Elite is a space tradingvideo game. It was written and developed by David Braben and Ian Bell and was originally published by Acornsoft for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron computers in September 1984.[2]Elite's open-ended game model, and revolutionary 3D graphics led to it being ported to virtually every contemporary home computer system and earned it a place as a classic and a genre maker in gaming history.[3] The game's title derives from one of the player's goals of raising their combat rating to the exalted heights of "Elite".
Non-Acorn versions were each first published by Firebird and Imagineer. Subsequently, Frontier Developments has claimed the game to be a "Game by Frontier"[2] to be part of its own back catalogue[19] and all the rights to the game have been owned by David Braben.[20]
Gameplay
The BBC Micro version of Elite, showing the player approaching a Coriolis space station
The player initially controls the character "Commander Jameson",[21] though the name can be changed each time the game is saved. The player starts at Lave Station with 100 credits and a lightly armed trading ship, a Cobra Mark III.[2] Most of the ships that the player encounters are similarly named after snakes or other reptiles.[22] Credits can be accumulated through a number of means. These include piracy, trade,[2] military missions, bounty hunting and asteroid mining. The money generated by these enterprises allows the player to upgrade their ship with enhancements such as better weapons, increased cargo capacity, an automated docking system, an extra energy bank and more.[23]
In the game universe, stars have single planets, each with a space station in its orbit. Stars are always separated by interstellar distances which cannot be crossed using the ship's sublight engines. Travel between stars is accomplished by hyperspace jumps, and is constrained to those within range of the limited fuel capacity (a maximum of 7 light years) of the ship's hyperdrive. Sublight travel uses no fuel.[24]
Fuel can be replenished after docking with a space station, which requires matching the ship's rotation to that of the station before entering the docking bay[21]—a task that can be avoided by purchasing a docking computer. Equipment upgrades include a fuel scoop, which allows "sun skimming"—collecting energy from the stars' corona[24]—described by the manual as "a dangerous and difficult activity", but in practice a fairly simple process far easier than manually docking at a space station—and collecting free-floating cargo canisters and escape capsules liberated after the destruction of other ships.[25]
While making a hyperspace jump between star systems, the antagonistic Thargoid[26] race may intercept the player half way, forcing the player's ship to remain in "witch-space" and do battle with the smaller invasion ships of the Thargoid. As the interrupted jump uses the full journey's fuel, the player may have insufficient fuel to subsequently jump to a nearby planet, trapping them in witch-space. They must either use an escape capsule, if owned, or abort the game and reload.[27]
An extremely expensive one-time galactic hyperspace upgrade permits travel between the eight galaxies of the game universe. There is little practical difference between the different galaxies. However, in some versions it is necessary to travel to at least the second galaxy to access the game's missions. The planetary layout of the galaxies is different, and many players have discovered trade routes between closely positioned planets with fortuitous economic combinations.
Most versions of Elite included several optional jobs for the Galactic Navy.[26] One requires tracking down and destroying a stolen experimental ship;[22] another involves transporting classified information on the Thargoids' home planet, with Thargoid invasion ships doing their best to see that the player does not succeed throughout the duration of the mission involving multiple interplanetary jumps.[28] Rewards differed depending on the mission - from cash and gems to esoteric hardware such as a cloaking device.
