Elite / Frontier Which Elite version should I play?

[Skyhopper]

So I've been investigating for a while and I've boiled my options down to BBC Micro, Archimedes and NES. And Honestly I don't know which one I should play!! I find people placing either of those as their favourite.

I've read Archimedes Elite includes a lot of unique stuff such as AI doing its own stuff away from the character and these things and Ian Bell himself acknowedges a lot of people think it's the best one out there. But on the other hand I like the wire graphics and 8 bit of NES more, does the NES one also have good AI?.

What should I do? (Open to play other options I may have discarded initially).

 

[Arioch]

So I've been investigating for a while and I've boiled my options down to BBC Micro, Archimedes and NES. And Honestly I don't know which one I should play!! I find people placing either of those as their favourite.

I've read Archimedes Elite includes a lot of unique stuff such as AI doing its own stuff away from the character and these things and Ian Bell himself acknowedges a lot of people think it's the best one out there. But on the other hand I like the wire graphics and 8 bit of NES more, does the NES one also have good AI?.

What should I do? (Open to play other options I may have discarded initially).

My recommendation would be for a modified version of the ZX Spectrum game - Elite Legend.

I gave some thoughts on it in the thread here, but basically it is designed for the 128k Speccy and has loads of new things going on like new AI traffic, new encounter types, ships/stations from other versions of the game, and much more. All in glorious wire frame

I’m playing using the “Speccy” emulator on Android

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Ian Bell recommends the NES, I think.

 

[Koen]

Archimedes ELITE was definitely the best classic version of ELITE by far.

I played it on my Archimedes back in the early 1990s, now I use the Archie core on MiSTer FPGA to play it.

See this video on the Archie core (the player is clueless but the video contains some information on getting you started on the system if you are unfamiliar with RISC OS since the OS and GUI are very different from, well, everything else):

Source: https://youtu.be/hVDMqCeF6O4?si=qyJY_7MaBDMzwFWe&t=2489


MiSTer FPGA also supports BBC, NES, ZX Spectrum (including the Spectrum Next) and many other platforms.

Edit: also see this MiSTer FPGA forum post on different versions of ELITE: https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=4590

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

The one you have the most fun with.

 

[trixster1979]

6502 second processor Elite on the beeb is superb. ArcElite is probably the best overall but it’s quite difficult until you get used to it. The Amiga version is excellent too.