childlike awe

Boff'in

Boff'in
Being born in the later 70's, I grew up on 8-bit, was a teenager during 16-bit, and watch the mature rating being used as 3D games took off in the late 90's as I moved into age bracket where I was eligible to vote, get drunk and learning to get competent with the opposite sex (still failing after all these years).

and I remember my awe at seeing elite, fantasising about the planets and star-ship travel.

on my meek little c64 later on in life, oh how I pretended those games were more advanced, projecting from my heart onto what those pixels (and later on polygons) could actually represent, whether it was Mercenary, Epic, batman the movie, Damocles, xwing, wing commander

Every life-cycle of tech had a tour-de-force, something that made you gawk with OMG i am THERE, I can't believe I get to play something like this, whether it was the original Doom, half-life, GTA3, the sims, i-war, HL2 / Farcry1, Doom3, Crysis,

And even after sighing and tutting over some mechanic, or progress bar that never seams to be filled,
there are these moments,
and I just had one,
the music kicked in, I had to fiddle round with my jump destinations as I was about to run out of fuel, and landed at some 'port' (any port will do in a storm), with a plan in my head to buy bigger fueltanks, downgrade my armour, and power distributor to lighten my load,
and I was swushing past a gass giant, and one of those newly textured moons to get to the station and....I was just staring in awe at the gas gaint, the rings and the moon. Supercruise cut out, and the station zoomed up, the ATC kicked in, nothing I hadn't seen a like probably a million times by now, and it just got to me, as I flew in and docked all giddy and shocked...

I can't believe I get to play this.
 
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Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
Ozric
Boff'in said:
Being born in the later 70's, I grew up on 8-bit, was a teenage during 16-bit, and watch the mature rating being used as 3D games took off in the late 90's as I moved into eligible to vote and get drunk.

and I remember my awe at seeing elite, fantasising about the planets and star-ship travel.

on my meek little c64 later on in life, oh how I pretended those games were more advanced, projecting from my heart than what those pixels (and later on polygons) could represent

Every life-cycle of tech had a tour-de-force, something that made you gawk with OMG i am THERE, I can't believe I get to play something like this, whether it was the original Doom, half-life, GTA3, the sims, i-war, HL2 / Farcry1, Doom3, Crysis,

And even after sighing and tutting over some mechanic, or progress bar that never seams to be filled,
there are these moments,
and I just had one,
the music kicked in, I had to fiddle round with my jump destinations as I was about to run out of fuel, and landed at some 'port' (any port will do in a storm), with a plan in my head to buy bigger fueltanks, downgrade my armour, and power distributor to lighten my load,
and I was swushing past a gass giant, and one of those newly textured moons to get to the station and....I was just staring in awe at the gas gaint, the rings and the moon. Supercruise cut out, and the station zoomed up, the ATC kicked in, nothing I hadn't seen a like probably a million times by now, and it just got to me, as I flew in and docked all giddy and shocked...

I can't believe I get to play this.
Click to expand...

I have the same starting point as you. And yes this game is amazing for just those moments.

A couple of weeks ago I had docked at an Outpost that was in very close proximity to a landable planet. I didn't have time to notice the textures on the way in because I always Buckyball my way into stations (force of habit). I landed at the station, with just the blackness of space stretching out in front of me, refuelled, sold a few things I'd picked up on my travels and then hit launch. The landing pad took me down, turned me around, and then brought me back up...

I was greeted with the sight of this majestic red, yellow and purple marked planet in front of me, covering half of the screen. I just stared at it for about 10 seconds without even realising I had been let go by the landing clamps. Then, almost sensing I needed a nudge, the music kicked in (it really does seem to have a way of coming it at just the right moments). I looked around taking in all of the tiny details on the Outpost, glimmering half hidden behind the planet was the star in the system and then as I took off the Orion nebula (with it's close neighbours), Pleiades cluster and California nebula all came into view having been previously obscured by the station.

Actually breath taking!
 

Bryan K

Bryan K
I feel like that alot when playing ED, especially due to the VR aspect.

I was flying out of a starport the other day on the dark side of an ELW, and it was just a few minutes before/after sunrise/sunset. I had to stop and just stare at that beautiful red horizon for awhile.

I’m still in my twenties, though, so I missed the first golden age of gaming to use as a reference. We started with an NES in my household.
 
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ColonelJack71

ColonelJack71
A far cry from the BBC Micro days... Remember : A First Class Passenger Cabin and a fuel scoop and tourists will pay you to go to places like this :

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Solsticide

Solsticide
I know what you mean, I had a similar moment with the original Frontier Elite 2 when I got it for the Amiga (the whole galaxy on one floppy disk!), starting on the surface of Merlin in Ross 154. The purple sky, Aster looming overhead with the rings, and the noise of the wind blowing in my ears. This awe turned to amusement when the first thing I did was accidentally fire my lasers on the landing pad, causing Ride of the Valkyries to start playing and about 40 police Vipers to take off and attack. About 8 of them crashed into the planet and exploded before they managed to blow me up too. I thought it was hilarious.
 

Ashnak

Ashnak
In this case, don't even think about trying ED in VR.