When the developers met at Jesus College, Cambridge, Bell was already working on a game for Acornsoft called Freefall.[32] Braben had started writing a game called Fighter, but had not yet completed it. The two projects were sufficiently similar that Braben and Bell compared notes, and after seeing Star Raiders on the Atari 800 they decided to collaborate to produce what eventually became Elite. They first approached Thorn EMI;[33] the company's rejection letter stated that the game was too complicated and needed to be finishable in 10 minutes with three lives. Braben and Bell then met with Acornsoft; their demo of Elite's combat and docking sequences impressed managing director David Johnson-Davies and other Acornsoft executives. The company agreed to publish the finished game, although they feared that it was too ambitious for Braben and Bell, and was uncertain about the merits of two developers instead of one on a single game.[34][35] The programmers were given a £1,000 advance from the company and a royalty rate of 7.5% was agreed.[33]
The game took two years to write and started out as a 3D arcade game without the trading element.[32] It was written in machine code using assembly language,[36] giving much care to maximum compactness of the code. The last part added was the 3Dradar display fitted into the last few unused bytes in their computer.[37]
The original BBC version used a novel split screen approach to show four colours (five, including the black background) onscreen simultaneously; the upper two thirds of the screen were displayed in Mode 4 while the lower part was in Mode 5.[38] The subsequent Electron version ran entirely in Mode 4, because the video chips were not 100% compatible and therefore were in black and white only.[21]
The Elite universe contains eight galaxies, each with 256 planets to explore. Due to the limited capabilities of 8-bit computers, these worlds are procedurally generated. A single seed number is run through a fixed algorithm the appropriate number of times and creates a sequence of numbers determining each planet's complete composition (position in the galaxy, prices of commodities, and name and local details; text strings are chosen numerically from a lookup table and assembled to produce unique descriptions, such as a planet with "carnivorous arts graduates"). This means that no extra memory is needed to store the characteristics of each planet, yet each is unique and has fixed properties. Each galaxy is also procedurally generated from the first. Braben and Bell at first intended to have 248 galaxies, but Acornsoft insisted on a smaller universe to hide the galaxies' mathematical origins.[35]
However, the use of procedural generation created a few problems. There are a number of poorly located systems that can be reached only by galactic hyperspace— these are more than 7 light years from their nearest neighbour, and, being low-tech, are unable to replace the galactic hyperdrive, thus trapping the traveller. Braben and Bell also checked that none of the system names were profane - removing an entire galaxy after finding a planet named "Arse".[39]
The developers did not spend much time playing their creation, and the quality testing was mostly performed by Acornsoft's managing director David Johnson-Davies, who also planned the packaging and marketing campaign at the time.[40][41]
The original BBC Micro disk version uses a non-standard disk-format for copy protection. This relied on specific OSWORD &7F DFS opcodes in the Intel 8271 floppy-disk controller to directly access the disk, and produce a non-standard sector/track-layout. This causes issues for legitimate customers that use the Western Digital 1770 disk-controller (DFS) ROMs from third-party manufacturers such as Watford Electronics. Acorn subsequently released alternative versions of the BBC disks that are compatible with the WD1770. In addition to this, self-modifying code was used as part of the protection system, created by Rob Northen.[42] This BBC disk-copy-protection was also used by Superior Software in its Exile game.[43]
Acornsoft set in motion a large-scale publicity campaign and commissioned a presentational package for the game that was far more elaborate than normal. Acornsoft packaged Elite in a box larger than its usual releases, complete with a novella by Robert Holdstock called The Dark Wheel, a 64-page Space Trader's Flight Training Manual, reference card and a ship identification poster. The flight training manual was written in a style that took the rookie trader through the controls and various aspects of play.[40]
The original Acornsoft version of The Dark Wheel promised on its back cover that "[a] sequel to the novella is planned for publication in 1985", but no direct sequel was ever written. A second novella, Imprint by Andy Redman, was included with the IBM PC release of Elite Plus, but apart from being set in the same universe it is in no way connected to the original story.
Marketing activities included a £50,000 promotional budget from Acornsoft, including television advertising[26] and a launch party at the Thorpe Park theme park (holding such an event for a video game was almost unheard of at the time) and a competition to be among the first to achieve the status of "Elite".[38][44]
The Dark Wheel
The story tells of a young starship pilot named Alex Ryder, whose father Jason is killed when their merchant ship is attacked by a notorious pirate. In trying to understand and avenge his father's death and achieve an "iron ass" (a space-trader's term for a well-armed- and armoured spaceship), Alex encounters the basics of the Elite universe—including combat, hyperdrive and hyperspace and the deadly aliens called Thargoids. Finally Alex discovers the truth about his father and his combat rank. He also acts as an acceptable face of trading as his female co-pilot, Elyssia Fields, is an alien and wanted in several systems. Alex wants to avenge his father's death, but must exercise caution in tracking down the assassin. By trading commodities, he slowly improves the arms and armour of his ship. When he is competent at using the spaceship for combat, but before he feels ready, he makes a trade that is sure to bring his father's killer to him.
