Hey all. I'd like to take a moment here and regale you all with the tale about my life long flirtations with the Frontier Elite franchise.
First of all, I'm an American (yes I know, booo). I was also born in '84, the year Elite was released. So I didn't experience it until years after it's release. Here in America, the BBC Micro never took off. At all. The Amiga and the Commodore were relatively known, but almost no one actually owned one, and Acorn wasn't even known in the States at all.
The two big dominant PCs of the 80's here in the States were the Apple II and the IBM Compatibles like the i386 and the i486. after that Intel took over with the Pentium and throughout the 1990's, at least until Apple's big come back with the iPod, the Powerbook G4, and the iMac, the only real PCs on the market here were Intel Pentiums with Microsoft Windows throughout the 1990's.
We never really had anything from Acorn, BBC, or Commodore. Though as an anecdote, after their big return to form, Apple and their Macintosh line of PCs has become more popular here on the Pacific West Coast than even Windows PCs now. I know that's not the case in the UK. But here, we love Apple's developer tools and APIs. We're a very tech savvy bunch here on the west coast of the U.S.
Anyway, back to my story. The first time I was exposed to Elite was as a port on the Apple II in the late 80's. As a small child I loved space, so when my dad brought home a video game about it, I was ecstatic to say the least. It really wasn't long before I was docking like a champ. I had entire pages filling the study we kept the computer in. Pages of lists of systems and station names, all places that had good inventory stock of various commodities to trade.
Even as a small child, I was utterly engrossed in the sheer magnitude of the game.
But then the Apple II died of old age and was replaced by an Intel Pentium 2 PC, and my days with Elite faded away. I always had fond memories of the game, but I moved onto other games like Mechwarrior, Descent, FreeSpace, X-Wing, Wing Commander, and Homeworld. I was the outsider in my circle of friends. While they were all busy playing games like Doom, Quake, and Unreal Tournament (which were absolutely huge games here in the States), I was playing Mech sims and space games.
Then in the late '90's and early 2000's, right about the time I was in my last years of highschool, Blackberries and Palm Pilots became very popular, and I got myself a Handspring Visor Edge running PalmOS. In my search for games to play on the device, there was one game for PalmOS that spread through my circle of friends like wildfire. It went by the name of Space Trader.
Now, Space Trader was just a simple 2D space trading game. There was no flight sim gameplay involved. But from the moment I booted it up I was struck with this nagging feeling. I started out in a system called Lave... Surely that had to just be a coincidence? But no. The next system over was Leesti!
I knew these systems! But from where? This question haunted me for days. The longer I played this silly 2D trading game where all I did was tap, the more familiar it seemed. The ships themselves were new, and had different names, but the cargo space capacity... The weapon mounts... These were identical load outs to a space game I'd played before. I just knew it. But despite all the tapping involved in the game I couldn't quite place my finger on it. Nevertheless, I continued to play Space Trader, and it developed it's own special place in my heart as one of my favorite mobile games of the early 2000's.
A couple years later I'd bought my first laptop on my own from money saved from my job. One of the first space games I found for it was an open source game called Oolite, a fan-made remake of Elite. It was at that very moment, when I read the word "Elite" that all the dots connected in my own mind. All these years, all the space games I'd played and held in such high regard, Freespace, Wing Commander, Space Trader, most all of them had some ties to Elite. The game that started it all. It was at this point that I learned once and for all that Space Trader was a fan-made spiritual successor to Elite! That's why all the systems had the same names!
Fast forward ten years later to around 2013, and I'd added all of the original Elite games to my game library thanks to modern ports or DOSBox. I'd relived the childhood of wonder with Elite and brought it back with me into my early 30's.
Then I learned about a brand new kickstarter project called "Elite: Dangerous". And yes. It was the same Elite I'd fallen in love with twice in my life, and had been flirtatiously dancing around without even realizing it for most of that time. I have played almost every day for the last 3 years, and I don't intend to stop anytime soon.
Today, I'm buying an Oculus Rift just for Elite Dangerous while it's still on sale. I don't expect I'll be disappointed.