Seriously.

Otherwise, you'll have a whole new level of addiction.
 

CMDR ANCALAGON

C
I was also born in the late 70's, and when I first left the star port and where ever it was that I started, having no idea what this game is (it was on sale and had space ships - sold) I opened the gal map, zoomed in and out and back in, closed it, looked around at the starport and planet, opened the gal map again and thought to myself "wow, this is the future we were promised!"
 

amcb10

amcb10
I am from the same era.

My first was a ZX81 then C16, C64, Atari ST, Amiga and first PC was a 386 DX25.

This game has come a very long way since then and even though I moan about parts of it I still keep coming back.

The awe in this game blows me away at times.
 

IndigoWyrd

IndigoWyrd
Like the OP, I was a product of the 70's - older than Star Wars and the Internet.

I played a little bit of video games, not so much in the 70's, only a little bit more in the 80's. I spent most of my time studying martial arts, practicing my marksmanship, and learning things like survival skills, how to climb virtually anything, playing sports, and chasing skirts.

In the 90's I still did a lot of these things, but spent more of my down-time playing various games - Final Fantasy and other RPG's mostly. Then a short stint in college, then off to the military.

Into the 2000's I had more down-time for gaming, got into things like Quake, Unreal Tournament, America's Army - and that pretty much finished me off for FPS and PvP gaming. I had some pretty astonishing records, even got harried by the occasional recruiter and had to tell them I'd already done my time, got my medals, went to sniper school and wasn't coming back for any more.

Got divorced, spent a little time homeless, living in an internet cafe, got back into college again, healed from a work-related injury and surgery, and of course, I had a bit more time to play some games and chase skirts again. Got to play a number of titles - various FF games, Elder Scrolls - again mostly RPG's.

Caught a skirt, got married again, made kid, settled into a job - and discovered an amazing up-and-coming game - No Man's Sky. The technology behind it seemed fascinating, and the look of it... like a pastel acid trip that would leave Lewis Carroll scratching his head. I pre-ordered, but I was feeling an itch to play something spacey. I started looking, and a couple titles caught my eye. Star Citizen looked really good, but there were a few things working against it. First, it was a pre-alpha, and they wanted way too much money to buy-in. Then, I noted Chris Roberts was behind it, and this threw up a huge red flag. Roberts hadn't done anything since Wing Commander, and those were barely alright, if not terribly simple, and he'd built a track record of over-promising and under-delivering. Then I noted what you could buy to buy in, and realized this was a pay-to-win model, so I was done. That left Elite: Dangerous.

Never heard of it, but came to find out it was the continuation of an old series of games. It looked really nice too, but it was all just flying around in space, station hopping. Too bad. I picked up The Witcher 3 instead and started playing that. Great game, finally finished it Monday night. I was still feeling that itch, and No Man's Sky announced the release was being delayed. Bummer. I looked around again for something to scratch with, and I saw Horizons had since been released, and it featured Planetary Landing. And it was on sale, and I could get it, the base game, and some extras all in one bundle. Hard to pass up a bundle on sale, so I bought.

I came, I saw...

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No Man's Sky did finally release, and I still play it too. For all the wonder and beauty of Elite, I still find it lacking in some areas, especially where Exploration is concerned, but NMS has that covered in spades. Wildly pastel colored spades. Elite might, some day, reach some measure of this - we'll see. They're both very different from each other. Elite is extremely complex, like a flight simulator with a game in it. NMS is simple, like a game with a flight-like element in it.

But needless to say, I'm here for the long haul. From now, until the servers shut down.
 

EISENHORN01

EISENHORN01
I can’t hear Blue Danube without going back to the 80s and thinking about the pure joy ELITE gave me back then. It doesn’t matter where I am in RL if I hear that music I’m a kid again memories like that are priceless. I still wish it played on the loading screen of ED as well as when using the DC.
 

Dr Zarkov

Dr Zarkov
Back in February of 2016, when I docked my Hauler at Lave Station, I was jumping with joy - felt like coming home after 30 years when I parked my Cobra III there. Wife and kids thought I went nuts :)

I've waited 30 years for all this.
 

Vandaahl

Vandaahl
Dr Zarkov said:
Back in February of 2016, when I docked my Hauler at Lave Station, I was jumping with joy - felt like coming home after 30 years when I parked my Cobra III there. Wife and kids thought I went nuts :)

I've waited 30 years for all this.
Click to expand...

That was the first thing I did when gamma was released back in dec 2014, going back home :)
 

Quantis Trap

Quantis Trap
In Dec 14 when I started, I wanted to fly back to Lave but my space trucker jumped right in and did the grind to the Cobra first.

I bypassed the Hauler at the time bouncing through the Adder instead. I haven't put it down for very long since.

This game is definitely a huge step in visuals, but I wish it progressed the story faster.
 

Canoe

Canoe
I remember waking up extra early on a Saturday morning to load up Elite, by cassette drive, on my Commodore 64. It was wire-frame, simple, crude, but we filled in the universe with our imagination in ways I think are a little lost in modern times. It's still a spectacularly beautiful universe, I just hope it's given the due attention and love it deserves.


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