The X-Files Game

The X-Files Game is an interactive movie point-and-click adventure video game developed by HyperBole Studios and published by Fox Interactive. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS and PlayStation in 1998, and is based on the television series The X-Files.

The X-Files Game
North American Microsoft Windows cover art
Developer(s)HyperBole Studios
Publisher(s)Fox Interactive
SCEE (EU, PS1)
Director(s)Greg Roach
Producer(s)Phil Peters
Designer(s)Greg Roach
Programmer(s)Pete Isensee
Melanie McClaire
Artist(s)Jeanne Franz
Writer(s)Richard Dowdy
Greg Roach
Composer(s)Paul Wayne Hiaumet
Mark Snow
Platform(s)
ReleaseMicrosoft Windows
  • NA: June 11, 1998[1]
  • EU: September 29, 1998
Mac OS
  • NA: June 1998
PlayStation
  • NA: October 13, 1999
  • EU: January 9, 1999
Genre(s)Interactive movie, point-and-click adventure
Mode(s)Single-player

Plot summary

The game takes place somewhere within the timeline of the third season of The X-Files series. The story follows a young Seattle-based FBI agent named Craig Willmore (played by Jordan Lee Williams) who is assigned by Assistant Director Walter Skinner to investigate the disappearance of agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, who were last seen in the Everett, Washington area. In order to follow their trail, Agent Willmore must use a variety of tools along the way, including night vision goggles, a digital camera, PDA (an Apple Newton), and lock picks, as well as law enforcement gear such as an evidence kit, standard-issue handgun, handcuffs, and even his badge. During his assignment he is partnered with a Seattle Police Department detective named Mary Astadourian (played by Paige Witte), and a minor romantic subplot involves a relationship developing between the two.

Several of the actors from the TV series reprise their roles in the game, including David Duchovny (Mulder), Gillian Anderson (Scully), Mitch Pileggi (Skinner), Steven Williams (X), Bruce Harwood, Tom Braidwood and Dean Haglund (The Lone Gunmen) and—very briefly and depending upon the outcome of the game—William B. Davis (The Smoking Man). The game is set and was filmed in Seattle. The TV series actors filmed their relatively brief appearances in the game just before entering production on the feature film. The game's plotline involves aliens taking over the bodies of humans and contains many references to the show's extraterrestrial mythology. During the course of the game the "present day" date of April 1996 is displayed alongside certain locations, placing this "episode" after the season three episode "Avatar" and before "Wetwired" , which take place March 7 and April 27 respectively. This time is also after the first incident with the alien black oil in the episode "Piper Maru" of the third season.

The screenplay for The X-Files Game was written by Richard Dowdy, Greg Roach and Frank Spotnitz, from a story by Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz.

Gameplay

The game uses a point-and-click interface, uses full motion video technology called Virtual Cinema, and includes a large number of cut scenes. Included in the gameplay are numerous occasions in which the player can alter other character's attitudes and reactions depending upon responses and actions (or inactions). Dubbed "UberVariables", certain decisions made by the player can set them along one of three tracks: Paranoia (Willmore will start seeing things like twitching corpses and shadowy figures), Loss (messages from his ex-wife are kinder), and "The X-Track" (more details are revealed about mytharc-related conspiracies). The player can also affect Willmore's relationship with Astadourian positively and negatively based upon how he responds to her suggestions and ideas.

Production

The game's developer, HyperBole Studios, had initially rejected the project when Fox approached them. They later became interested when they started to watch the show for themselves.[2] The title's design document was over 1000 pages, while the shooting script was 748+ pages, written using FileMaker Pro due to the number of options available to the player. In total, around 6 hours of footage was filmed for the game.[2] The game's development cost $6 million and lasted four years.[3]

The video portions of the game were filmed between seasons of The X-Files and just before the feature film. Some footage in the game, such as the hotel rooms and excerpts from Keystone Cops, is the same as seen in the episode Syzygy. Anderson and Duchovny were very busy, thus requiring the disappearance of Mulder and Scully and the introduction of the Willmore character. A former U.S. naval base, at Sand Point, was used as the setting for the NSA facility at the end of the game, and the boat used as the Tarakan is a training ocean-going tug, which had previously been used in a drug smuggling plot.[2] The 'melted blast effects' on the Tarakan were made using water-soluble paint, which caused havoc when it began to rain during filming.[2] "Tarakan" is Russian for cockroach.

The game was filmed on Digital Betacam tape with Sony cameras and captured using Power Macintoshes running Adobe Premiere and Media 100.[4]

The X-Files Game was displayed at the 1996 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in June. At the show, a writer for Computer Games Strategy Plus noted that it was "still very early in development", and was set for 1997.[5]

Reception

Sales

The X-Files Game was a commercial success.[6] In the United States, it placed fifth on PC Data's computer game sales chart for the week ending June 20, and held the position the following week.[7] It remained in the weekly top 10 through the June 28-July 11 period,[8] but was absent from the charts by its fifth week.[9] The X-Files Game was the ninth-best-selling computer title in the United States during June 1998, with an average retail price of $42.[10] It remained in PC Data's monthly top 20 for another month before exiting in August.[11][12] By July, the computer version of The X-Files Game had sold 64,680 copies and earned $2,769,311 in the United States alone.[13] In the United Kingdom, the computer version debuted at #1 in Chart-Track's rankings during its first two weeks,[14] and held in the top 10 after nine weeks.[15]

