Elite / Frontier Your Elite Memories

[Callum Rowley]

Greetings,

To celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Elite we want to get people remembering their experiences of the game - be it something in-game, how you first found Elite or who you used to play it with - we want to hear it. We've opened a section on the Elite website for peoples Memories of Elite, so tell us yours and have it featured here!

We all look forward to hearing about some of the great times you've had in Elite!

 

[Sir.Tj]

I remember Elite being on the school computer (yes computer not computers) in the Computer room it was a BBC Micro, you would have one person playing the game with about 20 kids (and teachers sometimes) watching, giving advice and shouting. Especially when your were trying to dock.

Ahh, happy days.

 

[Steve O B Have]

I remember waiting desperately for the tape version of Elite to load up, sitting patiently watching hex numbers climb, expecting at any moment for it to crash and I'd have to start it all over again.

Being on tape and not knowing how to save game to a floppy my brother and I would have to start the game from scratch every time and we'd play it till our BBC B+ would overheat. Slowly the screen would develop artifacts and then eventually freeze... Away we would go to wait for it to cool down, only to come back a couple of hours later to start the process all over again...

 

[DrBaggy]

4am, been playing too long on my Amstrad, got to dangerous in the original Elite and I've survived attacks by pirates, badly damaged but docking with the Coriolis station manually, and then there's a "crunchcrunchcrunch" as I misjudge the docking and an hour's play is lost.

Fantastic! A sense of danger and fragility that made space seem more real and more engaging than any space sim since

 

[Steve]

I was at college when Elite was released (showing my age now) and I managed to scrape together £14.95 to buy the BBC cassette version - a disk drive was out of the question.

Once I'd figured out how to dock I played the game to death, often missing college as a result. Well, Elite was much more interesting than A-level maths

 

[Paul Shonk]

Elite of the Year

Like most people of the time that had a computer I remember Elite very well... during my mid teens playing games and coding on the BBC and always sharing the fun with my father.

Especially so as May 1985 - Elite of the Year - that was me!

I've been working in computing ever since, always enjoying the time and games as they progress, just wondering when an updated Elite will surface.

 

[Marcus]

Wow 25 years!

I suppose like a lot of people in Britain I played ELITE for the first time on the humble ZX Spectrum, though it took a bit longer than I had wanted...

It began with my brother John and me visiting a friends house because he had managed to save enough pocket money to buy the game. I remember being blown away at the full sized cover poster on the door of our local computer game shop and desperately wanting to play it

I remember pouring over the beautiful packaging and after he showed us how to play it he agreed to come over and load it up for us (what a guy!).

So round he came and got it working (that Lenslok was a tricky thing!) and left with his copy back to his house....well my brother has first go and after numerous attempts (all unsuccessful) at docking turns the Spectrum off and declares that I would have hated it as it "was rubbish"....grrrrrr!

I dont think I have saved for anything so hard in my life, but I did finally managed to buy my own copy and have never looked back

The docking was hard though

 

[Michael Brookes]

I remember my mum becoming addicted to Repton when I first got Elite and having to battle with her for use of the computer

Michael

 

[Stefan Mars]

Mothers eh? When I asked mine to get me a copy of the game she spotted the screenshot on the back of the box and went "slaves? drugs? I don't think so!". I was kind of impressed actually, you had to read all the text on the screenshot to spot what you could trade in - never thought she would bother.

Six months later she had forgotten and I made damn sure the game was ordered through a mail-order company so that she could not spot that screenshot again.

Not entirely sure what she gained since I was playing the game at a friend's place before then and had indeed mentioned that fact to her.

 

[Sir.Tj]

Mothers eh? When I asked mine to get me a copy of the game she spotted the screenshot on the back of the box and went "slaves? drugs? I don't think so!". I was kind of impressed actually, you had to read all the text on the screenshot to spot what you could trade in - never thought she would bother.

Six months later she had forgotten and I made damn sure the game was ordered through a mail-order company so that she could not spot that screenshot again.

