Elite (video game)

Did You Know?

• Acornsoft held a launch party for Elite at Thorpe Park theme park, an almost unheard-of event for a video game at the time.
• A variant called Elite A was created by Angus Duggan by disassembling and modifying the BBC Micro code, adding more ship types and gameplay improvements.
• The original Acornsoft version of the novella The Dark Wheel promised a sequel for 1985, but none was ever written.

Development

Braben and Bell cited influences including 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Battlestar Galactica, as well as authors Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert L. Forward, Isaac Asimov, and Orson Scott Card. The default commander name Jameson came from the Traveller tabletop role-playing game, though Braben denied substantial derivation from it. The two met at Jesus College, Cambridge; Bell was working on Freefall for Acornsoft, and Braben on an unfinished game called Fighter.

After comparing notes and seeing Star Raiders on the Atari 800, they collaborated on what became Elite. Thorn EMI rejected the game as too complicated, but Acornsoft agreed to publish after a demo of combat and docking sequences impressed executives, despite concerns about the project's ambition. The programmers received a £1,000 advance and a 7.5% royalty rate. Development took two years, starting as a 3D arcade game without trading, written in assembly language for maximum code compactness.

The 3D radar display was added in the last unused bytes. The BBC version used a split-screen approach for four colours; the Electron version ran in black and white due to incompatible video chips.

Versions

The first release was for the BBC Micro model B on tape and disk, followed about a month or two later by the Acorn Electron tape version, which was black and white and lacked Thargoids, suns, and missions; a bug preventing Galactic Hyperspace was fixed via a mail-in tape replacement. A version for the BBC Micro with the 6502 Second Processor, announced on 25 July 1985, added 18 ships, no disc loading at stations, screenshot and print capabilities, double the frame rate, and full colour via a MODE1/MODE2 split screen.

Telecomsoft won a bidding war for rights to other formats. The Commodore 64 conversion introduced Trumbles and played 'The Blue Danube' when the docking computer activated. The ZX Spectrum version, programmed by Torus, included a supernova mission. The Amstrad CPC conversion, programmed by Ricardo Pinto from a 6502 hex dump, had fewer ships but added supernova rescue and cloaking device missions, along with refined animations.

Reception

Elite received very positive reviews at launch; the BBC Micro version sold 107,898 copies, and the game became a national phenomenon in the UK. Bell estimated about 600,000 copies sold across all platforms, while Frontier Developments' page cites around one million units. Sophie Wilson called it 'the game that couldn't have been written'. Many players found it difficult, sparking debate in The Micro User's April 1985 letter column.

David Fell in Beebug Magazine called it 'the best game ever' for the BBC Micro. Shingo Sugiura in Personal Computer Games described it as vast, complex, and absorbing. John Cook in Micro Adventurer called it a masterpiece and the best game written for the BBC Micro. Crash magazine gave the Spectrum version 92%, calling it one of the most imaginative games ever designed.

Zzap!64 gave the Commodore 64 version 97% and the Amiga version 98%. It ranked 16th in Your Sinclair's Top 100 Speccy Games in 1992, 7th in the Readers' Top 100 Games of All Time in 1993, and 9th in a Retro Gamer readers' poll.