  You know there will be unpatched problems with the game for the first two months at least.  It'll be at LEAST April before your worries are REALLY over.

/bitter BF2 addict

[nataz]

You know, I personally thought that X-COM Terror From the Deep was harder than UFO Defense, too.  The gameplay itself was not as hard (Microprose toned down the difficulty in terms of things like the aliens' stats and AI) but it had a lot of tricky missions (like the cruise ships) and difficult research paths (like how you were supposed to get psionics).

yea, complicated, but not really hard.
the nade problem, where you could basicly throw them as far as you wanted, made the early missions really easy. load up a guy with granades, pop him out with protection, and just start chucking them around the map.

In the later levels, I remember there being a bug where you could kind of phase though corner walls of certain ships. Also, the guided torp thing made life a little easier. 

[Eddie]

JP, you might be happy to know that there is a new UFO game: UFO Aftershock.

[jpmeyer]

Aftershock/Aftermath are more of those "spiritual successor" games where people from Microprose started new companies, right?  IIRC, Atari has the X-COM license and has retired it.

[Bram]

Oddly enough, I've played this. A friend of mine used to be addicted to this in highschool. It was the first PC game I ever saw. The graphics were ludicrous** compared what Commodore Amiga had to offer at that time. The game was pretty cool though.

**, OK, not ludicrous. Just not quite as good yet, either. This was in fact the first PC game that made me realise that the end was near for Amiga.

[Revvik]

I personally always thought Jagged Alliance 2 was a much better game, so although I OWN an X-Com game, I never did get to play it.  I should definitely take a look into it though, if it was this well-received.

[VegasJake]

Oddly enough, I've played this. A friend of mine used to be addicted to this in highschool. It was the first PC game I ever saw. The graphics were ludicrous** compared what Commodore Amiga had to offer at that time. The game was pretty cool though.

**, OK, not ludicrous. Just not quite as good yet, either. This was in fact the first PC game that made me realise that the end was near for Amiga.

Man, that brings back bittersweet memories...  I owned the mighty Amiga500 back in highschool.  Technically and pricewise it was lightyears ahead of anything else on the market, but Commodore just couldn't get their marketing together or something, so it languished and died.   

The thing had some amazing games too (Shadow of the Beast series, Turrican, Speedball, Drakkhen, ... *sigh*).

[Kowal]

I beat UFO Defense, TFTD, and Apoc.  IIRC, the first two didn't have the option of not being turn-based.

UFO Defense was the hardest of the three, and harder than most games.  Though, I think most people inflate how hard it is because the ending series of the game is pretty heavily reliant on how well you did in the beginning.   If you stay on top of things in the first half, the mars invasion is almost laughably easy.

[jpmeyer]

I beat UFO Defense, TFTD, and Apoc.  IIRC, the first two didn't have the option of not being turn-based.

UFO Defense was the hardest of the three, and harder than most games.  Though, I think most people inflate how hard it is because the ending series of the game is pretty heavily reliant on how well you did in the beginning.   If you stay on top of things in the first half, the mars invasion is almost laughably easy.

Along those lines, the easiest game of X-COM that I ever played was ironically on the hardest difficulty (which was also the only time that I've beaten on that level--every other time I get my base invaded almost instantly and lose since the weapons that I ordered sometimes hadn't even arrived yet).  It happened because the aliens get buffed up quite a bit at that level (it takes a few shots to kill even a Sectoid), which means that you need to use a lot of explosives in order to actually be able to kill anything until you get laser and plasma weapons.  During the terror site mission in the first month, I threw a grenade into a gas station where two Sectoids were.  On any other difficulty level, this would've killed both of them and then the exploding pumps would destroy their corpses, but on superhuman it only damaged them and then the smoke and fire from the burning pumps knocked them out.  Turns out that one was a navigator and one was a leader, so I had the hyper-wave decoder, psionics, and two alien interrogations by the time I was two months into the game.  Suffice to say, the second the first alien base got set up I was able to snag the commander and win instantly.

[Kowal]

The easiest I had was in Apoc, when I first tried realtime mode.  The pain in the ass for the other games was the patience required to actually bother sitting through each of the alien attacks and beating them back.  With real time, I could blow through battles in about 5 minutes with minimal losses and just keep on moving.  I could even afford to be careless and lose a sergeant here and there because the money would flow in so fast they were cake to replace.