Elite / Frontier searching for amazing mid-late 90's space game

Hi all, basically one day in the year 1997 i think (i was around 13/14yo) in the UK, my dad comes home from his start-up biz. He says the newly hired french programmer at the office has installed a game on his sony vaio laptop for us to play. so we check it out. :eek: this game was soooo amazing. obviously im trying to identify this game so i can play it again. below are all the clues to help track it down.

1. upon loading the game had the words FRONTIER and maybe ELITE.

2. most of the screen during game play was black and you were navigating a little spaceship.

3. the view was in 2D (not first person shooter). i.e you would be floating around in space as a light greyish coloured rectangular shaped ship maybe 1.5cm in length and 7mm in width approx.

4. the key words i remember were DOCKING and LOOTING.

5. you would float in quite a physically realistic motion towards a large block
of grey something maybe a space centre and you would attach yourself to it maybe and DOCK and maybe LOOT i cant remember exactly.

6. you would encounter some hostile ships similar or bigger maybe and have to fight with them i think but cant remember the weapons, maybe firing red coloured lasers or missiles not sure.

7. there were portals i think which you would find randomly after some time playing and i think u would rush to catch it before it dissapears. you would then be transported to another location, with new places to dock and things to loot. i think i remember some things being coloured a bright ruby red whether it was around the portals or maybe the weapons laser beams etc.

now i know you're all thinking, well if the words FRONTIER and/or ELITE FRONTIER showed up as the game was loading then it must be those games.

believe me ive searched google endlessly looking for screenshots of anything with those words in them and they dont look anything like the game im trying to find.

what is confusing is that they have the same words as their titles and also even have similar gameplay and plot descriptions i.e floating around in space trading and docking and looting etc! so its so confusing and frustrating when u look at every game in every series and nothing looks anything like it.

so either i was playing this game in one of many possible views i.e i played it in the long distance view so i can see the big picture and the space ship exterior from far away, and didnt ever "zoom in" to go into first person shooter like the views im seeing in screenshots of the frontier series.

so anyway the reason why i cant just turn on that old laptop is because within a year that sony vaio laptop back in late 90's just suddenly died. we sent it to sony and they wanted over a thousand to repair it so we said forget it and thus never saw that game again. its in that sony vaio hard drive but i cant get to it! i try and motivate myself to find it online but then give up and forget about it for a couple of years when i dont find anything and then i get all nostalgic and want to find it again when i see anything to do with space in the news or new space games which dont compare to it in my opinion.:(

hope u can help
 
it sounds very much like elite and there si enough youtube footage around to clear it up, seriously if its elite you will know, asside from that I remember a game that came out called 'epic' had the mother of all intro videos complete with classic soundtrack and looked the part, but cant remember too much on the game itself
 
Hi archamedes, thanks for the quick reply.

i just checked youtube as you suggested, searching " frontier elite" and unfortunately all the screenshots were what i was expecting and have seen before over the last 6 or 7 yrs. also checked out Epic and also doesnt look like the game im searching for. the game im talking about definitely didnt look like frontier games at all. it was played from a different perspective as described. its just incredible that theres so many web pages for really mediocre games but then absolutely NOTHING for this game. its like i was the only one who played it. maybe that programmer made the game himself and just let a few people play it i dont know now what to beleive haha! its just insane how theres no trace of this game. its too good to not have any fans or following. im not even a sci fi geek but i found this game ridiculously good so the star trek types would be in galactic heavan so its a mystery why nobody has made a website about it since its release. very strange...
 
have you checked 'abandonware' websites? there are hundreds of sites out there that allow you to play really old dos and windows 3.1 games using the dosbox program. i wont add any links because some people still find downloading old games for free as a grey area, even though most are not avaliable to purchase anymore and i don't want to get into trouble if this forum doesn't agree, but try abandonware search into google and have a look through the games a-z, most have screenshots and even video clips
 
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haha, no basically that start up ended with my dads old uni friend stabbing him in the back. it was a 80/20 partnership, my dad was the entrepreneur and his friend was a systems analyst but not business minded at all. my dad came up with the idea and turned it into a biz that all the big software companies wanted to acquire just around the dot com boom. the old uni "friend" got greedy and denied there was ever any 80/20 contract. u can imagine the rest. my dad left with nothing and after years creating the biz and hiring all the programmers. but they all stayed with the winner so there hasnt been any contact with the french programmer since. ahh the depressing past is all coming back to me now. maybe our brains all buried all those bad memories deep into the abyss including the title of this ****** game!
 
Hello Cantfindit
From you description it sound like a PD game, then again as you said it may have been made by the programmer
But as long shot Escape Velocity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgjcRRu4aqk

hey thanks for that Spacegamer. just looked at some screenshots it actually is probably the closest looking shots ive seen to the game im looking for. its got similar perspective in terms of distance zoomed out and also the size of the things in the game. however the main difference i see is that escape velocity has 3d objects whereas game im talking about is just 2D but high quality graphics. thats whats so strange about it. its 2D but the physics is so smooth and floaty and realistic. the graphics also very detailed and not blurry or low detail like a lot of the games around those years. there were no characters or graphics of "cartoon like characters" it was just pure space exploration and floating around docking and looting and going thru portals and then suddenly being confronted by hostile ships upon going thru the portal. i think it even had good music im not sure now. but its just so weird that the game had the words frontier and or elite because i confirmed it with my younger bro who remembers it by one or both of those names too so its not my imagination. and also i seriously doubt that french programmer made the game haha i was just joking about how i dont know what to believe anymore as its like only me my dad and bro know of this game.:S
 
here is an "artists impression" haha of what i remember. its mainly to show the size/proportions and kinds of colours to help jog anyones memory. ofcourse i drew this in less than 2 minutes in ms paint and its got much much more detail on the space station and player spaceship. also im not sure whether it was the portal that had those ruby red colours or it was even on the player ship itself (possibly weapon laser beams maybe not sure)

quickmspaintmemoryversiu.jpg
 
A conundrum. :S
Could have been the Solar Wind games but both of em have characters talking in them.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/solar-winds-the-escape/screenshots

definitely not that Solar Wind game unfortunately. my drawing is actually quite accurate and only difference is that there is much greater detail on the player ship and the docking station thats all. everything else in terms of proportion and looks is actually very similar. if anything the game i played was AHEAD of its time because i remember thinking how incredible the detail was and how deep and atmospheric it was. nothing like these really old looking blurry 16 bit arcade pixelated games. this was like a post 2000 type game so cant have been old. the mod on abandonia reckons i mustve been playing an older game because my description doesnt add up??? its really frustrating and a shame cos this game should be in everyones top 3 space games without a doubt!

ive posted this same thread on abandonia to see what they say. their forum is a bit funny tho because since ive posted there has been 1 reply by a mod and that means theres at least 2 views maybe many more but my thread doesnt even show up in that section of the forum so doubt anyone will see it if i cant see it myself. its in the: request games > unknown games thread (if anyone cares haha).
 
Your artists impression made me think of Uridium 2 on the Amiga, but it's probably not what you're looking for.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhOxA8l5wrk

The mention of a portal and docking made me think of it as your ship comes through a portal at the start of each level of the game and you also dock with the big space ships to get inside and destroy their reactors and collect power ups.
 
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