ANNOUNCEMENT Celebrating 35 years of Elite - Competition Winners!

Paige Harvey

Community Manager
Greetings Commanders,

Over the years, the Elite series of games has grown and evolved, starting all the way from the first Elite (published in 1984) to the Elite Dangerous we have today!

For the 35th anniversary of Elite 1984 we asked you to share your greatest memories of the Elite series of games, and you really did deliver! Our team had a wonderful time reading through each and every one of your comments, but we had to narrow them down to 35!

Congratulations to our 35 winners of the Cobra MK III Classic Wireframe Paint Job, you've all been contacted privately and we hope you enjoy your prize.

Thank you to everyone who took part and celebrated with us, and be sure to check out the winning memories below:

Hello, interesting what to tell you about a favorite moment in the game. I have enough, but one thing stuck in my mind the first time I had to travel the neutron star highway. Unique experience of many beautifully made stars I always enjoy finding a new star. Your game is uniquely beautiful and I'm not surprised you are celebrating your 35th birthday. Happy birthday and I hope there are 35 more years to celebrate :)

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.

I was living in Zambia in the early 80's, 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.

Most memorable Elite moment was realizing, after playing the original Elite on the C64, that this was a much larger world that I had ever seen in any other game at the time. Saving games, upgrading my ship, going anywhere I wanted (within 7 LY), this was all new. And it changed my view on games forever, something I can thank Elite for.

The first time I really looked at the galaxy map in Elite Dangerous, instead of just going from point A to B. I zoomed out to look at the size of the bubble, and thought "Wow, this is a pretty big game". Then zoomed out more. And more. And more. I was in sheer awe at just how huge this game is. That was the moment that convinced me to go out into the black and start exploring.

It's hard to just pick one memory, but when the game finally reached the sleepy little town of Gore, New Zealand and I finally got to see what the fuss was all about back in '85. Elite really blew my mind. I wasn't a gamer until then. Leaving Lave for the first time changed my life forever.

I live in the Elite since the time of the Spectrum. Honestly, this is my parallel life. One of my vivid impressions is when I nevertheless ended up without fuel and I needed to call fuel rats. I did not expect such a team to be possible in the “game”.

My best memory, that must be when we first discovered The Guardian, the myth about them, finding out more about them. Driving around, scan and see if you were able to solved the puzzle about the guardians. Team work with other CMDR's.

Happy birthday Elite! Humanity is so far from achieving interstellar travel that I think - for a guy/gal in his forties - Elite in VR is the closest thing to experience what it might be like. So of course, one of my favorite moments was when I put the Oculus DK1 on my almost bald head and saw the space, ships, stations in their proper size. The other was fighting the War for Lugh, making friendships with other commanders, and ultimately winning it together with my fellow Crimson State Group supporters.

I have many "best/favourite" memories with each version of Elite (except FFE as I don't own it), but I'll go with one from the original Elite, Spectrum 48K version... from a couple of months ago. Here I am, on the loading screen, 10 mins in. Our 5 yo wanders in, sees the carton, the ship chart and the Elite logo on the TV "OH! THAT'S THE ANCIENT ELITE!", he bellows - then said 5 yo promptly attempts to climb over my back to get at the keyboard!!! Such is the gravitas of the original Elite, that 35 years on, today's youngsters want to play it! :D

I guess my favourite memory was when I first played the original Elite on the BBC Micro and my dad and I turned the entire room into a spaceship using cardboard boxes and anything else we could get our hands on (much to my mum's despair!) We drew screens and consoles on all the boxes, pretty sure it just looked like a mess but to me at that age it was the bridge of my ship :)

My Best moment in Elite was when i first got interdicted by a Thargoid. I almost wet my pants. Hehe.

My favourite memory from Elite Dangerous was when i flew all the way out to see Voyager 1 for the first time. I was just floating there for ages in deep space just staring at it. Words cant describe what I was feeling.

