French – English
The MO5.COM association has the great pleasure of announcing that Julian Gollop, creator of X-COM, has just joined the association as an honorary member.
He considers our initiative necessary and welcome, and offers us his support by agreeing to become an honorary member of the association. There is no doubt that the support of such a personality from the world of video games will help us to make ourselves known and develop.
Born in India but raised in the UK, Julian Gollop was fascinated by board games as a teenager, and saw computers as a way to hide the rules that were too complicated for a tabletop game. At the age of eighteen, he created his first video game, Time Lords (1983) on BBC Micro. He then moved to ZX Spectrum for the turn-based tactical strategy games Rebelstar Raiders (1984) and Chaos: The Battle of Wizards (1985), the latter being published by Games Workshop and based on his own 1982 board game. In 1988, Julian Gollop founded Target Games – later known as Mythos Games – and released Rebelstar II, then developed this concept with Laser Squad (1988) which itself set the bases of the future X-COM: UFO Defense (1994). The latter was almost canceled twice during its long-term development, but nevertheless proved to be a commercial success upon its release and is still considered today as one of the best PC games ever created. Among the numerous sequels and variations of the franchise, Julian Gollop only designed the third episode, X-COM: Apocalypse (1997), which unfortunately did not live up to its ambitious initial concept. Julian and his brother Nick tried unsuccessfully to create a remake in 2001 which caused the bankruptcy of Mythos Games, although the elements of the unfinished project were acquired by Altar Games to produce UFO: Aftermath. Julian Gollop then founded Codo Technologies and released Laser Squad Nemesis (2002) and Rebelstar: Tactical Command (2005), then he decided to move to Bulgaria to take a break from game design. But he eventually missed it and joined Ubisoft Sofia in 2006, where he worked on Chessmaster (2008), Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars (2011) – one of the best games of the Nintendo 3DS launch – and Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation (2012) as creative director. He has since returned to strategy games with Chaos Reborn, a crowdfunded sequel to his 1985 game.
Rebelstar Raiders (ZX Spectrum, 1984)
Chaos: The Battle of Wizards (ZX Spectrum, 1985)
Laser Squad (ZX Spectrum, 1988)
X-COM: UFO Defense (DOS, 1994), aka UFO: Enemy Unknown
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars (3DS, 2011)
And you, why not become a member of MO5.COM too?