Elite
Way back in 1984 Elite gave gamers the Cobra Mark III spacecraft, eight galaxies to traverse, and more than 2,000 planets to visit. Its wireframe graphics rendered perhaps the first truly open-ended, three-dimensional game universe. And it did it with only a few dozen kilobytes.
Coded by college undergrads Ian Bell and David Braben, Elite was a watershed event in computer gaming. It almost single-handedly launched the space sim and helped pioneer the 4X genre, paving the way for everything from Wing Commander to Freespace. Its BBC Micro and Acorn releases were eventually ported to almost every home computer system available. Elite even showed up on the NES.
Elite's floppy disks came packaged with a novella, The Dark Wheel, which provided a rough backstory and introduced players to the Elite universe. The game itself, however, was a plot-free, completely open-ended playground where the player could explore, trade, upgrade their ship, and engage in combat as they saw fit. The only goal it provided was a gradual ranking up, from "Harmless" to "Elite," earned by defeating space pirates, aliens, and bounty hunters.
Elite has long since been released into the wild. You can find emulations at Ian Bell's Elite page, or poke around the Elite Wiki for newer incarnations like Oolite. You can even find a browser-based flash version here. As primitive and awkward as Elite now appears, its brilliance is still apparent. Click "Read more" below to see more screenshots from the original.
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Ah Elite, I still go back and play it every now and again. The sequel, Frontier, was sublime. While there have been games that been bigger, broader and flashier since Elite, few have captured its sense of fun and wonder.
I quit trying to play after I crashed for the 935th time while trying to dock at the first station. Lining up with the docking bay is one thing. Having to match rotation while lining up and moving forward with just the right amount of thrust? That's something else.
Psychotic Foreign Teenage Chicks are so hot. - Legion
...they can also come bathe in the glorious, healing light of my Johnson. - Prederick
I never played Elite, but I owe it some gratitude for Wing Commander Privateer and to a lesser extent Privateer 2, Freespace, and DarkStar One.
I am pretty sure this was the first game I got addicted to and is the reason I like space sims in general.
"Frogger did not convince me to jump into oncoming traffic." --rabbit
Writing, gaming, and stuff.
Right on, Commander.
"The spirit is willing, but the flesh is spongy and bruised."
XBox Live
Oh yeah, first landing, such memories. Then again, after the infinite frustration, you really do appreciate the docking computer, which I guess was the first thing everyone bought.
You can't take the sky from me.
OH I LOVED being able to finally do this. It was a point of pride that I was able to do this manually without a docking computer on a regular basis.
Oh, Elite. Commodore Monty the Python driver. The special missions, sun scooping, narcotics, military lasers. My first addiction to a computer game. Many hours in college, not wasted -- just redirected.
I learned to dock early from my space sensei, and could hit that thing full speed, from any angle of approach. I was a god! Then I lost track of the hints for the third mission somewhere in galaxy two.
How does it end?
It ends?
I loved Elite; that's how I got into flight sims, which lasted me for over a decade.
Great game.
“Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.” Atty Gen'l John Ashcroft, on secret NSC torture guideline discussions.
I never would have realized my love for all things Space related (especially space sims) if it had not been for my aunt buying Elite Plus! for me at a garage sale. I was only a kid at the time (I think I wasn't even 10 years old yet), and I loved pretending my room was the interior of my ship, and I would walk away from the computer while flying towards a planet or star in peaceful systems...and that low shield alarm would always bring me running back to the computer to save the day. That game + my imagination made the whole experience so memorable. I still have a copy of it on a jump drive for those times when I want to hear the Blue Danube one more time
Tobyus
Still searching for the perfect game...
Last edited by Tobyus on Sep 14, 2006 - 02:06 PM; edited 1,000,000 times in total
"Beautiful Blue Danube" by Strauss, the docking tune. Just a great game and loved it. Played it for so many hours back then. On C64 and later my XT computer.
The radar system, in my opinion, is so far still unmatched.
'Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.'
Benjamin Franklin
Endless space in 48k - what more could you ask for.
Loved Frontier as well. I've tried to recapture that feel with endless games since, most recently Darkstar One and X3, but it just doesn't feel the same.
"some say he roams the woods at night, foraging for wolves.."
Eve-online : Elizabeth Lockley
I loved this game. I played the hell out of it. And I'm having a lot of trouble getting my head around the fact that it's just a hair shy of a quarter century old.
I wish it were time for Cheers. But it's not. It's time for vengeance!
There's nothing like your first, right?
Yeah, me too.
Nothing to add to what's been written - this was/is an awesome, awesome game. Elite + Ultima IV = me hitting the Blutarsky point one semester (ouch!)
Steam ID: tboon
I am so very glad I came around to the gaming world just after this antediluvian artifact.
http://vegasdailyvista.blogspot.com/
I think Elite still qualifies as my favorite game of all time. Period.
Nothing quite matches it. I'd love it if someone would update it to support modern (wide) resolutions and the X360 gamepad and LEAVE THE REST ALONE. Maybe, maybe, MAYBE put textures around those wonderful wireframes. Maybe.
Everything else, though, just leave it alone and let it be the little slice of perfection it has always been.
"And my son, too, thinks everything is a launchpad, every bug a meal, and every sunny day a reason to take all your clothes off and roll around in the grass." - rabbit
I never did get in to Elite, but Frontier was genius -- I couldn't tell you how many hours I played of that on my old Amiga. I haven't had that kind of experience with a game since, but I've had high hopes for a while that an open-source game called Vega Strike would get there. The project just released version 0.5.0, which I plan on having a good play with when I get home:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/
Xbox Live: pneuman
I'm still waiting for the Elite "Star Wars" game -- one where you're just a smuggler trying to make it in the universe wrenched by war (and you work your way up through one side or the other (if you wanted to)). I always thought that would be the direction they took the Star Wars space flight sim, but they never did.
I loved Elite, but I was awful at it. Even if I was patient enough to dock, and made my first run selling food or textiles without getting killed by pirates ( I think I killed one pirate, ever), I invariably made a bad choice at that point resulting in death.
Maybe I was playing it wrong, too. Even though you could speed up time a lot, it would still force me to spend ~30minutes to get to some of the station. Is that normal?
One of the greatest games ever and the one that made me noticing for the first time that video games could be more than Centipede or Frogger.