How Old Were You?

[Danial]

I was just wondering how old everyone was back in 1993/1994 when UFO/X-COM came out?

 

I remember it distinctly. I was 14 and in Grade 10. I'd just gotten my first computer and a friend gave me the game to install... Ahh, the memories

[Ruivo]

Quite some time ago.. 486 DX100.. 32mb of ram, no "multimedia set". A cousin gave a set of 4 diskettes i think to my brother, and i used to watch him play it.

 

Think i was 8, or 9 years old when i started playing.. don't remeber

 

I remember asking him to make it so i could use a Firestorm as troop carrier.. hehe, he fooled me and played the game when it was my turn to play.

Edited October 25, 2007 by Ruivo

[NRN_R_Sumo1]

I was 3/4 and only played the first xcom at 16 or 17 xD!

[RwwT]

I was about ten. Had a DELL 386 and tried to load it up. Finally realized I only had 2 mb memory and the game required 4, man I was pissed. My dad took me to costco or Price Club then, where I got 2 more for about 100 bucks. My grass cutting money that I had saved. Ah...the young days.

[JimmyMoon]

Eleven.

 

I had the Amiga version.I was fairly useless at it.

 

Now, thirteen years later, I'm only mildly useless. There's progress for ya.

[imperialus]

I was 12. Living in Argentina at the time we had come back to Canada for Christmas. One of my friends showed me this "really cool game". The next day I managed to convince my dad that it was what I really really wanted for Christmas. The rest as they say, is history.

[[stewart]]

well . . . I was younger anyway.

[RustedSoul]

careful stewart, we almost found out your age

[MeanpantheR]

I was 3 or 4

 

can't remember the exact year I started to play but it was one of my first games I was playing

[tachyon]

It must have been out for about a year when I got to first play it. It was burnt, and my freind made me a sheet of the most likely to use number/word combinations. Between xcom and Quake (the orgiginal), I had to quit school.

[Kratos]

When I was 8-10? I really don't remember.

[carlgta]

i think i was 12. even today this is the best strategic pc game i ever played. thank you for this game. brings back memories.

[Craniorp]

I had 3 years and only a year later, i got my first computer, a Pentium 100MHz, 16MB RAM, 1x CD-Rom.

[Steelion]

I would have been 3 or 4. I do remember watching my dad play it, though. I don't remember if I ever saw him win, though.

[mattrat]

I was fourteen years younger than I am now. I bought my first version at a store-- can't remember the name-- in Milford Haven, Wales. Played it and have been playing ever since.

[Chris StarShade]

I was about the ripe old age of 10 when X-COM came out. Played it at a friend's place. Ahh the alien deathscreams...

[Sgt. Thematic]

16? I read a review in a magazine. Then about 2 years later I got a box with the CD. I haven't started very many games, but I have tried to win some desperate missions (or just win them with an excellent rating) by reloading the start of the mission. Edited July 22, 2008 by Sgt. Thematic

[Sorrow]

I was 10 then. I didn't have PC, so I played it for the first time when I was 15.

[Zombie]

You guys make me feel so old sometimes.

 

I was 22 when the game came out, but didn't play it till the following year when a college friend loaned me a bunch of his games for the Playstation. Let's just say that there were a few days (non-stop, day and night) of my college career which disappeared into thin air. Luckily I still managed to pass that semester. Then I had to go without X-COM for a year until I finally found a used PSX copy at (I think) Electronics Boutique for only $5 USD. The clerk working the desk mentioned that the price was that low because it wasn't a very popular game. Little did he realize...

 

- Zombie

[[stewart]]

22? Punk.

[VPR]

I was 11 when ufo came out but I didn't pick the games up until they were out on budget titles, which was probably a year or so later.

[sixtysix]

When it came out...ummm I suppose I was 24 or so. When did I hear about it? In 2006. Yeah yeah I know. Gimmie a break! It was pre installed on an old used computer I bought at a yard sale. Best $10 I've ever spent! I don't think the computer could run much more really...but honestly who cares?

 

When the game came out my second daughter was turning two, with my twins well on their way. Little time for the finer things in life (aka gaming ) when you have four beautiful girls to support. Now that the wee one's are old enough that they want to be left alone (I love em to pieces but it's nice to have some me time) I've been able to regress and do all the stuff my friends were doing 15 years ago. Hahaha.

 

I always wondered why my father spent so much time working on his truck. Now I think I understand what he was really doing. Just having some "me" time. ROFL

 

I gotta say though ,this game far surpasses anything that they've produced in all the time since then. Goes to show...substance trumps style every time.

[uncy]

I was 10, and my mother let me play it everyday only because was in english (best school EVER), and I used to lecture her about UFOs and Sectoids... heh... This game is, and it will remain, the game of my life...

[Mikkel]

In 1993 I was 17 years old. Played on my friends PC and later on my first PC 486 ...hehe

[Nightkin]

In 1994 when I played the game the first time on my Amiga 600 I was 11.

It was when X-Files scared the heck outa me and then this game...

The atmosphere in the game was nearly the same. I remember me ducking in front of my monitor whenever a shoot was fired out of nowhere ROFL

[Sectoid Medic]

My first post..

I was 6 years old. Didn't understand all that much about the game, especially since English is not my native language

[uncy]

I got it when I was 10, and it was my only excuse my mother will allow me to use the computer during the week, I told her I was learning english and I did. I kind of thank X-Com for that, I got to go to the US for 1 year, and afterthat, I can't stop living in different countries, cultures and languages.

 

X-Com marked my life.

 

ups, I already posted that I was around 10... :S

Edited January 13, 2009 by uncy

[Snakeman]

I'm old like Zombie. I was 23 or 24, something like that. My recollection of the year 1994 was that it was dominated by X-COM and X-Wing for myself. Perhaps a little of the older Sim City thrown in for good measure. I forget when games like Lightspeed/Hyperspeed, Wing Commander came out etc., but those would be the sort of games in my rotation at the time. I certainly know for sure I gave X-COM an inordinate amount of attention.

[Andy]

I actually got TFTD first, around 16-17 years of age. Friend should me the game play, so I tried it out. I remembered my first encounter with lobsterman. A lobsterman walked up to my aqua-jet coelacanth, pinched it. My aqua-jet then reaction-fired, only to kill itself from the splash damage.

 

I've only played Enemy unknown a few years back. I wanted to check out each game in the xcom series. Xcom 1 is somewhat easier than 2, but it has more reaction fire-happy units. I don't like how they name the tech tho, it's so ambigious (like alien alloy, alien grenade, alien food).

 

Xcom has remained a large part of my life and will continue to do so. Now I just hope TakeTwo would just come out with a sequel already!!!

[Epsilon]

It was released litterally a couple of days before my 10 year birthday, where I got the Amiga AGA version as a present, apparently because my parents thought it was like X-Files, seeing as it had aliens. I loved it so much that a couple of weeks later I had completed it and continued on a harder difficulty.

So yeah, most of my free time back then was spent on the UFO games and looking forward to the next episode of X-Files.

Hi btw, just found these forums

[johnb10000]

I was in my thirties and I bought this game when it first came out. Then I played TFTD as soon as it was available. The next two versions of the game I didn't like as much.

 

I started playing computer games when I was in college in the 1970's.

 

There is a website called www.gog.com and they sell old DOS game. They had a survey to see what games people want added and they got about 300 votes for XCOM.

[EtherImp]

I was 13/14. My gamer friend introduced me to it and I promptly got a copy... I won't say how.

[MrMoe]

I was around 10 years old as I played it my first time at my uncles amiga. Alien bases were totally bugged and the Chryssalids frightened me to death **

[oldfan]

  Snakeman said:

I'm old like Zombie. I was 23 or 24, something like that. My recollection of the year 1994 was that it was dominated by X-COM and X-Wing for myself. Perhaps a little of the older Sim City thrown in for good measure. I forget when games like Lightspeed/Hyperspeed, Wing Commander came out etc., but those would be the sort of games in my rotation at the time. I certainly know for sure I gave X-COM an inordinate amount of attention.

