Find of the Week (12/9/12 - 12/15/12)

X-Com: UFO Defense (PSX)

Value: $70 on eBay for incomplete copy

Actual Cost: $5

This find is what prompted me to document my great finds. This one was found at my favorite local flea market. My buddy Benny was playing my copy of XCOM: Enemy Unknown for the Playstation 3 (great game, by the way) and made casual mention that they had the Playstation port of the original at some game store he visited recently. After bugging him for more details, he remembered it was at a video game booth at the flea market, hidden away in a stack of games in generic paper sleeves.

It was a Sunday, and the flea market wouldn't be open again until Wednesday. I waited, a bit nervously, I admit, and drove there the first moment I could. We found the game right away. It was much to my surprise that the game was priced at $5! Normally this booth eBay checks games it knows to be rare. Luckily this Playstation gem slipped through the cracks.

My copy is incomplete, unfortunately, but I'm so elated that I don't even mind. The original X-Com: UFO Defense ranks in my top 10 games of all time (right behind it's sequel, Terror From the Deep, actually). I had kind of resigned myself to the thought of never being able to play. I surely wasn't about to pay $70 for a port of a game I could play on the PC for free. Still, it's one of my favorites, so I am elated to now own it for the Playstation.

How does the port hold up? It's pretty awesome. It's not quite as fast as playing in DOSBox. It has load times when going to the battlescape screens. The controls are quite clunky at first. It uses up one whole memory card. But, the gameplay is all there. The loading times encourage me to play "ironman"style with no reloads to try and avoid losing fallen soldiers. The controls get easier over time. I have all my Playstation saves backed up onto my PS2 hard drive. It even exceeds the original in one area, the soundtrack. Overall, it's quite awesome.

I am playing on Genius difficulty, and it's quite brutal in the early stages of the game. I may have to go back down to Veteran difficulty, because I can't beat the first month's terror mission for the life of me. That's something I don't want to do. I'll probably stick through with it for a few more tries. I want this to be a hardcore experience.

Surely, that's only fitting for a hardcore game find!