With the exception of aliens, Julian Gollop’s strategy game, UFO: Enemy Unknown has absolutely no gameplay commonalities with Eugene Jarvis’s arcade side-scrolling magnum opus, Defender. The games both touch on a primal emotion however, defense against the unknown and fear itself. UFO: Enemy Unknown, or as most would eventually know it: X-Com: UFO Defense was the result of an iterative development process for Julian Gollop and his brother Nick, spanning a decade of prior work, and the game kicked off a cherished, though oft-mishandled franchise. Today we are going to journey through the history of the X-Com franchise, beginning with Julian Gollop’s earliest inspirations and works, through the original series, up to the War of the Chosen. Welcome to Arcadology: The History of XCOM.
