When did you first encounter Elite?

[Pastie]

Many years back I went up a friends house because he said that he had a new game that let you fly around space and trade and kill things, I thought he was having a laugh. It was on his BBC micro computer. I was amazed. Very basic when you look back at it, but at the time it was brilliant.
I was only 14 at the time

As the years went by I played many other versions of this game, better graphics each time, and always fun to play.

Can't wait till this one comes out. I just hope my computer is up to spec

Where did you first encounter Elite?

 

[Geraldine]

Hi Pastie
Firstly, welcome to the forum! Always great to hear from new people signing up. My first encounter was by way of the good old Spectrum. That was a great version of the game. Not as iconic perhaps as the BBC version but still had all those important features that made the original game great.
Like yourself, I too played just about every edition of the game since then and if you want to re-play some of those classics, do drop by the Elite Forever site were you will find many easy to use packages of the classic games themselves plus a selection of the open source remakes too.

Have fun in the forums.

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

Pasti? Humm very very long shot here but people tend to keep the same handles through different sites.

Were you the Pasti that was a staff member of a site that talked about PC Tech?

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

Were you the Pasti that was a staff member of a site that talked about PC Tech?

PM tends to work better for things like this

OP - Computer magazine reviewed BBC Elite and said it was coming to the ZX Spectrum ... Firebird Software; glorious box with a lovely plastic lenslock device; ahh .. them were the days.

 

[Listeri69]

I didn't purchase the original Elite, it came with the BBC B micro we purchased in 1984. I remember it taking forever to load up on tape . I got as far as dangerous on the original game, and pretty much the same on Elite+ that I had on the Archimedes A3000, I played frontier elite 2 on the PC an old 486 DX100 but I never played First Encounters. I didn't really like the jousting aspect of the fighting on frontier although the missions and trade were much improved as were the galaxy ect. I'm hoping now in Elite Dangerous that all the brilliant innovations are brought together along with some gratuitous eye candy. The game design so far looks amazing and I can't wait to fly out into the unknown

 

[Pyros]

Played it in the speccy also (a spectrum plus to be mroe exact).

Oh, those were the days

I did find by absolute chance a bug in the game that allowed instant transportation to target destination space station

 

[Patrick_68000]

Played it in the speccy also (a spectrum plus to be mroe exact). Oh, those were the days
I did find by absolute chance a bug in the game that allowed instant transportation to target destination space station

One day I decided that I wanted to play a game. So I went to the store and I looked at the boxes of games. I noticed Frontier Elite 2. The box was very nice and the description of the game was motivating. I've played on my Atari ST and like you, I found a bug by accident. Finally I never knew how if it was a bug. I was able take tons of gemstones, and the system was paying me for it, and resell them in the next system at the highest possible price. The system was throwing gemstones as one gets rid of garbage.

 

[Theor]

Came free on the front of Amstrad action! And the cassette didn't work :/ So, sent off for the disc version instead

 

[Philip Coutts]

My brother played it at college and bought a copy for his acorn electron. I watched open mouthed and he let me play after much whinging. Been hooked ever since

 

[Patrick_68000]

My brother played it at college and bought a copy for his acorn electron. I watched open mouthed and he let me play after much whinging. Been hooked ever since

And after, you play, and him whinging ?

 

[DWorth]

I actually first came across Elite at school. Someone seemed to have sold them a copy on the grounds that it was educational. None of the staff understood it, so as I 'knew about computers' I was asked to play around with it. Unfortunately it was incredibly difficult to control without a joystick so I never got very far.

Then some years later, a friend of mine came round to my house clutching a copy of The One Amiga, which contained a preview of a new and amazing looking space game: Frontier: Elite II. We drooled over the screenshots and waited for its release... and waited... and waited... finally it came out and we both played it to death. We even started to document the game and put together our own guide of trade-routes, combat tactics, mission tips, ship configurations, wormhole jump co-ordinates and distant colonised systems and so on. This was in the days when the internet was in its infancy and almost unheard of outside of universities, but we had some vague notion of being able to sell this and put together our own disk. Not that we ever did.

I still have my original save game still going - even though I now play via an emulator.

Happy days.

 

[Zak Gordon]

I had a ZX81 (+16K rampack!) at the time, and was busy typing my own ascii looking games into it and learning to program in Basic.

A friend of mine, even more into the new computer tech than myself, invited me over to his one day after school to show me his new game, Elite on his BBC B micro. He loved it so much that he even bought it for his Electron just to see the difference!

Needless to say i was blown away, as Elite compared to anything i could see on my ZX81 was light years ahead. I twisted my parents arms so that for that coming xmas i would get a new more sophisticated home computer. After lots of exhaustive research i decided i wanted an Atari 800 (it had the best graphics display with a possible 256 colours etc). Sadly Elite never made it to that platform! Still at least it had a decent Basic so i was able to carry on learning to program, thinking that one day i might make a type of Elite for it (didn't happen!).

It wasn't until i owned an Amiga that i actually owned a copy of Elite for myself, but since then it is one of those games i always have a copy of in my gaming collection.

 

[Capt. Hook]

First player on the BBC Micro - ported it over to Dragon32 and then later loved it on the Amiga and then Frontier on the A1200.

 

[Moongazer]

I first played Elite on a spectrum+, the game did not come with a manual but i came across a second hand copy of i think it was an atari version which had the manual in it so i bought that . Then when i had an Amiga bought that version.

 

[Zak Gordon]

First player on the BBC Micro -ported it over to Dragon32 and then later loved it on the Amiga and then Frontier on the A1200.

You ported it to the Dragon 32?!! Good job. Awesome! The days or many uk computers, Dragon, Oric, Sinclair, Amstrad.....and i'm sure i'm missing a couple?

 

[Tenshi]

I always had a spectrum 16k never could afford the BBC micro. Eventually saved up and got an Amiga 500 and Elite Frontiers was the most played game I had on that computer.

As I played the game I wondered what it would be like with other people playing it over a network, then Eve was released in 2003 my dream came true to a point. And now Elite is coming back I feel like a kid in a sweet shop with this and Star Citizen 2014 is going to be awesome and full of win.

 

[Crayfish]

I first encountered Elite in an article in "Your Sinclair" magazine I believe. I was incredibly jealous of BBC Computer owners because of it.

 

[Sir.Tj]

First encountered Elite in the school computer room, that was on a BBC Micro and it was always a fight to even just to see the screen.

 

[Gwenydd]

I first discovered Elite when it was released for the Commodore 64. I loved it and still do. Can't wait to play Elite Dangerous.

Gwen

 

[TheBetpet]

Grabbed a compilation pack for my Amstrad CPC which had it on. It was one of the appeals for the pack and was hooked after that. Never got to Elite (well, not without cheating anyway)