Elite is 30 years old today

[TraceRacing]

For those of us who were playing games 30 years ago, Elite raised the bar on the BBC Micro and other computers.

Currently Eliteangerous is is beta and the beta 2 code drop is a week or so away.

Anyone else an E fan and playing the beta? If you are, look me up

Commander TraceRacing

[Old Greg]

For those of us who were playing games 30 years ago, Elite raised the bar on the BBC Micro and other computers.

Currently Eliteangerous is is beta and the beta 2 code drop is a week or so away.

Anyone else an E fan and playing the beta? If you are, look me up

Commander TraceRacing

Right on Commander!

[NickFitz]

A mate of mine worked at the local Acorn dealership, so he got all the new stuff as soon as it came out. A while before, Acornsoft had released Geoff Crammond's Aviator, a Spitfire flight sim that included a suspension bridge you could fly under in its (rather small) world, and I was blown away that such 3D graphics could be achieved on the machine.

Then they released Elite, with multiple ships on screen, vast distances to fly, hundreds of star systems spread across multiple galaxies, and - wait for it - hidden surface removal!!!

It was an incredible achievement from a technical perspective, and a revolution in game development.

Happy Birthday, Elite!

[NickFitz]

Incidentally, those nostalgic for a bit of 6502 assembly language can download the source from co-author Ian Bell's site: Ian Bell's BBC Elite Page

[Churchill]

A mate of mine worked at the local Acorn dealership, so he got all the new stuff as soon as it came out. A while before, Acornsoft had released Geoff Crammond's Aviator, a Spitfire flight sim that included a suspension bridge you could fly under in its (rather small) world, and I was blown away that such 3D graphics could be achieved on the machine.

Then they released Elite, with multiple ships on screen, vast distances to fly, hundreds of star systems spread across multiple galaxies, and - wait for it - hidden surface removal!!!

It was an incredible achievement from a technical perspective, and a revolution in game development.

Happy Birthday, Elite!

And you can download the source code :-)

[sbakoola]

I feel so old, I got it for my C64 back in 1984.

Still Elite Dangerous is released at the end of the year (yes I helped to Kickstart it, sad I know)

[original PM]

I had it on my acorn electron (bbc micros retarded smaller sibling) years of fun till my save corrupted

Then got it for my c64 and did it all over again (with colour and docking music).

And then I had to upgrade my atari st 520 to a full meg of ram (ooh cost me about 100 quid for that half meg ram stick back in 92/93) just so I could play elite frontier

Lazy hazy days of times gone by.

:-D