Not entirely sure what she gained since I was playing the game at a friend's place before then and had indeed mentioned that fact to her.

That's made my day that, just needed the rock and roll to complete the set. (Had the same problem with my Dad and a BMX/Grifter argument)

 

[waffoo]

Many hours spent on the BBC B version (with a floppy drive, natch..) round a friend's house. Later, my neighbour had a version who had it on the Commodore 64 (alcoholic, smoked like a chimney, huge pirated VHS Collection, played Elite - awesome for an impressionable 12 year old). Finally got my own version on the Spectrum and in the words of Bryan Adams, 'played it 'till my fingers bled'.

A great regret was never making ELITE status, although nearly wept when i got to DEADLY.

I would swear that the hours spent playing this game got me through my initial pilot aptitude tests for the military (in the early 90's the vector graphics they used for testing hand/eye co-ordination were very similar to those used in Elite..) and have thus spent my professional career flying helicopters for the Royal Navy!!

 

[Zardozz]

Elite Memories & the beginning of my career

I was 18 when I first played Elite on the BBC Micro, at boarding school where the Computer Room had 4 Micro's. The first time I destroyed an Asp & collected its cargo got me hooked. I spent so many hours in that small room, perhaps too many that my grades suffered. I also have an old photo of me holding my christmas present, of Elite for the ZX Spectrum, I didn't own the speccy it was my elder brother's but while he was home onleave from the Army, we'd play it till the tape snapped & we had to buy another copy. Thankfully he had a MicroDrive & we'd saved my games to it.

In 1986 I started work for Virgin Megastores in Leeds, selling & buying for the shop. I remember doing the shop displays when Frontiers came out, we had an Comodore64; Amiga; Amstrad464; Atari ST & 286 PC all with monitors running with games to promote/demo. Those days were the best. From the friends I made there, it's sparked so many careers. 4 in the games development, some programmers others graphics.

Thank you David & Ian for the BEST GAME EVER!! I still yearn to recreate its drag on my imagination, some have come close like, Egosoft's X series & Volition's Freespace. But all of the wannabe's have you to thank & all yearn to become ELITE.

Zardozz

 

[JohannStrauss]

I remember me sitting in front of that computer with my friend after school....not eating, not drinking...just playing. Notating the prices and routes.
We gave some hints to a German gamemagazine and got 50 Deutschmarks for that trading hints. remember: there wasn't the Euro! We were eating softcakes and drinking peachjuice all day. The world was still a good place for me those days.

 

[bananascope]

i'm far to young to have ever played elite
my first memories of the elite universe came from frontier elite 2. my friend had a demo disk from amiga format magazine which had the frontier intro on it. he enthused over it for weeks til the game came out. i mearly kept saying 'its ok'. how foolish of me.
when said game was released we'd sit over it for for several years after, him the pilot on the mouse myself the gunner on the joystick. this of course meant that when i played on my own copy my piloting skills never developed to the point they should be for someone who logged as many hours as i did! and then....
with the death of the amiga the rise of the playstation then the xbox i stoped playing to my shame. it wasnt until about a year ago i discovered i could play it on my pc using dosbox and then the magic returned!
i still play it now 16(?) years after its release,how many games can claim that? so back to elite and all i can say that despite the fact i've never played it, if it can inspire a game such as frontier elite 2 it must have been very special indeed! lets hope for an elite 4 and even an elite 5 and let us return in 2034 to celebrate 50 years of elite!

 

[Taranis Dekker]

I remember being introduced to this by a friend on a C64, and it took me ages to get a copy for my Amstrad CPC464... after which I was well and truly hooked, much to the despair and anger of my parents, since they rarely saw me!

I remember the elation I felt when I progressed so far into it, that getting hold of the cloaking device, and the ECM jammer (those oft rumoured items!), and I remember how I felt when I made it too Elite - after dealing with the Thatrgoid invasion (remember the space station, and the subsequent supernova?) - and the paltry reward of 100g of Gems for stopping the Thargoids...

Good Times!