Alex also learns what the "Dark Wheel" is and what it takes to join its ranks.[45]
Versions
Enhanced graphics in the Archimedes version of Elite, showing several Viper-class police ships flying in formation and a planet in lower-right corner
The first version of the game was released for the BBC Micro, model B on tape and disk and "about a month or two later" the Acorn Electron tape version was released.[21] The Electron's limitations meant the game was in black and white only, and several game features were cut including Thargoids and suns. Neither the BBC nor the Electron tape versions featured missions. Additionally, the original tape version for the Electron contained a bug that stopped Galactic Hyperspace from working.[46] Acorn provided a mail-in tape-replacement service to upgrade to v1.1 (marked as such on the tape label) that fixed this bug.[47]
A version for the BBC Micro with the 6502 Second Processor was announced by Acornsoft on 25 July 1985, this new version added several extras over the standard BBC version, including 18 ships in the player environment (up from 10), no loading from disc when leaving/arriving at a space station, the ability to save screenshots and print screens to an Epson compatible printer. It also boasted over double the frame rate and a MODE1/MODE2 split screen vs. MODE4/MODE5 giving a full colour game for the first time. https://elite.bbcelite.com/6502sp/
The great commercial success of the BBC Micro version prompted a bidding war for the rights to publish Elite in other formats,[48] which British Telecom's software arm, Telecomsoft, eventually won.[49]
The ZX Spectrum version, programmed by "Torus"[51] included a supernova mission not found in the original.[21]
The Amstrad CPC conversion has fewer ships than other platforms, lacking the Anaconda and Transport, along with some minor differences in missions and titles.[52]Ricardo Pinto, the programmer for the Amstrad version, explained that his team was given a 6502 hex dump by Braben and Bell, which did not help development: "In the end we wrote our version by playing Elite on a [BBC Micro] and making ours look the same."[53] This version included the "supernova rescue" and "cloaking device" missions, and refinements to the launch tube and jump drive animations.
According to the lead programmer of the 16 bit Amiga/Atari ST and the MSX conversions Rob Nicholson, he did not have access to the source code because of contractual issues and had to write them "blind". All he had were the ship shapes and the procedural generation code for the galaxies.[54]
The Acorn Archimedes version, ArcElite (1991), written by Warren Burch & Clive Gringras and regarded by Stuff magazine as the best conversion of the original game,[55] added intelligent opponents who engage in their own private battles and police who take an active interest in protecting the law. As well as such gameplay enhancements, the version also exploited the more modern hardware by using polygon mesh graphics in place of the wire-frames. The game world no longer seems to be centred around the player; freighter fleets with escorts go about their own business, pirate formations patrol lawless systems looking for cargo to loot and mining ships can often be found breaking up asteroids for their mineral content. Unlike the mythical Generation Ships of the original, rare occurrences of other non-pirate entities mentioned in the manual really can be found in the Archimedes version: geometric formations of space beacons; hermits living among the asteroids; abandoned ships towed by police (although Dredgers and Generation Ships are confirmed not to exist in Archimedes Elite).[56] The Archimedes version of Elite was originally written to be a space trading game called Trojan - however the obvious similarities eventually meant that to avoid a potential lawsuit Trojan had to become an official Elite conversion.[57] ArcElite was one of a number of games released for free by The Icon Bar website in 2006.[58]
Some versions feature a new title, "Archangel", for the player to earn that substitutes the rank of Commander. Archangel is reached by undertaking a special mission to destroy a space station in a system invaded by the Thargoids. The player's reward for completing the mission is to receive the title Archangel and obtain a device that is capable of emulating anti-ECM broadcast.[28]
Versions for 32X and Sega Mega Drive were in development but cancelled due to Sony backing out of the project and lack of publisher.[59] However, a ROM image of the Mega Drive demo was released online by co-designer Ian Bell.[60]
One of the 16 most influential games in history. (2007)[78]
Elite received very positive reviews on its launch and the BBC Micro version eventually sold 107,898 copies.[79] The game's popularity became a national phenomenon in the UK, with reports airing on Channel 4 and elsewhere.[80]Elite was Firebird's best-selling Commodore game as of late 1987.[81] Bell estimates that approximately 600,000 copies were eventually sold for all platforms combined,[80] while Frontier Developments' Elite page states that the numbers are around a million units.[2]
