"It's a good thing" Firaxis's 2003 X-COM reboot never happened

Firaxis's Jake Solomon has said an earlier push to reboot X-COM ahead of 2012's Enemy Unknown is probably better off in the prototype afterlife.

Speaking with Edge, Solomon said he tried to get an X-COM reboot off the ground in 2003, when he had just started in his career.

"It was awful. It’s a good thing it never went ahead," he said.

"Because I was way too young, I had very little experience, and I just wasn’t in the right place to make that game. It really took a long time until it made sense for the team and for the company.”

Solomon said the plan at the time was to remake the original game with the same mechanics, plus a few extra features.

“We had to identify those things that make a game XCOM, and it’s very hard to do with a game that’s so big and emergent, and has all these complex systems in it," he said of the failed attempt.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown, on the other hand, is pretty great, and available on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.