My favourite memory was the first time i bumped into a white dwarf in my DBX, it was the first time I had truly seen the beauty of the game firsthand.

My best memory of Elite Dangerous, when when I first started playing. I was introduced to it via some YouTube videos of Mr. Myu. From there, I started watching his live streams on twitch.tv/mrmyu. When I joined, I was quickly embraced by his wonderful player group, who has since become a second family to me. The friendships I've made thanks to this game will affect me for the rest of my life.

One of my favourite moments in Elite: Dangerous was when I managed to escape a player pirate during a CG.... I was in a Python and escaped with 1% hull... for some reason, I ran out of fuel and had to call the Fuel Rats... everything went well, until the fuel rat (no names named), accidentally touched my ship when he was taking a photograph and I went kaboom.

Favourite memory is probably running out of fuel in the middle of nowhere thinking all is lost but before dying I googled what to do when out of fuel and came across a community of people who spend a hell of a lot of time flying about just giving people fuel. (https://fuelrats.com) I got help from them and just seeing a few ships jump in and all start shooting fuel limpets at me was great. I joined the fuel rats after that and did a couple runs myself. Really showcases the Elite Dangerous community at its best. Happy 35 years.

I bought the game in January this year and have been playing it pretty much every day so far. Some time in April I did a trip to Colonia, but tried to venture off the beaten path whenever possible. At one point I simply tried to get "up" as high as possible. It wasn't a record by any means ("only" about 2,780 lys above the galactic plane) and I didn't use Neutron star boosts either. But my highest system not only offered a pair of class B stars but also a planet with Anemones (the system was Oushairgh PX-U e2-7). I spent the night there looking down on our Galaxy, the planet bathed in the almost purple light of its star, my ship sitting in that field of anemones. Very magical and my favourite moment so far.

Favorite memory has to be when I had to travel 50+ jumps to meet with my friends. We had all run out of fuel and were in a group call and had all called the fuel rats together lol. Happy 35th Anniversary Elite!

Congratulations on 35 years guys! That's quite an achievement really. So I have a story for you, last October I had acquired an old Oculus Rift headset and was beside myself with how awesome this game is with VR support. Everything was fantastic, I was piloting my original Cobra MK III down to survey a damaged space station and get some meta alloys for engineering. On the last jump down warnings start flaring, things go sideways and I'm ripped from hyperspace unexpectedly. So here I am, home alone, staring down a Thargoid for the first time with a new VR setup. Honestly that made the hair on my arms stand up. And I had to go outside for air, scared the heck out me. Lol... I had to let that headset go a month later due to some internal damage which I can only assume is the reason I got it at discount, but I will never forget that feeling.

Favorite memory would be landing on my first planet and driving around for an hour only to find that I had barely covered any ground next to the huge crater I had landed next to.

My favorite memory is when I bought my first Anaconda. Hit the launch button, lifting that shiny big thing off from the platform and and accele... Wait, this is the primary fire button. Weapon fire, then a big fire ball and of course the rebuy screen...

Wow, so many good memories but I think my first expedition, so Enigma Expedition was the best, and that ending outside a Megaship. Tear in my eye.

My favourite moment was when I reached Beagle Point in DW2, turned my Anaconda around and saw the galaxy, and every single jump I made to get there suddenly felt worth it. It's a moment I'll never forget.

My memory of the original Elite is about my friends (who played it with me on my Spectrum literally all around the clock in shifts) broke my Sinclair joystick. Not the best memory, but definitely the strongest one.

What I love most in Elite: Dangerous is the chaos, and the sound designs that come with them. My favorite memory would have to be going (for the first time) to a station that had been attacked by Thargoids to rescue survivors. Seeing the station in disarray, fires and destroyed sections, the anxiety and stress that you can hear in the traffic controllers voice -- it was all pretty incredible! What stood out the most was going inside. I remember something had exploded and knocked me off-course. I got stuck on some floating debris. Heat was building up, alarms were blaring and I was in my Cutter. It's fun to be in these situations because you have to think quickly about how you're going to get yourself out of them. I feel this was just so well designed to give that foreboding feeling of a serious emergency. I loved it. Hopefully we will get more scenarios like this in the future!

