Sorry if this is in the wrong thread. I played (or at least I thought I played) on Elite as a child in the 80s on the school BBC Micro. It was my last year at Junior school, which was the British academic year 1983-84. I left in June 1984. Elite was released in September 1984. So according to these dates I simply could not have played Elite on the BBC as I remember. Unless of course the game was available before this time by some other method. Can anyone confirm this or have I just done too much damage to my brain over the years! I did play on the Acorn Electron as well, but I don't remember exactly when I got this.
Elite / Frontier When was Elite first playable on the BBC?
- Thread starter CMDR Lukas Vance
- Start date
Elite is a space trading video game, written and developed by David Braben and Ian Bell and originally published by Acornsoft for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron computers in September 1984.[1] Elite's open-ended game model, and revolutionary 3D graphics led to it being ported to virtually every contemporary home computer system, and earned it a place as a classic and a genre maker in gaming history.[2] The game's title derives from one of the player's goals of raising their combat rating to the exalted heights of "Elite".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_(video_game)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_(video_game)
Thing is I was doing O levels then, so I wouldn't have played... Or at least if I had then I'd not have got the results that I did.
Yep I know the Wikipedia article. It states when it was published. That doesn't mean you couldn't play it before then. Was it released in some form before the officially published date? I was hoping someone might be able to ask our Lord David Braben. I'll buy him a packet of biscuits if he can put my mind at rest.
Well if you can't get one of the authors why not the other one, from Ian Bell's site...
Ian Bell said:
So it was written in 1984 as well.
Which still leaves a window of 7 months for it to be possible.
I've followed the story of Elite very closely and there was a great deal of secrecy surrounding the game before it was released. It would be fascinating if there were pirated copies doing the rounds in primary schools!
I very much doubt it would have been a pirated copy. It was a small primary school in a tiny village in West Yorkshire! I just wondered whether a preview was released to schools. Again, I could be very much mistaken and my memories are of playing on the Acorn Electron. My various leisure activities between then and now have not exactly helped my memory...
As with myself, it's probably senility.
I remember buying Elite (disc drive version) for the BBC Model B in September 1984. I don't recall a preview version and I'm not even sure this was a thing in 1984 (cover mounted cassettes on Acorn User magazine would have been very expensive).
Played it first on my step brothers Amstrad, I didn't get on with my dad but boy did I visit a lot of weekends when elite came out. you loaded it via tape and it took ten minutes to down load, STICK THAT IN YOUR PIPE AND SMOKE IT when you young uns start moaning about crashes and disconnects YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW GOOD IT IS NOW A DAYS, You would sit there watching the screen listening to the game screech it's way through ten minutes AND BANG IT WOULD FAIL TO LOAD the despair was immense, your young heart would be crushed as the world fell in around you then you hit rewind and started again.
Yeah or the part where your save game tape broke when you were already at Deadly and you had to start again!
On the Beeb you only had to rewind to the start of the failedblock
Yeah I agree- I found that to be a great feature compared to most 8-bit machines at the time, which had to start their whole loading process again when something went pear-shaped!
As for helping the OP, all I remember is the conversion from the BBC to the Electron was release by Acornsoft at the same time, but was very much a shadow of its counterpart in terms of graphics/colours/sound and speed- poor thing. It also had that Galactic Hyperspace bug which was only fixed when Superior Software acquired the Acorn catalogue around 1986 and re-released it, which is when I purchased it myself.
Oi, you old fogies!
Can I join in?
The joy of getting the Electron floppy drive expansion and banishing tape loading errors was wonderful. Did miss the drama of the last minute failed loading block though
Can I join in?
The joy of getting the Electron floppy drive expansion and banishing tape loading errors was wonderful. Did miss the drama of the last minute failed loading block though
No need to get testy.
The joy of getting the Electron floppy drive expansion and banishing tape loading errors was wonderful. Did miss the drama of the last minute failed loading block though
I still have mine on the loft, the Z,X keys need re-soldering though, but it still works with the Plus1 and 5 1/4" floppy. (Well it did about 10 years ago when I last tested it)
The Electron had even less available memory than the BBC if memory serves, which it probably doesn't due to the 1990's. I doubt many of todays programmers could get Elite into 28kb.