While at Maker Faire this last weekend, I got into a conversation with a couple of other geek dads who tracked me down to talk about LEGO robotics. As we stood in a food line, we discussed our hobbies, our kids (all three of us were sans children at the event), and growing up geek. The talk ended with us discussing our various gaming backgrounds as kids, specifically early video games and computer games. I wrote last week about my renewed interest in the Infocom games and we all enjoyed sharing our favorite moments from some of those great text-adventure games. (Apologies to Tyler for spoiling the ending of Infidel… I can’t believe I griped about it without checking to make certain they’d played it.)
After we all had written down some games we’d missed and would be checking out, Sam mentioned X-Com. All three of us yelled so loudly that we got funny looks from the other families enjoying their lunch around us. Who knew a 20+ year old game would still have such an effect on three grown men?
If you’ve played X-Com, then you likely know the draw to it and can understand. If you’ve heard of X-Com but never played it, you’ve likely heard a dozen or more arguments why you should go hunt it down and play. And if you’ve never heard of X-Com, I wish I could trade places with you and enjoy the game again as a completely new and unaware player.
X-Com doesn’t have the modern day graphics as you can see from the included screenshots. It’s turn-based, too — meaning that in combat game mode you specify the actions you wish to take (or more accurately, that you wish for your soldiers to take) and then after the characters have moved, fired their weapons, ducked behind cover, or lost their minds… well, then it’s the aliens’ turn.