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Elite and its sequels...
Lodbrok
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
In a recent thread there was some discussion about Elite and the games that followed it, Frontier and First Encounters. Elite was probably the first game that I truly immersed myself in, spending many hours in front of an old, I think, 286. Trading at first, finally almost exlusively doing bounty hunting to reach the ultimate goal... becoming Elite. Anyway, I though it might be fun to talk about the elite games, I did not find any recent threads on them, so here follows a little information about the various games.
[size=+2]Elite[/size]
Elite was the game that more or less invented to free-form space-sim. You had a small ship capable of trading, fighting and travelling between starts in eight galaxies. There was no set goal in the game, except for getting the highest ranking, Elite. The game featured simple wire-frame graphics and due to the limitations of the hardware of the time much of the content was procedurally generated. Elite was first released in 1984 for the BBC micro, later it was ported to many other platforms. The game was made by David Braben and Ian Bell.
[size=+2]Elite 2: Frontier[/size]
This was, as the name implies, the sequel to Elite. It was released in 1993 and coded by David Braben. Much of the original game-play was intact but greatly expanded with the ability to land on planet, undertake missions for various factions and a more complex economy. Perhaps the biggest change was that the original arcade-like flight model was replaced with a true newtonian model, something which made combat quite difficult but also very rewarding.
[size=+2]Frontier First Encounters[/size]
First encounters could possibly be viewed more as an expansion than a completely new game. The game-play was almost exactly the same as in Frontier, but the graphics were upgraded, the universe was much more fleshed out and there was an actual story-line to explore if you wanted to. The game was released in 1995 and was plagued by many bugs since it was released in an unfinished state.
For a more detailed desctribtion of the games check out the wiki-page here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_%28video_game%29
Of these games I think I liked Frontier the best. The complete freedom and detailed planets made you feel like you were actually there in the game. I remember the first time I started the game... you start the game in a small one-man fighter, on a lonely star-port on an ice-planet. The landscape is coloured in pastels from the setting sun, a huge gas-giant is hanging in the sky and you can hear the wind blowing past. Few games have managed to convey the feeling of a huge universe, there for you to explore, as well as this game.
Over the years there has been rumours about a new game in the series. David Braben is still in the games business, and according to the wiki there is still active development taking place of Elite 4. Right now his company is working on the game Outsider, but apparently work on elite 4 will resume once outsider is released. A possible release date that has been mentioned is 2012, so don't hold your breath.
Anyway, this is probably my favourite series of games, and I have many fond memories from them. Let's talk about them, and other games in the same spirit....
Edit:
The original game has been released by one of the original authors and can be downloaded from his page here:
http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/
Frontier and First encounters can be downloaded from the frontier club. They are free to try out for thirty days. Find them here:
http://www.eliteclub.co.uk/download/
[size=+2]Elite[/size]
Elite was the game that more or less invented to free-form space-sim. You had a small ship capable of trading, fighting and travelling between starts in eight galaxies. There was no set goal in the game, except for getting the highest ranking, Elite. The game featured simple wire-frame graphics and due to the limitations of the hardware of the time much of the content was procedurally generated. Elite was first released in 1984 for the BBC micro, later it was ported to many other platforms. The game was made by David Braben and Ian Bell.
[size=+2]Elite 2: Frontier[/size]
This was, as the name implies, the sequel to Elite. It was released in 1993 and coded by David Braben. Much of the original game-play was intact but greatly expanded with the ability to land on planet, undertake missions for various factions and a more complex economy. Perhaps the biggest change was that the original arcade-like flight model was replaced with a true newtonian model, something which made combat quite difficult but also very rewarding.
[size=+2]Frontier First Encounters[/size]
First encounters could possibly be viewed more as an expansion than a completely new game. The game-play was almost exactly the same as in Frontier, but the graphics were upgraded, the universe was much more fleshed out and there was an actual story-line to explore if you wanted to. The game was released in 1995 and was plagued by many bugs since it was released in an unfinished state.
For a more detailed desctribtion of the games check out the wiki-page here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_%28video_game%29
Of these games I think I liked Frontier the best. The complete freedom and detailed planets made you feel like you were actually there in the game. I remember the first time I started the game... you start the game in a small one-man fighter, on a lonely star-port on an ice-planet. The landscape is coloured in pastels from the setting sun, a huge gas-giant is hanging in the sky and you can hear the wind blowing past. Few games have managed to convey the feeling of a huge universe, there for you to explore, as well as this game.
Over the years there has been rumours about a new game in the series. David Braben is still in the games business, and according to the wiki there is still active development taking place of Elite 4. Right now his company is working on the game Outsider, but apparently work on elite 4 will resume once outsider is released. A possible release date that has been mentioned is 2012, so don't hold your breath.
Anyway, this is probably my favourite series of games, and I have many fond memories from them. Let's talk about them, and other games in the same spirit....
