AmiXcom gives classic Amiga owners a new way to play X-COM series

X-COM and the Amiga aren’t exactly strangers, but AmiXcom is doing something a little different. Instead of recreating the original game from scratch, it brings OpenXcom to classic Amiga hardware and gives long-time players another way to experience one of the best known strategy games of the 1990s. The project is still in alpha, but it’s already well beyond the stage of simply showing a title screen. Players can reach the Geoscape, manage bases, prepare missions and take soldiers into turn-based battles. That’s a decent amount of game already.

What AmiXcom actually is

AmiXcom is an Amiga version of OpenXcom. OpenXcom is an open-source recreation of the engine used by the early X-COM games. It doesn’t include the commercial game files, so players still need data from an original copy.

AmiXcom currently supports UFO: Enemy Unknown, X-COM: UFO Defense, as well as X-COM: Terror from the Deep. The idea is fairly simple. Take OpenXcom, adapt it to AmigaOS 3.x and make it usable on suitably expanded classic Amiga systems. In practice, that has meant quite a lot of work.

A quick look back at X-COM

UFO: Enemy Unknown arrived in 1994 and was developed by Mythos Games and published by MicroProse. Its mix of strategy and tactical combat made it stand out. One moment you’re looking at the whole planet, building bases, funding research and sending aircraft after unidentified flying objects. The next, you’re controlling a squad of soldiers inside a farmhouse, warehouse or alien craft.

The tactical battles are turn-based and often unforgiving. Soldiers have limited movement, enemies can appear without warning and seemingly simple missions can go wrong very quickly. That unpredictability became one of the game’s defining features.

Terror from the Deep followed in 1995. It kept much of the same structure but moved the alien threat underwater, bringing new enemies, weapons and mission locations. OpenXcom later made both games easier to run on modern computers while keeping their original rules and structure largely intact. AmiXcom now takes that same idea back onto Amiga hardware.

Making it feel playable

The biggest challenge hasn’t simply been getting the game running. It’s been getting it running at a speed people can actually use. Early versions could slow down heavily on the Geoscape, especially when displaying the rotating globe. Later releases improved that considerably, making the strategic part of the game much smoother.

Battles have also received plenty of attention. At one stage, even moving a soldier could involve a noticeable delay. That has been reduced dramatically, so tactical missions now respond much more like you’d expect from a turn-based game. Saving and loading have improved too.

Earlier builds could take close to a minute to save a battle and even longer to load one. Version 0.5.0 cuts those waits by a large margin. You may still notice pauses, but the difference between the earlier builds and the current release is significant.

You’ll need more than a standard Amiga

AmiXcom isn’t intended for an untouched A1200 sitting under a television. The current version needs an AGA Amiga with a 68020 processor or better, Kickstart 3.0 or later and a healthy amount of Fast RAM.

Memory is the biggest requirement. The game currently uses around 50 MB, so you’ll need a well-expanded machine or an emulator configured with enough memory. Most testing so far has been done with WinUAE, although the project is designed with real Amiga hardware in mind as well. The standard AGA version runs at 320 x 200 in 256 colours. There’s also an RTG version, although that side of the project still needs more testing.

It’s still an alpha

AmiXcom isn’t finished, and version 0.5.0 doesn’t pretend otherwise. Music isn’t working yet. Keyboard text entry still has problems. Loading can take some time, and some save-game information isn’t displayed properly. The RTG version also needs more testing.

Most importantly, a complete campaign hasn’t yet been confirmed from the opening stages right through to the ending. So anyone trying AmiXcom now should expect rough edges.

Where AmiXcom stands now

Even with those limitations, AmiXcom has reached an interesting point. The main strategic game is there. Base management works. Players can prepare missions, send out squads and fight through Battlescape encounters. Both UFO: Enemy Unknown and Terror from the Deep are supported.

That’s enough to show what the project is aiming for without needing to imagine the rest. AmiXcom 0.5.0 remains an alpha release, but it’s already a working Amiga version of OpenXcom rather than a simple technical experiment.

The next improvements are likely to matter more to everyday play than headline features. Faster loading, better input, working music, lower memory use and wider hardware testing would all make the experience more complete.

For now, AmiXcom offers a straightforward proposition: OpenXcom running on classic Amiga hardware, with enough of the original X-COM experience already in place to make the project worth following.