Elite's technical breakthroughs reportedly amazed the BBC Micro's developers, with Sophie Wilson calling it "the game that couldn't have been written". However, many players found gameplay difficult and unfamiliar; the game was so controversial that The Micro User devoted its April 1985 letter column to readers debating it.[4]
In his review of the game for Beebug Magazine in 1984, David Fell called Elite "the best game ever" for the BBC Micro.[63] In Personal Computer Games Shingo Sugiura said "Elite is vast, complex and very, very absorbing. I've got bulging, red eyeballs from staying up into the early hours but I don't care. I'm going to continue playing until I am ranked Elite ... or at least Competent ... or even Average ... Buy it!".[69] John Cook wrote in the December 1984 issue of Micro Adventurer "A masterpiece such as this is difficult to describe within existing parameters" and "By any standards, Elite is an excellent game, certainly in the Top Three this year. By BBC standards, it is simply the best game that has ever been written for the machine".[40]Crash magazine said about the Spectrum version "Elite is one of the most imaginative ever to be designed to run on a home computer" and gave it a score of 92%,[24] while at the same time it was a best-seller in the Gallup charts.[82] The game was number 16 in the Your Sinclair "Top 100 Speccy Games" in 1992,[83] was voted number 7 in the Your Sinclair "Readers' Top 100 Games of All Time" in 1993[84] and was voted the 9th best game of all time by the readers of Retro Gamer Magazine for an article that was scheduled to be in a special Your Sinclair tribute issue.[85] Similarly Zzap!64 gave the Commodore 64 version 97%, stating that it was "a brilliant game of blasting and trading and is certainly the best game I've seen this year"[22] in 1985 and the Amiga version 98%[70] in 1989.
In 1984, Elite received the Golden Joystick Award for "Best Original Game".[71] In 1985 the game was awarded the "Best Game Overall" for that year by readers of Crash magazine,[72] and "Game of the Year" by Computer Gamer.[73] In a 1992 survey of science fiction games, Computer Gaming World gave the title two of five stars, stating that its "popularity was largely a result of being one of the first space games with a 'large' universe to explore". The magazine gave Elite Plus two-plus stars, describing it as "More detailed and complex, it is also more tedious than the original".[86] A 1994 survey of strategic space games set in the year 2000 and later gave Elite and Elite Plus three stars and two-plus stars, respectively.[87]
In 1993, Commodore Force ranked the game at number four on its list of the top 100 Commodore 64 games.[88] It was ranked #14 top game of all time by Next Generation in 1996,[89] #12 on IGN's 2000 "Top 25 PC Games of All Time" list,[74] the #3 most influential video game ever by the Times Online in 2007,[76] #6 "Greatest Game" by Stuff magazine in 2008,[77] #1 "Top Retro Game" by Retro Gamer in 2004,[75] and #1 "best game of the 1980s" by Next Generation in 2008.[25] In 1996, GamesMaster ranked Elite 11th on their "Top 100 Games of All Time."[90] The game was retrospectively awarded 10/10 by the multi-format magazine Edge—together with only 2 other games[citation needed]— and is being exhibited at such places as the London Science Museum in the "Game On" exhibition organised and toured by the Barbican Art Gallery.[91]Elite is also featured in Game On! From Pong to Oblivion: The 50 Greatest Video Games of All Time by authors Simon Byron, Ste Curran and David McCarthy.[92]
In 1991, PC Format placed Elite Plus on its list of the 50 best computer games of all time. The editors called it "a classic game that mixes solid 3D space combat with trading to create a universe in which you can spend many a happy half-hour bushwhacking the dastardly Thargoids."[93]
It has been named as one of the most influential games in history,[78] and has been credited as being the first truly open-ended[108]open world game[109] and opening the door for future online persistent worlds such as Second Life, World of Warcraft[76] and EVE Online. Elite is one of the most popularly requested games to be remade,[110] with some arguing that it is still the best example of the genre to date, with more recent titles—including its immediate sequel—not rising up to the same level.[111][97][112]
Legacy
In November 1999, on the game's 15th birthday, Ian Bell released many binaries and source code of several versions of the original game on his website.[113][114] A dispute arose between Bell and David Braben regarding Bell's decision to make available all versions of the original Elite.[115] The dispute has since ended and the various versions became available again on Bell's site.[31][116]
In the late 1980s a variant of the commercial BBC Micro Elite release was created by Angus Duggan by disassembling and modifying the 6502 code from the existing with many extra features, originally titled Elite III but now known as Elite A to minimise confusion. It includes many more ship types, more ship types flyable by the player (who begins in the less capable Adder), cargo delivery missions, some extra equipment items and numerous gameplay improvements. Elite A was released publicly in 1997.[117] Like the original game, it can be downloaded free from Ian Bell's web site and played under emulation.
