Nostalgia: X-COM

Sometimes there are great things. Then there are awesome things. Worse still are the things that can only be revisited in memory. Though its better to recall these things rather than never knowing them, these artifacts of personality are something that I tend to dwell on during idle moments. I would imagine anyone does.

X-COM is the subject of some of those such memories. It occupied a great deal of my youth for a time before my attention wandered elsewhere.

This game holds a place with my memory as accompanying me during the first time I stayed up late... real late... around 1am in the morning or so. I was babysitting my siblings then while my parents were out. I was barely 13. I was home. Alone. Late in the bleak midnight hours fighting aliens in the dark.

I was scared for many reasons out side the game. The ephemeral quality of being awake during what would seem a forbidden time of night alone would be enchanting with a terrible quality. But being alone to face the terrors lurking in the shadows made it that much worse.
So I ordered my brave little soldiers, many of which I was attached to somewhat -going so far as to name one of my more potent soldiers "Ripley"- to explore the depthless unknown. It was almost certainly ordering them to their death. It often was. And in turn it further changed the darkness around me into a perceptively real threat.
The unknown presented a real danger to Ripley and them, and thus for me, for death laid just outside of their line of sight.

I didn't want them to die. But they did. The weak willed, those bastards, even ran from their duties. But the bravery of the few of my little heroes that stood against the turning of the inevitable night always stuck with me. In this dark hour, Ripley and her squad did not waver.

And so I didn't.