According to HyperBole's Jason VandenBerghe, The X-Files Game made it into "the top-10-bestseller lists in most territories it shipped to." Breaking down its popularity by region, he wrote, "Our strongest markets were Europe and Japan, where The X-Files is an even larger phenomenon than it is here in the states".[16] Total sales of The X-Files Game reached roughly one million copies by 2013.[3]

Computer versions

Macworld wrote that The X-Files Game's "excellent use of QuickTime video is offset by tediously slow sections."[28]

The X-Files Game was a finalist for the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences' 1999 "Adventure Game of the Year" and "Outstanding Achievement in Character or Story Development" awards, although it lost these prizes to Grim Fandango and Pokémon Red and Blue, respectively.[30][31]

PlayStation version

Jeff Lundrigan reviewed the PlayStation version of the game for Next Generation, rating it two stars out of five, and stated that "Although well produced and faithful to its source, X-Files just demonstrates that even the best FMV adventure games still aren't great games."[38]

References
  1. "New Releases". June 11, 1998. Archived from the original on June 19, 2000. Retrieved December 6, 2019.
  2. An Interview with Greg Roach, Prima's Official Strategy Guide, The X Files Game
  3. Edge Staff (September 14, 2013). "The Making Of: The X-Files". Edge. Future plc. Archived from the original on September 19, 2013.
  4. X Files: The Game - Read Me file
  5. Staff (June 1, 1996). "E3 Adventure & Role Playing Games". Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on June 14, 1997.
  6. "The Making Of: The X-Files". Edge. Future plc. 14 September 2013. Archived from the original on May 5, 2014.
  7. Ocampo, Jason (July 9, 1998). "The battle between StarCraft and Unreal for No. 1 continues". Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on April 6, 2005.
  8. Ocampo, Jason (July 22, 1998). "Myst drops off the weekly chart". Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on April 6, 2005.
  9. Ocampo, Jason (July 29, 1998). "SWAT 2 storms the chart". Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on April 6, 2005.
  10. Ocampo, Jason (July 21, 1998). "StarCraft scores a hat trick with its third month at No. 1". Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on May 2, 2005.
  11. Ocampo, Jason (August 18, 1998). "SWAT 2 debuts at No. 5". Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on April 6, 2005.
  12. GamerX (September 25, 1998). "August's PC Best-Sellers". CNET Gamecenter. Archived from the original on August 17, 2000.
  13. Staff (November 1998). "Letters; Mys-Adventures". Computer Gaming World (172): 34.
  14. Mallinson, Paul (October 1998). "Charts; This Month's Top 20". PC Zone (68): 24.
  15. Mallinson, Paul (December 1998). "Charts; This Month's Top 20". PC Zone (70): 24.
  16. VandenBerghe, Jason (December 3, 1999). "Postmortem: HyperBole Studios' The X-Files". Gamasutra. Archived from the original on March 3, 2012.
  17. "The X-Files Game for PC". GameRankings. Retrieved June 21, 2011.
  18. "The X-Files Game for PC Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved June 21, 2011.
  19. Nguyen, Thierry. "The X-Files Game". Computer Gaming World. Archived from the original on October 10, 2000.
  20. "The X-Files". PC Gamer: 129a. September 1998.
  21. McCandless, David (1998). "PC Review: The X-files". PC Zone. Archived from the original on June 24, 2007. Retrieved June 9, 2014.
  22. Houghton, Gordon. "X-Files: The Game Review". PC Gaming World. Archived from the original on September 15, 2000.
  23. Walk, Gary Eng (June 19, 1998). "The X-Files Game (PC)". Entertainment Weekly (437). Retrieved June 9, 2014.
  24. Altman, John (July 1, 1998). "The X-Files". Computer Games Strategy Plus. Archived from the original on February 19, 2005.
  25. Mooney, Shane (November 3, 1998). "X-Cruciating". PC Magazine. 17 (19): 370.
  26. St. John, Don (August 3, 1998). "The X-Files Game Review". PC Games. Archived from the original on September 2, 1999.
  27. Bottorff, James (1998). "X-Files: Where are Fox and Dana?". The Cincinnati Enquirer. Archived from the original on April 28, 2001. Retrieved June 9, 2014.
  28. Gowan, Michael (February 1999). "Name Your Game; From Goofy to Gory, Macworld Reviews 48 Ways to Play". Macworld. Archived from the original on August 10, 2001.
  29. Kramer, Greg (September 1998). "The X-Files". MacAddict. Archived from the original on July 13, 2001.
  30. "Second Interactive Achievement Awards; Personal Computer". Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. Archived from the original on November 4, 1999.
  31. "Second Interactive Achievement Awards; Craft Award". Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. Archived from the original on October 11, 1999.
  32. "The X-Files for PlayStation". GameRankings. Retrieved June 21, 2011.
  33. Nguyen, Cal. "The X-Files - Review". Allgame. Archived from the original on November 16, 2014. Retrieved November 16, 2014.
  34. Huhtala, Alex (October 1999). "The X-Files". Computer & Video Games (215): 37.
  35. Reiner, Andrew (January 24, 2000). "X-Files (PS)". Game Informer. Archived from the original on May 31, 2000. Retrieved June 9, 2014.
  36. MacDonald, Ryan (November 24, 1999). "X-Files Review". GameSpot. Retrieved June 9, 2014.
  37. Zdyrko, David (November 18, 1999). "X-Files: The Game (PS)". IGN. Retrieved June 9, 2014.
  38. Lundrigan, Jeff (January 2000). "Finals". Next Generation. Vol. 3 no. 1. Imagine Media. p. 98.
  39. "The X-Files". Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine (50). September 1999.
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