That is such a relief to know that some people were older than me (I was 15 or 16). Now I'm 32 and playing this game and enjoy every minute of it. I also can turn into a zombie at times, especially on the weekend playing well into the small hours of the night. Sometimes I feel like maybe I should stop playing video games and "get a life". But then again, I enjoy this game so much. Lucky I don't have a girlfriend now otherwise she give me heck or dump me. ROFL

[Rodlen]

I wasn't even alive at the time, so...-2 years old. I started playing at maybe the age of 5 or 6 (had old computer in my room, with floppy drive). That was about the age when I also played the original Wing Commander and quite a few games in the Ultima series.

[jaakes]

I guess I was around 8 or 9 when my cousin introduced me to UFO:EU. I remember it was very, very slow on a A600. Later when I had a PC I bought apocalypse, which was good but not as great. 90's really had the best scifi, space and alien stuff. Wing commander and XCOM games along with X-Files and Babylon 5 on TV, yay.

 

EDIT: Wow, I can't believe I haven't posted here before.

Edited January 19, 2010 by jaakes

[MiniMacker]

When X-com Enemy Unknown came out, I was about 1 year old.

 

Fifteen years ago. That is a long time.

 

 

I think I first played it when I was nine or possibly ten. I didn't know shuckeroonies was going on and I just liked to put up a base on Hawaii and shoot down UFOs on the geoscape. I hated tactical missions; mainly because I lost every soldier I had.

[Pugsley]

I remember getting X-com when I was around 13 or 14.. I can't pin point the exact age. Spent many many hours playing it in my youth. Good times! Still haven't actually finished the game however... haha.

[Marcling]

I wasn't born... -13 years old?

[Zombie]

  Marcling said:

I wasn't born... -13 years old?

Really? Unless my math is totally wrong, that puts your current age at 3. (1994+13=2007, 2010-2007=3).

 

- Zombie

[Marcling]

oh, i meant -3 Edited February 9, 2010 by Marcling

[BladeFireLight]

I came across it at a software rental store (back when they were legal) I think I was 19.

 

My best friend picked it up as I was broke. After renting it like 10 times he bought it. Lucky him. I shelled out for TFTD when it came out a few months latter. We must have spent every morning after work at his house playing for 10 hours getting 2 hours of sleep and then going back to a 12 hour night shift at work.

 

-Blade FireLight

[LouisdeFuines]

I bought the game, right from the publishing of it, that means in 1994. I have been 15 years old at that time.

[kzsoci]

Hi

 

I was 8/9 years old, and I totally remember reading about both games in computer gaming magazines as they came out, and I thought that they were very cool; the article about tftd was especially nice, because it didn't describe the game itself (stuff about geoscape/battlescape etc. - because it is almost the same as the first part), but it gave lots of tips, hints, tricks that made me think how cool was this game's atmosphere. Unfortunately, I think I don't have those articles anymore.

 

A couple of years later, I tried them out. They were kind of hard for me as about 10/11 years old (I don't know if kids can play computer games better nowadays), and a bit scary, but I liked both of them very much. So do I even today.

Edited November 24, 2010 by kzsoci

[hereticus]

I was 13 at the time when I got it for Amiga 600. I remember getting a blister on my thumb from swapping the floppies back and forth.Than around 1999 I bought used copy of the game for PSX and have been playing this game ever since constantly. Love it to death and as I grew up the game grew with me.

[OSH]

I was 14. But I've started playing UFO when I was 17, on my first Amiga - CD32. Edited November 5, 2012 by OSH

[3llense'g]

I was about 9 when it came out, but I'm pretty sure we only played it much later, as our version was in Hungarian (thx to Schulti).