Celebrating 35 years of Elite!

[Ghulor]

My favorite memory is the first approach to a black hole in Elite: Dangerous with my Wingman CMDR Daniel R.
It was as strange as the distant stars dancing around the black hole as we flew by.
The ribbon of the Milky Way widened and stretched like pouring sour milk into a glass of blue water.
We were there for about half an hour and every time we passed by there was a different visual effect - amazing.

Greetings,
CMDR Ghulor

 

[Vamvas]

Commander Vamvas

It's not very hard remembering how it felt like playing Elite on my Beeb thirtysomething years ago. Lots of memories there, but I recall feeling puzzled when I got lost during a hyperspace jump and landed in the middle of nowhere, thargoid ships approaching. Managed to destroy a couple and then quickly re-jumped to my original destination.
I later found out that you could supposedly press a key (CTRL I think) during the jump countdown to force this behaviour.

Happy anniversary Elite, you always bring back fond memories no matter how far ago and keep making new ones.

 

[Fiennes]

My favourite memory is the first time I wiped my save. Almost a billion credits - foom.

I'd decided that I was going to play an "ironman" mode, so any ship destruction would result in a wipe. I also decided to play exclusively in open - which resulted in a clear dilemma, especially when I would get to my first elite and try outfitting at Jameson Memorial. So I use a modified ironman role which means gankings have no effect other than a tiny chip off the five billion credits I have.

I've had to wipe the save a few times for legit destructions - it's very cathartic

I did also plan to have a "one ship only" policy, but that disappeared when mining changed. It's much easier to store engineered modules on a ship than in module storage.

 

[feiercrack]

Congrats from germany!
Feiercrack
I am 48 years young and I'm still flying since 1984

 

[Cdr Voorheez]

Congrats from germany!
Feiercrack
I am 48 years young and I'm still flying since 1984

Sane mate, same

 

[Old Duck]

I don't fly a Cobra.

 

[Cmdr Wade]

Favourite memory? Playing on the 48k ZX Spectrum 35 years ago, using the Lenslokk security widget up against my old black and white portable TV and finally getting the code right and not having to re-lad the game via tape! The original Elite is still my all time favourite game, there was just nothing else that came close.

 

[Tox]

Great game i'm old enough to have played the original
now have VR best game ever

 

[Spyke]

I was living in Zambia in the early 80s, working as an engineer, and had a BBC Electron. I got Elite in 1985, just before my friend Eric came out to see me. We spent weeks flying our Cobra together. I still have the log.

Note how the smell of King Prawns we sold on Ensoreus lingered all the way to Bameara, and we found a good trade in Muskrat Pelts.

Cmdr Brand

 

[Vic Hattenshue]

Cmdr Vic Hattenshue

All of DW2. In particular arriving at Semotus Beacon and then a week later the mass jump out in the company of a sidewinder (Cmdr BootCZ), several Anacondas, a Cutter and assorted friends!

Having started DW2 in Bjørn Curious, a barely engineered DBX, I joined a squadron (The Explorer's Consortium), learnt shed-loads about Elite Dangerous from other cmdrs, diverted to Colonia, unlocked engineers, increased Bjørn's jump range to 57LY, made it to Beagle and beyond, then came home the long way via the Sagittarius-Carina arm.

A great experience and brilliantly researched, implemented and executed by the DW2 team.

Second to that would be playing Elite for endless hours on an Acorn Electron (with a whole 16k of RAM!).

 

[Condutiarii]

My favorite memory is simple. I arrive in one of the systems housing an engineer with my Alliance Chieftain, I am a novice fighter. I go into supernavigation when I get intercepted by two elite players (No NPC) in combat, each on an Anaconda. I try to escape my chasers as best I can but I get kicked out of super-navigation. I feel my time coming... I take a first shot and then try to get away when the security ships arrive! I managed to launch the supercruise and escape from my attackers feeling relieved... when suddenly I was intercepted again by these two rats. I resist for 5 minutes which seemed very long to me before being kicked out of the supernavigation again. This time, two very fast blows defeated the structure of my ship, it was destroyed. I have just been destroyed by the two worst cowards in the galaxy I know, who have just brilliantly destroyed a poor novice. But it left me with quite a memory.

 

[Darkfyre99]

Commander: Inga Stevenson
Platform: PC

My favorite moments in Elite... it's hard to pick, there's so many of them across the whole franchise. But if I had to pick one, it was from Frontier: Elite 2. I had a mission to deliver something for the Federal military in my Viper, and had played the game just long enough to realize that I was likely to arrive too late to complete the mission on time at my current rate of deceleration.

