Celebrating 35 years of Elite!

[G0odT1me]

One of my earliest memories of the game was back in 1984.

My parents had just upgraded me from a zx81 to a 48k spectrum. Colour computing at last! However the only spare tv in the house was black and white! Wonderful!

They bought me elite for Xmas, and I remember my dad sitting with me helping me to play it. And my first real fight was with a cobra. It took me what felt like an hour to kill it, and I always remember the old man clapping and shouting "that's my boy!"

A year later I was running narcotics but I didn't tell him about that....

Cmdr G0odt1me

 

[Kenneth Durand]

Greetings Commanders,
I turned 56 in May and can still remember my first gaming experiences with the original in 1984 (or was it a year later when I first played it?).
My first Commander name was "Ian Braben" and I thought it was fantastic that none of my friends knew at the time that it was the combination of the developer names Ian Bell and David Braben.
I've often paused for years since then, but I've been back since Horizons and love it as much as I did the first day.
So, fligh safe and cu in the black.

 

[Snarfbuckle]

My greatest memory of Elite was in Elite II Frontier as i got captured by the gravity of a gas giant i was a little too curious about.

I remember how i frantically was pointing the nose of the ship to the sky with maximum engine burn to break the grip of gravity as i plummeted ass first into the 2000 gravities atmosphere.

...I did not succeed...

 

[K M Butler]

CMDR K M Butler
One of my earliest fave memories was picking up the knack of successfully manual-docking in Elite 1. Repeatedly and consistently.
Elites 2-4, just being able to run around doing and seeing things in space, with combat basically being a (rarely bothered with) option.

 

[Zuldjins]

Cmdr Zuldjins
В первые играл в Elite на ZX Spectrum в 1989 году
с друзьями пропадали днями в эту игру . торговали , выписывали цены на листок бумаги.. (сейчас это так выглядит наивно)
воевали. растраивались.. пользовались самой лучшей видеокартой на планете (воображением)

First time I played Elite on ZX Spectrum in 1989. We would get lost in the game with friends for days. Trading, while taking notes of prices on the plain paper. Fighting and getting upset for loosing. We were using best graphic hardware on the planet - our imagination. Its been 30 years and I'm still a fan of this game. Thank you.

 

[Cairo]

Commander name: havefunwillrevel

My favorite memory is of the original Elite from the early 90s. The game didn't have multiplayer, but that didn't stop me and a friend of mine from playing on our computers while talking over the phone about what we were doing - as if we were in the same universe, just unable to see oneanother. We stocked up at a station, agreed on where to travel and if one ran into trouble on the way there the other waited for them to rejoin the expedition at the destination. Good times

 

[Slicerax]

CMDR Slicerax

My favorite moment, or rather, point in time, was when me and some friends were all doing refugee rescue missions from damaged starports to grind rank for the Federation, so we could get the Federal Corvette. Prior to this, I had decided to gain Elite in Trade Ranking by running high value mining, and make 1 billion credits on the way there, then grind rank so I could fully outfit the Corvy. I had achieved these two pieces in about 10 or so total hours of high value mining, and I was now doing the refugee missions. However, my friends kept telling me to buy a Python instead of an ASP Explorer (to speed up the rank grind), but I had noted that due to my budget at the time, buying a new ship would cost me more time and I was already rolling with my plan. Despite their stubbornness and occasional mockery, I was still the first one out of our group to purchase and fully outfit the Corvette, and that is still my most satisfying moment in Elite to date.

 

[Max Bothin]

"Max Bothin", here, played ELITE back in 1985 (with this name). I remember the mission, where I had my ship full of trumbles. I guess I had to fly to a sun to get rid of them. I made my credits by trading between Ra and Relaes. (Relaes is not in ED). I remember also, shooting bad pirates by using the left, right and backsides of the ship. Something, that is not possible in EB, neither.

I'd love to get the paintjob ;-)

 

[SASalt1977]

Cmdr SASalt1977 Congrats you on 35 years.

My favorite memory would be after only playing the game 6 days and scraping enough credit together on the old rares runs to upgrade my modules a little and buy a discovery scanner and a 2a fuel scoop then without any engineering proceed to cruise out to Jaques in Colonia in the Cobra.

 

[Mr_Fy]

CMDR LONGMAN.P.J
I played Elite on the Acorn Electron with my dad back in the '80s. We used to write down all of the market prices on a notepad he'd taken from work. Lave>Leesti>Diso etc. Food in one direction, tech in the other. We used to take it in turns to fly and evade those dirty pirates. He spent many years looking for an up-to-date substitute and the closest game he found was Freelancer. It was pretty good but not quite the same. He died of cancer on 14 Sep 2007 and one of my many wishes is that he could have played this game. It is exactly what he would have wanted and something we could have both talked about at great length over a cold beer......
O7 CMDR RON

 

[Sutore]

CMDR Sutore

Ahh, Elite memories... there's a few from all the years I've played, but I remember wasting a huge amount of time searching for the Space Dredger on Elite for the ZX Spectrum (once I'd battled the dreaded Lenslok). I spent ages going from system to system, hunting it down. I even filled out the 'Notes' pages of my pilot's manual with the system's I'd checked. My belief it was there came from an Elite guide in an Amstrad magazine...

