Elite's history stretches back almost 30 years, so here's a brief summary of how we got here and how much great stuff you can enjoy today in the Elite universe.
The original Elite was written by David Braben and Ian Bell in 1984, and was a bold move away from the Pac-Man era of two-dimensional games with three lives that took ten minutes to play. You play Commander Jameson, intrepid pilot of a Cobra Mk III spaceship. Starting in orbit around a planet in the Lave system, the game lets you trade and explore in a sandbox of over 2,000 worlds, battling pirates (if you're nice), police (if you're naughty), and occasionally an insectoid race called the Thargoids (if you're unlucky). The fan remake Oolite is the best way to experience this game on modern hardware.
The original game also came with a novella that drew a living universe on the game, allowing players to imagine something far deeper than could be realised on the computers of the time. You can read Elite: The Dark Wheel on Ian Bell's website.
David Braben released Frontier: Elite 2 in 1993. Elite had changed the industry, and a franchise that offered unparalleled realism nine years earlier needed a major reboot to get the same reaction again. FE2 moved the action to our Milky Way galaxy (rendered more accurately than perhaps any game before or since), and introduced the Federation and Empire as two great powers locked in a cold war. The realistic flight model confused many players during combat, but the fan-made Frontier: Elite 2 combat tutorial explains how it works. You can download Frontier: Elite 2 (Shareware) and run it in DOSBox.
FE2 came with a gazetteer of selected worlds and Stories of Life on the Frontier that, while not regarded quite as highly as The Dark Wheel, are closer to the official history we expect to see in Elite: Dangerous.
Braben founded Frontier Developments in 1994 and released a sequel called Frontier: First Encounters in 1995. This game added the Alliance as a third major power, and introduced journals and scripted missions that let the player (optionally) put themselves at the heart of a galaxy-changing story. You can download Frontier: First Encounters (shareware) for DOSBox, but the game never really shook off the bugs from its turbulent release. Fans have tried to iron out the bugs and modernise the game many times over the years, most recently in AndyJ's Mod of FFED3D.
Although FFE put most of its story in the game itself, Further Stories of Life on the Frontier once again fleshed out the background to the universe.
Legal and funding issues kept the official Elite universe in suspended animation after 1995, but the community has been hard at work ever since. As well as the updates and remakes, the Elite universe has inspired some exceptional fan fiction over the years, such as the four book Oolite saga by Drew Wagar and the Escape Velocity audio drama by Chris Jarvis (both of whom went on to write official Elite: Dangerous fiction).
Frontier want to combine the rich universe of the later games with the fun of the original, and the crowdfunding model has allowed fans to keep them honest through publicly-archived design discussions, official fiction, and conversations in this very forum. It's easy enough to jump in and start having fun, but exploring some of the excellent backstory will add many extra layers of fun to your experience.
The original Elite was written by David Braben and Ian Bell in 1984, and was a bold move away from the Pac-Man era of two-dimensional games with three lives that took ten minutes to play. You play Commander Jameson, intrepid pilot of a Cobra Mk III spaceship. Starting in orbit around a planet in the Lave system, the game lets you trade and explore in a sandbox of over 2,000 worlds, battling pirates (if you're nice), police (if you're naughty), and occasionally an insectoid race called the Thargoids (if you're unlucky). The fan remake Oolite is the best way to experience this game on modern hardware.
The original game also came with a novella that drew a living universe on the game, allowing players to imagine something far deeper than could be realised on the computers of the time. You can read Elite: The Dark Wheel on Ian Bell's website.
David Braben released Frontier: Elite 2 in 1993. Elite had changed the industry, and a franchise that offered unparalleled realism nine years earlier needed a major reboot to get the same reaction again. FE2 moved the action to our Milky Way galaxy (rendered more accurately than perhaps any game before or since), and introduced the Federation and Empire as two great powers locked in a cold war. The realistic flight model confused many players during combat, but the fan-made Frontier: Elite 2 combat tutorial explains how it works. You can download Frontier: Elite 2 (Shareware) and run it in DOSBox.
FE2 came with a gazetteer of selected worlds and Stories of Life on the Frontier that, while not regarded quite as highly as The Dark Wheel, are closer to the official history we expect to see in Elite: Dangerous.
Braben founded Frontier Developments in 1994 and released a sequel called Frontier: First Encounters in 1995. This game added the Alliance as a third major power, and introduced journals and scripted missions that let the player (optionally) put themselves at the heart of a galaxy-changing story. You can download Frontier: First Encounters (shareware) for DOSBox, but the game never really shook off the bugs from its turbulent release. Fans have tried to iron out the bugs and modernise the game many times over the years, most recently in AndyJ's Mod of FFED3D.
Although FFE put most of its story in the game itself, Further Stories of Life on the Frontier once again fleshed out the background to the universe.
Legal and funding issues kept the official Elite universe in suspended animation after 1995, but the community has been hard at work ever since. As well as the updates and remakes, the Elite universe has inspired some exceptional fan fiction over the years, such as the four book Oolite saga by Drew Wagar and the Escape Velocity audio drama by Chris Jarvis (both of whom went on to write official Elite: Dangerous fiction).
Frontier want to combine the rich universe of the later games with the fun of the original, and the crowdfunding model has allowed fans to keep them honest through publicly-archived design discussions, official fiction, and conversations in this very forum. It's easy enough to jump in and start having fun, but exploring some of the excellent backstory will add many extra layers of fun to your experience.
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