First of all, I'm an American (yes I know, booo). I was also born in '84, the year Elite was released. So I didn't experience it until years after it's release. Here in America, the BBC Micro never took off. At all. The Amiga and the Commodore were relatively known, but almost no one actually owned one, and Acorn wasn't even known in the States at all.
The two big dominant PCs of the 80's here in the States were the Apple II and the IBM Compatibles like the i386 and the i486. after that Intel took over with the Pentium and throughout the 1990's, at least until Apple's big come back with the iPod, the Powerbook G4, and the iMac, the only real PCs on the market here were Intel Pentiums with Microsoft Windows throughout the 1990's.
We never really had anything from Acorn, BBC, or Commodore. Though as an anecdote, after their big return to form, Apple and their Macintosh line of PCs has become more popular here on the Pacific West Coast than even Windows PCs now. I know that's not the case in the UK. But here, we love Apple's developer tools and APIs. We're a very tech savvy bunch here on the west coast of the U.S.
Anyway, back to my story. The first time I was exposed to Elite was as a port on the Apple II in the late 80's. As a small child I loved space, so when my dad brought home a video game about it, I was ecstatic to say the least. It really wasn't long before I was docking like a champ. I had entire pages filling the study we kept the computer in. Pages of lists of systems and station names, all places that had good inventory stock of various commodities to trade.
Even as a small child, I was utterly engrossed in the sheer magnitude of the game.
But then the Apple II died of old age and was replaced by an Intel Pentium 2 PC, and my days with Elite faded away. I always had fond memories of the game, but I moved onto other games like Mechwarrior, Descent, FreeSpace, X-Wing, Wing Commander, and Homeworld. I was the outsider in my circle of friends. While they were all busy playing games like Doom, Quake, and Unreal Tournament (which were absolutely huge games here in the States), I was playing Mech sims and space games.
Then in the late '90's and early 2000's, right about the time I was in my last years of highschool, Blackberries and Palm Pilots became very popular, and I got myself a Handspring Visor Edge running PalmOS. In my search for games to play on the device, there was one game for PalmOS that spread through my circle of friends like wildfire. It went by the name of Space Trader.
Now, Space Trader was just a simple 2D space trading game. There was no flight sim gameplay involved. But from the moment I booted it up I was struck with this nagging feeling. I started out in a system called Lave... Surely that had to just be a coincidence? But no. The next system over was Leesti!
I knew these systems! But from where? This question haunted me for days. The longer I played this silly 2D trading game where all I did was tap, the more familiar it seemed. The ships themselves were new, and had different names, but the cargo space capacity... The weapon mounts... These were identical load outs to a space game I'd played before. I just knew it. But despite all the tapping involved in the game I couldn't quite place my finger on it. Nevertheless, I continued to play Space Trader, and it developed it's own special place in my heart as one of my favorite mobile games of the early 2000's.
A couple years later I'd bought my first laptop on my own from money saved from my job. One of the first space games I found for it was an open source game called Oolite, a fan-made remake of Elite. It was at that very moment, when I read the word "Elite" that all the dots connected in my own mind. All these years, all the space games I'd played and held in such high regard, Freespace, Wing Commander, Space Trader, most all of them had some ties to Elite. The game that started it all. It was at this point that I learned once and for all that Space Trader was a fan-made spiritual successor to Elite! That's why all the systems had the same names!
Fast forward ten years later to around 2013, and I'd added all of the original Elite games to my game library thanks to modern ports or DOSBox. I'd relived the childhood of wonder with Elite and brought it back with me into my early 30's.
Then I learned about a brand new kickstarter project called "Elite: Dangerous". And yes. It was the same Elite I'd fallen in love with twice in my life, and had been flirtatiously dancing around without even realizing it for most of that time. I have played almost every day for the last 3 years, and I don't intend to stop anytime soon.
Today, I'm buying an Oculus Rift just for Elite Dangerous while it's still on sale. I don't expect I'll be disappointed.
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