Elite: "Not so much a game, more a way of life."
17K+ hours in Elite Dangerous since I bought the first iteration of the game shortly after launch, and counting.
It's called, "Elite", for a reason. It was always a daunting slog to achieve Elite status in any of the Elite games. You knew you had reached something special, in rarefied company. Exclusivity and status require commitment, sacrifice. That has always been the point, and when Frontier Elite II arrived in 1993, even on 1.2MB floppy, the game environment gave us vastness at accurately modeled galactic scale. That's the big part of why Braben became a legend to a generation of gamers. Truly vast, open ended gameplay, that let us step into a truly challenging, 3d combat and trading simulation that for decades, no other game has come close to matching, and became an escape to an alternative environment for me and many other players, in some cases, also for decades.
I had an FE2 installation that migrated to every IBM PC I owned, and was still playing it between other games, until ED came out.
I've played a lot of games over 40 something years in computing and gaming, and with all I've loved and will fly a flag for, no other game has come remotely close to providing such a level of complexity and immersion experience over so much of that time.
In my personal case, the game has also granted me a critical psychological offset through the challenges of chronic and more recently, immediately life threatening illness.
That's why we play it.
That's why we love it.
o7 Commanders
17K+ hours in Elite Dangerous since I bought the first iteration of the game shortly after launch, and counting.
It's called, "Elite", for a reason. It was always a daunting slog to achieve Elite status in any of the Elite games. You knew you had reached something special, in rarefied company. Exclusivity and status require commitment, sacrifice. That has always been the point, and when Frontier Elite II arrived in 1993, even on 1.2MB floppy, the game environment gave us vastness at accurately modeled galactic scale. That's the big part of why Braben became a legend to a generation of gamers. Truly vast, open ended gameplay, that let us step into a truly challenging, 3d combat and trading simulation that for decades, no other game has come close to matching, and became an escape to an alternative environment for me and many other players, in some cases, also for decades.
I had an FE2 installation that migrated to every IBM PC I owned, and was still playing it between other games, until ED came out.
I've played a lot of games over 40 something years in computing and gaming, and with all I've loved and will fly a flag for, no other game has come remotely close to providing such a level of complexity and immersion experience over so much of that time.
In my personal case, the game has also granted me a critical psychological offset through the challenges of chronic and more recently, immediately life threatening illness.
That's why we play it.
That's why we love it.
o7 Commanders
Last edited:
