25 years of ELITE

[Zulu Romeo]

An interesting article by Dan Emery on the 25th anniversary of the release of the original ELITE for the BBC Micro (complete with a brief video interview with co-creator David Braben):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8261272.stm

What was interesting was how much of a programming marvel the game was considering:

Mass market computers were still in their infancy in 1984, with computers capable of four-channel sound, sixteen colours and little in the way of storage or memory.

"The BBC Micro only had 32k of memory, but out of that came the screen and machine use, so Elite had to fit into 22k which is less than most emails these days," said Mr Braben.

"We crafted every single byte and would work for hours just to free up three or four bytes so we could put in a new feature or ability.

"That level of concentration on things have been lost today when you have things that are many megabytes or even gigabytes in size," he added.

It was one of the great computing projects of our time indeed. Sadly I never played the original Elite on the BBC Micro, although I did pick up Chris Sawyer's Elite Plus for the PC.


I would have loved to have played the Archimedes version, though.

 

[John Clark]

Played a little on the school BBCs back in the day.

Doesn't seem like 25 years ago

 

[Haggis and tatties]

Had this on the Amstrad 464, and one day the tape spooled out in the tape deck and i lost all my saved games and that as they say was that.

 

[FPAlpha]

Oh man.. memories.

Had it on the Amiga and played it for hours.. however i used a cheat and got me the docking computer because i just couldn't handle manual docking

It was so much fun and definitely one of the all time classic games.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I never got into this game until several years ago, but I can see why it's considered so genre-defining. It's really amazing, what they managed to do with such limited hardware.

 

[SlaveOfSeven]

I remember the manual had a drawing of the cockpit of your ship with a BBC Micro as the central control panel. heh

 

[AdAstra]

I only played Frontier First Encounters, which I absolutely loved.

I would skim through atmospheres, refuel in a gas giant, try to land my massive Panther trader without autopilot etc etc.

Good times!

Where oh where has the (good) spacesim genre disappeared to?

 

[General_Phoenix]

I only played Frontier First Encounters, which I absolutely loved.

I would skim through atmospheres, refuel in a gas giant, try to land my massive Panther trader without autopilot etc etc.

Good times!

Where oh where has the (good) spacesim genre disappeared to?

Yeah, I loved Frontier. I loved Elite too back in the day, played that game reguarly back on my Amstrad...well, my dad's anyway. Space sims, and those (now) classic adventure games were my favorite types of games back then. Elite, Frontier First Encounters, and Wing Commander Privateer were among some of my favorite games. Was always hoping a Star Wars style Elite/Privateer game would be made, but that was wishful thinking.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Yeah, about the closest thing we have to it anymore is the Battlecruiser series, and the less said about that, the better.

 

[firehawk12]

Hasn't there been a rumoured remake of Elite for a while?

 

[Fencer]

Hasn't there been a rumoured remake of Elite for a while?

Braben is supposedly planning to make Elite IV after he finishes his latest game. But he's been saying that for years now.