 

[Crayfish]

Memories of Elite

Sitting in front of my rubber keyed spectrum peering through a plastic lens held up to the screen to decipher some random numbers and letters. Then inspecting the meticulous records on the notepad by the computer that held the tape counter positions of all my saved games.

The long journey to the safe zone in an unsafe system. Watching other trader ships pass by whilst my jump drive was mass locked by them, first through the front view, then the much anticipated detailed view through the side port and finally watching them vanish to a dot in my rear view.

Shooting a harmless asteroid for the .1 credit bounty only to discover that it's currently occupied by a rock hermit. Now I have a Sidewinder and a Krait to deal with.

Successfully docking manually, always a relief.

 

[buellpilot]

Hi all

I was a Commodore 64 Elite player, and entered the Firefox Elite competion, and got to play in the UK finals. Which I amazingly won! I then went on to play the US champ in London, also beating him to become the Elite C64 World Champion... winning lots of swag and a two week expenses paid holiday in New York as a guest of Firefox. Great times and my first time in the USA... I still have many of my Elite keepsakes tucked away somewhere

Are there any other competion players out there??

 

[Nitronium]

Elite, the most scariest gaming moment of my life

Hey all,

I started playing Elite when I was about 7 I guess, 1985 or so. We had just come back from living in Hong Kong with a couple of fake Apples and we got hold of Elite. Myself, my brother, all my friends played it so much, we even named the trees in the school playing field after Diso, Lave, Sol, Redequat (sp?) and continued playing the game there!

The memory that sticks in my mind the most is from Elite II, which I've gotta say, is one totally amazing game "Only the best mature with time" on the box, hear hear!

Anyway, there I was manually taking off from Ross 154 I think, having a little fly about as you do. I aimed up to hyperspace away but was too close to the planet. I sped up, then put on the fast forward for some daft reason. About a second later, I stopped the fast forward only to find myself rediculously close to the gas giant, pretty much between the rings and the planet. Being this close really frightened me, I got shocked, my bum twitched and I start sweating as I gently coaxed my ship away and avoiding getting trapped in the gravitation pull. The planet almost filled my screen (only a little 14" monitor), but I was in the middle of nowhere, totally on my own about to be swallowed up in some god forsaken gas giant. The size of the planet put the jitters up me. I really felt like I was there. That has been the most scary moment in any game for me to date.

The games were and still are awesome. The trick is that there was always something else for you to learn. For me, the ultimate was landing manually on planets to go mining. Never made any money, but the satisfaction of being able to do it was reward enough. By the time I got to that stage, I had a Puma Clipper, every weapon, I wasn't interested in cash, I just wanted to be able to do it.

I've hoped games would come out that are more advanced Eiltes, networkable, better gfx etc etc. Freelancer came a little closer, but you still couldn't manually dock, and you couldn't land on planets. Those are the sole two things that would give me the freedom I experienced 20 years ago back and the two things that in my opinion, would make the Elite of Today. All space sims since just haven't managed those two things at all, and therefore aren't good enough for me.

Frontier, if you can get together a networkable Elite, with all the freedoms of Frontier Elite II, you will positively re-write history. Here's hoping!

David, thanks for 1984

 

[Callum Rowley]

There are some great memories in this thread!

Hi all

I was a Commodore 64 Elite player, and entered the Firefox Elite competion, and got to play in the UK finals. Which I amazingly won! I then went on to play the US champ in London, also beating him to become the Elite C64 World Champion... winning lots of swag and a two week expenses paid holiday in New York as a guest of Firefox. Great times and my first time in the USA... I still have many of my Elite keepsakes tucked away somewhere

Are there any other competion players out there??

This is a particularly interesting story! It's nice to know some of the competition winners are still lurking around

 

[buellpilot]

Still lurking around, and have been using this weeks anniversary to drop one liners into random conversations 'Did I ever tell you I was a world champion....'

Although when one fellow worker pointed out that he was only 22 that did make me feel old....

Although Mr Braben also looks a bit older than the last time I saw him, opening a bottle of bubbly for me