Fired it up, and OMG. Salutations to anyone that enjoys and can successfully play that game.
Apparently,hindsight is 20/20 and nostalgia is blind.
You ever wonder why people go gaga over a classic car? Someone who drives a 2015 Lexus or BMW would climb in a Model-T and think it was the worst ride ever. Why on earth would anyone get hyped up to drive a piece of junk that's so uncomfortable and noisy with no digital music or air conditioning that handles like a brick and can barely go faster than a person jogging?
The reason is that it's a piece of history. Just like there weren't always automobiles, there weren't always 3-D space sims. Before Elite, if you wanted to captain a starship, it looked like this:
See that -E- ? That's your ship. You maneuvered around with text commands in a turn based fashion looking for +K+ which were the enemy ships. Then a calculator computed the damage done by your attacks. That was as good as it got.
Then Elite comes along. 3D graphics? Upgradable ship? Trading posts? A galaxy with 1,000 systems and you could play it with a joystick? Back then, it was like playing first person Star Wars on Oculus Rift.
Nowadays, it's a Model-T. Most people who download it will play it for a while to remember what it was like back in the day. People who are too young to remember might dismiss it as old-style junk, but hopefully it will give them an appreciation for how far gaming has come.
Who knows, in 30 years, your kids will be playing the current high tech VR game and you'll show them something like Elite Dangerous, and they'll act in the same shocked way... "Why would ANYONE play that?!?"
