Elite, the most scariest gaming moment of my life
Hey all,
I started playing Elite when I was about 7 I guess, 1985 or so. We had just come back from living in Hong Kong with a couple of fake Apples and we got hold of Elite. Myself, my brother, all my friends played it so much, we even named the trees in the school playing field after Diso, Lave, Sol, Redequat (sp?) and continued playing the game there!
The memory that sticks in my mind the most is from Elite II, which I've gotta say, is one totally amazing game "Only the best mature with time" on the box, hear hear!
Anyway, there I was manually taking off from Ross 154 I think, having a little fly about as you do. I aimed up to hyperspace away but was too close to the planet. I sped up, then put on the fast forward for some daft reason. About a second later, I stopped the fast forward only to find myself rediculously close to the gas giant, pretty much between the rings and the planet. Being this close really frightened me, I got shocked, my bum twitched and I start sweating as I gently coaxed my ship away and avoiding getting trapped in the gravitation pull. The planet almost filled my screen (only a little 14" monitor), but I was in the middle of nowhere, totally on my own about to be swallowed up in some god forsaken gas giant. The size of the planet put the jitters up me. I really felt like I was there. That has been the most scary moment in any game for me to date.
The games were and still are awesome. The trick is that there was always something else for you to learn. For me, the ultimate was landing manually on planets to go mining. Never made any money, but the satisfaction of being able to do it was reward enough. By the time I got to that stage, I had a Puma Clipper, every weapon, I wasn't interested in cash, I just wanted to be able to do it.
I've hoped games would come out that are more advanced Eiltes, networkable, better gfx etc etc. Freelancer came a little closer, but you still couldn't manually dock, and you couldn't land on planets. Those are the sole two things that would give me the freedom I experienced 20 years ago back and the two things that in my opinion, would make the Elite of Today. All space sims since just haven't managed those two things at all, and therefore aren't good enough for me.
Frontier, if you can get together a networkable Elite, with all the freedoms of Frontier Elite II, you will positively re-write history. Here's hoping!
David, thanks for 1984