Yeah, well, I know NOW, don't I? but fell for the Mirage hidden inside Frontier Elite II after seeing it in a game guide by a Mr Tony Dillon (Sinclair User fame).
Elite gets me too hooked...

 

[Nephroditus]

CMDR Nephroditus
I once spent a few hours capturing video navigating among ice asteroids while listening to the soundtrack. I posted a few minutes long video about it, and it made an old friend reconnect with me, coming back to the game.

 

[Wolfechu]

I think my favourite memory would be running cargo for the Christmas event a few years back, where our group team up to ferry thousands of tons to some outpost in the middle of nowhere, offloading to smaller ships in the group once we got there. I think we managed to bump the reward tier up sufficienty there so that new players could start with a Viper III or something.

That newbies were getting stuff for free annoyed certain players - probably the types who are using a thread like this to be snarky - so that was an added bonus

CMDR Name - Same as the Forum name.

 

[Eddie J.]

My best memory is ...


My girlfriend left me because of Elite Frontier. Great day.

 

[mdmaniac44]

Favorite Elite memory...
Discovering that I could buy and play my very own copy of Elite and that it was now using filled polygon graphics!
I can't even begin to count the hours I spent. I even had my own log book (hand-written) to record the prices of commodities in each market that I visited.

Shortly before I realized Elite: Dangerous was a good thing, I found a digital copy of Elite and started playing again. It's still just as much fun now as it was before.

(disclaimer: when I tried to play Frontier, I couldn't figure out how to land my Eagle and promptly crashed it and gave up. I think that would be my least favorite memory...)

CMDR MDManiac (PC)

 

[AvelCo]

Hey.
My English is not very good, but the story is good. That was in 1987. We played ELITE in my house and in the house of my friend. I had an IBM 5160, and my friend ZX Spectrum.
In those days, living in the USSR was difficult and my friend was engaged in criminal business. He painted erotic comics. But, when we started playing in the Elite, he began to draw spaceships and comics dedicated to the game. The police were watching him at that time. When they came to arrest him, for many months he painted only ELITE. So, the police found only Cobra, Python, the station and the Targoids. Thanks to the game, my friend did not go to jail.

CMDR Avel (PC)

P.S. And now my daughter Erica draws planets and stars. Because she saw ELITE Dangerous

 

[Sulihin]

The original Elite was always one of my favorite games. I recall my many hours when first playing as a teen, desperately trying to align myself with the mail slot to dock with the station. I was thrilled when Elite Plus was relased in the 90s, because I could return to the classic game of old with incredible cell shaded graphics! Playing the original game is why the classic style bobbleheads and paint jobs are so nostalgic, but the release of Elite Dangerous was a wonder, bringing my childhood delights into a modern era.

CMDR Sulihin

 

[Scrappy]

Waiting in line to dock to outpost during first minutes of ED launch. So many new players were around it felt like true MMO.

 

[PaisleySleeves]

My favourite memory, this is difficult with oh so many.

I would arrive home from school and sit down to complete my homework whilst watching TV. The theme tune to Blockbusters would start and I knew it was almost time, I would watch contestants asking Bob for the letter of their choice and answering the questions, whilst I was thinking about where I should fly next and what commodity I should transport. Blockbusters over I race up the stairs and turn on my portable TV and power up my ZX Spectrum to load in Elite. A few minutes later I’m sat in front of my TV flying through space with stars zooming past me and I make my way towards a planet and locate the space station. This all feels so real, I’m completely immersed in the game. I make my way towards the space station, then to line myself up ready to dock I orient my ship to face towards the planet and head away from the space station until it is centrally behind my ship. Banking my ship to face towards the space station I proceed with docking ensuring my ships rotation matches the space station to avoid crashing into the walls of the docking slot. I make the delivery of the goods I was carrying and purchase some other commodity ready to transport to another location. After launching from the space station I prepare to jump to the selected location. Entering hyperspace I begin to jump, for some reason the jump fails I’m in unknown space, Witch Space and I get my first glimpse of a Thargoid.

o7
CMDR Paisley

 

[T4k3shi47]

Definitely when I first put the VR headset on and decided to go explore the galaxy :

At that time, I was getting used to my HOTAS and able to remember the mappings without looking at the cheatsheet. Time to put the VR headset on !
So I bought a DBX, tune it up for exploration, setup the VR headset which was taking the dust for more than a year and ... OMG. This was so AMAZING ! My heart started to race, when I first took off the station : I was living the dream.

I spent the whole day travelling from one solar system to another, scanning planets, enjoying the view, taking screenshots. It was so wonderful, even better than that... I can't find the word to describe it.
My journey reached a climax when I first discovered an anomaly in deep space. A was so anxious while approaching the signal source, not knowing what to expect.
When I exited Supercruise and discovered those enormous cristallin structures floating in space, it is then that I realized how small we are and how many wonders there are in this universe, and that's my favorite memory.

Cmdr T4k3shi47