Many attempts to develop clones of Elite have been made, but most have been abandoned before completion or have otherwise failed to come to fruition. The open sourceOolite is a notable exception. Another successful adaptation is 1337 (meaning "Elite" in Leetspeak)[118] developed by Jose Maria Enguita for the Oric machines, that won the 2010 Oldschool Gaming Game Of The Year Award.[119] Contrasting with these conversions, around 1999 Christian Pinder developed Elite: The New Kind as a modern PC port of the original BBC Micro version. He achieved a faithful port by reverse-engineering the original assembly written BBC Micro version and recreating a platform neutral C code variant from it,[120] but at David Braben's request this version was withdrawn from distribution in 2003.[121] In September 2014, on Elite's 30th birthday, Ian Bell blessed Elite: The New Kind and re-released it for free on his website.[122][123] Since then, Elite: The New Kind is also distributed again in version 1.1 by Christian Pinder;[124] a source code mirror is hosted on GitHub.[125]
In 2020, Christian Pinder also released an upscaled Windows port of the Acorn Archimedes' Elite.[126][127]
^Shoemaker, Richie (13 August 2001). "PC Review: X - Beyond the Frontier". Computer and Video Games. Archived from the original on 8 April 2011. Retrieved 20 June 2008. If, however - like me - you consider Elite to be the best game ever made, X - Beyond The Frontier is by far its closest relation.
^"Gaming Greats – Elite (1984)". stuff.tv. Stuff. 19 April 2010. Retrieved 30 January 2012. The later version of Elite on the Acorn Archimedes is viewed as the best [...]
^"75 Power Players". Next Generation (11). Imagine Media: 50. November 1995. It was one of the very first games to feature 3D graphics, but more importantly it challenged the definition of what a computer game was.
^"The hot 100 game developers of 2007". Edge. 3 March 2007. Archived from the original on 20 August 2012. Retrieved 20 June 2008. David Braben is one of the old-time legends of British computer gaming – along with Ian Bell, he co-wrote the space simulator Elite, a hugely influential game often earmarked as one of the best ever made.
^Asterick (29 May 2008). "Presented in Retrovision: Elite". Gay Gamer. Archived from the original on 31 October 2010. Retrieved 20 June 2008. Elite is still one of the most influential games to date, having inspired EVE Online, Freespace, Jumpgate, Homeworld and a handful of other space titles.
^Barrat, Andy (30 January 2008). "Racing Into The Future". G4techTV Canada. Archived from the original on 20 April 2008. Retrieved 20 June 2008. But [the BBC Micros] weren't just for learning on, a handful of games were actually released for the Beeb—two of the most influential games ever in fact f– one of which was Revs. (...) The other super influential game [besides Revs] by the way, was Elite.
^Karlsson, Peter (2000), "Classic Commodore games on the web", Commodore World, no. 8, In 1984, Ian Bell was the one of the authors of a game that by many still is regarded as the best game ever written, Elite (the other author was David Braben).
^"NewKind". Christian Pinder. Archived from the original on 9 August 2008. Retrieved 9 August 2008.
^Martin, Matt (17 September 2014). "Classic space sim Elite goes free this weekend". vg247. Retrieved 6 November 2015. A superior remake of the original space trading game Elite will be released for free this weekend, 30 years after the original game launched
^Bell, Ian (20 September 2014). "Elite 30th Anniversary". elitehomepage.org. Archived from the original on 2 September 2015. Today, 20th September 2014 is the 30th anniversary of the day the world first experienced Elite, the 3D space trading and combat game written by Ian Bell and David Braben in conjunction with Acornsoft. From that beginning on the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron, the game went on to be released for most home computers of the time. Celebrate by playing Elite again, for free. Thanks to Matt Goldbolt. the original BBC Micro version now runs direct in the Google Chrome browser if you click here. Or for Windows PCs, download Christian Pinder's Elite: The New Kind by clicking here.