I'm sitting there out of time warp, wondering what to do, when it suddenly occurred to me: I don't have to have to use the retro-thrusters to slow down! I can use the much more powerful main ones if I flip over at the mid point! But I was already underway! When, exactly, should I start my retro burn?

So I jump out of my chair, grab a sheet of paper, my little book of useful information from college, and start working the problem. Soon, I arrive at my answer, set the engines to manual, and start burning towards my destination again. When I reach my turnover point, and realized that I don't have a useful cross hair to judge if I'm pointing the right way. I'd have to eyeball it!

Eyeballing it was good enough. On approach to the planet, I realized I was going to undershoot a little, so at the right time I flipped back over, set autopilot for final approach, and landed at the station with hours to spare. After that, I started using the flip over technique every single time. Each new ship, I'd create a table of common distances, the time it would take to travel those distances, and of course the flip over point, in order to better judge if I can complete a mission on time. It was a blast.

 

[Heater]

What would really be nice, is if FDev would just simply test their game patches and fix the bugs!

 

[hornbyOO]

I fondly remember the multi coloured jaggy lines as Elite loaded on my ZX Spectrum (They were the days) sitting for what seemed like ages waiting for program to load, and no it wasn't any strange cigarettes.
I remember the Docking Computer was a god send, as manual docking was a b*ll ache.

 

[Cmdr Bowker]

My favourite memory of Elite:

Load New Commander (Y/N)?
11 year old me in 1984, sitting in front of my BBC Micro Model B on Christmas Day in awe of the amazing 3D wireframe graphics scrolling in front of me.
This game was like something from the future, never before had I seen graphics like this on my home Micro!
A very exciting time that created a buzz around my friends, we didn't realise how iconic this game title would become.

o7 - Cmdr Bowker
See you in the black!

 

[andrak]

Favourite memory was around 1.5 when the big ships were added. Long before you decided to infect the game with skinnerbox grind, minimum viable content, maintenance mode for 2 years, and now blatant money grabs.

 

[Dagwit]

Commander MetaAverroes here.

I played the original Elite on ZX Spectrum until it broke the keyboard.

Then I played it on PC - using a ghastly joystick that was no more than a hat switch on a stick - till it broke my hand.

Still, it was a fun way to discover that I had hereditary tendonitis - fun enough for me to risk playing the modern game when all other games had been set aside so that I might keep some use of my hands till I was too senile to care about such trivia.

 

[JoeCoe]

CMDR Joe Coe

I love this chilling asteroid mining. My favorite ED memory: When it finally was something to make a lot of credits.

 

[CMDR Cliffjumper]

My favourite memory was playing the original 1984 version of Elite.

It was a saturday morning, and I was 12 at the time, at home on my own playing Elite while my father went out to do the weekly shopping, keyboard in front of me, Quickshot II joystick in my hand.

I'd entered the Zaonce system with it's rare dodecahedron shaped space station (it's be nice to see these on Elite Dangerous) with my hold full of expensive wines.

After navigating through the system and fighting off a band of 3 pirates with my Military lasers, I'd positioned myself between the planet and the space station watching the right-side screen to where the entrance slot was... then, when I was in position, made a 90 degree turn and pulled up to have the sot dead ahead in front of me at a distance.

Suddenly the door opened, and my father said "Come and give us a hand with the shopping please."

"Just a minite" I said hoping I could get in the station then help with the shopping.

"No, NOW!" ordered my father.

"Oh well", I thought, leaving the game running and headed on an unguided suicidal trajectory towards the stations entrance slot... "There's about 1000 credits of wine down the drain!"

I got up and headed out to the car, muttering to myself.... 34th century problems, huh?!

Once the shopping was in, I was allowed to go back to my game...

...and was amazed to find my ship safely in the space station, and a "Welcome to Zaonce" message on the navicom screen!!

Somehow the star gods were in my favour, and I'd miraculously gone into the slot without even a scrape to my hull!!

A wonderful moment!


Cheers

CMDR Cliffjumper

 

[Infidel Deity]

Well, my first kill was exiting. Fresh out in space, I got attacked and barely managed to move my Sidewinder in the right direction, but somehow the enemy blew up. It was an andrenalinic moment.

CMDR Infidel Deity.