Elite Turns 25 159
satellite17 writes "The BBC notes that the classic space combat / trading sim Elite is 25 years old today. Elite was one of the first 3D games produced for a home computer and also one of the first open-ended games. Odd as it sounds now, this meant that even though it was popular with friends of the creators, David Braben and Ian Bell, they initially struggled to find a publisher. 'They just didn't get it; they wanted a high score and they wanted players to have three lives,' Braben said. It is also credited with influencing quite a few modern classics."
Riedequat is a tedious world (Score:2, Funny)
but plagued by mutant tree frogs.
Missions (Score:3, Funny)
I cant even begin to imagine how many hours my younger brother and I put into this game on the C64. I was hooked from the start, with the fabulous novella that came in the instruction manual. I pity those that only ever had a pirate version, the box set/manual/novella were a huge help in fuelling the imagination.
I still remember the day though when I came back home and my brother said 'oh I was playing Elite and it said something about 'Do you want to accept this mission' so I said no'
He still has imprints of my hands around his neck. I never ever saw a mission appear when I was playing.
Anyone else get through the missions? They still remain one of the greatest mysteries around that game to me.
Re:Some would call X3 the successor... (Score:3, Funny)
My combat algorithm was somewhat less refined than yours. I couldn't keep track of the enemy in flight, so I developed:
1) Lock autopilot onto enemy
2) a) If enemy is flying away, shoot at him.
2) b) If enemy is shooting at me, break lock and fly in another direction until he stops
2) c) If enemy launches missile, lock on autopilot, shoot, and hope missile bites it
3) If enemy is still alive, return to 1
As you can probably guess, about half of my encounters resulted in mutual destruction by collision.
Happy Birthday Elite (Score:3, Funny)
Not strictly on topic... but Elite is mentioned and I just have to post this as this entire thread reminded me of the following animation;
http://www2.b3ta.com/heyhey16k/heyhey16k.swf [b3ta.com]
Awesome... and good old days. Damn... now I'm going to fill the rest of my week of vacation playing Oolite... thanks, Slashdot :P