Believe it or not, David Braben’s revolutionary space epic Elite was released a whole quarter of a century ago, making it as old as this writer. I remember tinkering with the game way back in the day on my Acorn Electron, and eagerly anticipating its seqel, Frontier, on the Atari ST years later (although oddly enough I don’t remember ever playing it).

The original Elite put players in charge of a 3D spaceship in a huge 3D modelled universe, and allowed them complete freedom to trade, attack other ships, and explore as they wished. It was pretty much the Eve of its day (except entirely offline, of course), and not only that, but it did all this in 32K of code.

Of course, the BBC article and accompanying video interview with the game’s creator tells the story better than I ever could, so I highly recommend it if you’re in any way interested in the history of this industry-changing game.

So Happy Birthday Elite, you’ve aged well!

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Well, much better than most of the other games of that era, anyway.

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