Elite Dangerous was my FIRST foray into the ELITE universe, almost 4 years ago. I would not have made it very far if not for my friends who had started before me and helped me out from the beginning. To this day we fly together, either in the same space or far apart while chatting and still help each other. I think my favorite memory is the time I was able to get out of the Sidewinder and buy the Mighty COBRA MK III. A ship I loved and still have in my inventory.

My best moment of Elite wasn't playing it on my Atari ST back in 1984 from literally sun up to sun down nor was it playing Elite:Frontier in 1993 and finding out we could land on planets for the first time. It was finding out that it was coming out on the PS4 on a new generation of machines. Just keep the fun coming and I'll keep hauling those hundreds of light years across the lonely galaxy.

My favourite memory is actually outside of the game itself - we were a bunch of guys in school playing Elite on C64 - One friend greeted me every day with a healthy - "and -are you dangerous already?"
Cheers to you, Carlos, if you should read this!! o7

I think the best moment for me would have to be playing on the PS4 version of the game but I completely was being dumb, kept over shooting how much fuel I had and kept making silly jump. Ended up meeting some guys who helped me refuel using their limpets after each jump. It made me feel so connected. Since then I have flown with them many times. Like heading to the high g planet and see who can land. Epic battles in civil war systems and also figuring out how to kill a Thargoid for the first time. There are many others but this stands out! Shout out to Dyd, Nightglide and sluggishone!

First time I was interdicted by Thargoids in ELITE (circa 1985) I panicked and spilled coke on my math book!

Just flying between systems in Frontier with the music filling my ears was joyful.

The whole Distant worlds 2 was a great experience.. Every commander involved, from organisation to just flying around. Fuel Rats and Hull Seals to help commanders when in trouble... Getting at Beagle Point in time to get the decal...

For me just playing the game on my C64 and being able to dock without the computer was epic! (disclosure, I did get a docking computer) More recent was joining DW2 and making it to Beagle Point. I don't know if or when I would have wondered out there myself, but figured just go for it.

My favourite memory from Elite was watching a stream while playing the game and meeting CMDR Alesgriff79, then eventually meeting her in person and now we live together happily all thanks to Elite Dangerous. Without this game I don't think I would ever have met her.

Best moment so far.... the smile of my 9 years old son when i told him his birthday present, a fully engineered Fer De Lance, was waiting to take off from Georges Lucas in Leesti (and that he could crash it hundreds of time with the credits we had.)
 
Congrats to the winners.

Now i'm going to go into a corner and cry for not winning anything.

If you say it for me, I don't think you have any idea of what I published, because in fact what I put in ,did not enter into the contest,don't bring your bad karma to me

, I said it for other commanders, such as one who talked about his brother who died last year and then discovered his record ... that deserved to be read at least


Today everyone wants to make an ingenious answer or ?
 
Thanks for the prize, didn't expect to win tbh. I'll post a picture of it here later when I get it in-game. For those that didn't win, congrats for being apart of 45 pages of great memories.

o7
 
I'm glad for the winners ,congratulations!! but a little shameless that only chose the shortest ones, right? I read some very good and beautiful oneself

notify next time only 5 lines maximum ,don't laugh at us !

Time is money... I could have written 2 pages of my story, with all the details etc... No, I am not joking, I remember it so well. If you ever have a great story to tell, write down the elevator pitch and present that one first.
 
If you say it for me, I don't think you have any idea of what I published, because in fact what I put in ,did not enter into the contest,don't bring your bad karma to me

, I said it for other commanders, such as one who talked about his brother who died last year and then discovered his record ... that deserved to be read at least


Today everyone wants to make an ingenious answer or ?

I'm sorry, i've no idea what you are saying.
 
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