Edit:
The original game has been released by one of the original authors and can be downloaded from his page here:
http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/
Frontier and First encounters can be downloaded from the frontier club. They are free to try out for thirty days. Find them here:
http://www.eliteclub.co.uk/download/
Lodbrok on
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I hadn't saved in a while, but it was fine as I was just tranporting high value goods between Corporate worlds. Then, I docked at Orerve and a single screen of text came up, telling me that pirates had boarded my ship in the station and killed me - Game Over.
It blew my mind - absolutely didn't care about losing the progress. From that day forward I always carried 1T of Firearms in the hold in case they ever tried it again - but they never did. Think it was a once in a life-time game event.
Frontier Elite II was my favourite. Fucking hell I've got memories:
Scholar and a Gentleman? Critical of bad science and religion? Skeptobot - Is for you!!
Lave: Wasn't the Lion Transport one of the worst ships in the game? At least acceleration-wise? My favourite ship was the constrictor, really fast and with a mean look. The Boa was nice as a freighter, liked the look of that ship.
Constrictor:
Boa:
And then there was of course the Turner Class in FE...but that was something different.
The scale of it just blew me away and the starmap was just awesome. When he finally got back we jumped into playing it but didn't have a clue what to do, but one tutorial later and I was hooked. Good times, I remember getting up early the next day and getting all hyped to explore this universe. I want something to give me that feeling again. Morrowind is perhaps the only thing that's gotten close, for me.
SoogaGames Blog
The entire universe on a floppy disk. Planets with atmospheres, real-time accurate orbits around the sun and day/night cycles.
Also, trying to dock under newtonian physics without any kind of autopilot... fucking hard but damn it's rewarding when you pull it off.
Thargoids and witch-space... that was scary shit back in the day.
Then I flew into space and dumped it into the nearest star. :P
It took down an Imperial Cruiser with a fucking 5mw pulse laser. I loved it truely.
Also the game came with a giant A0 map, a huge manual, a seperate guide book to Newtonian Physics, and another book that collected actually really good short stories based on the game.
Bloody excellent.
Scholar and a Gentleman? Critical of bad science and religion? Skeptobot - Is for you!!
Shujaa: That intro's much nicer, cheers. Thought I'd just forgotten it having a horrible framerate
SoogaGames Blog
Hmmm, monopoly.
For anyone looking for a replacement, I would recommend Escape Velocity Nova. It's closest in spirit. But I would still kill for Elite 4....
Hell I would probably by a windows pc.... urgh...
Scholar and a Gentleman? Critical of bad science and religion? Skeptobot - Is for you!!
The memories are starting to come back...
Getting your first Military Hyperdrive and feeling like a badass when you look at your new jump range...
Getting into combat while travelling, and noticing that your speed is a fucking HUGE number...
Scanning recent wormhole residues just to see what other people were doing... man that was awesome.
Sitting outside a station in your Panther... aiming that little Plasma Accelerator turret right at the docking port and letting loose... and watching the police Vipers flying straight into your hell beam....
man, that reminds me. Assainations where you would watch your mark leave, read the jump for their destination, then in your smaller, miltary drive powered ship jump their before them, and fuck them up when they arrived.
That and being shot down by fuck wits, with a huge booty in your ship. Unable to beat them, I hyperspace jumped to escape. They had readers themselves and followed me.
Getting desperate, I forced a miss-jump to lose the fuckers, and then had to mine a gas giant for enough fuel to get back to civilisation.
Good times.
Scholar and a Gentleman? Critical of bad science and religion? Skeptobot - Is for you!!
I was well proud of even getting that though.
But surely, there must be more games in this genre, right? I've played a little bit of Escape velocity nova, but it's not the same. Of course, there were the Privateer games, but other than that? Eve? According to the wiki, Elite was a large inspiration for Eve Online, but online games have never been a favourite of mine...
That way, when pirates attacked you, and you sped up time again - they basically crashed into you - letting you continue on your merry way...
Scholar and a Gentleman? Critical of bad science and religion? Skeptobot - Is for you!!
WOW THERE THEY ARE IN 3D WE ARE LIVING IN THE FUTURE AMIGA 1200 FOR LIFE DOS CAN DIE --- NOTHING WILL BEAT THIS.
Oh Amiga WHY DID YOU HAVE TO DO A SEGA!!?!?
Scholar and a Gentleman? Critical of bad science and religion? Skeptobot - Is for you!!
I hear the X series of games are similar, have no experience on that myself.
There's also Freelancer but it's a lot more lightweight in the amount of freedom and options you get.
Eve Online is pretty much the closest you'll get to Elite multiplayer anytime this decade, and it's really very good. However it does have its own flaws and is not to every Elite fan's tastes.
There aren't solar systems. Just different regions. Kills it for me.
It just feels like going from one cube of space with factories dotted around it, to another.
Scholar and a Gentleman? Critical of bad science and religion? Skeptobot - Is for you!!
Edit: Geez, I wait a few minutes and I've already missed the discussion about this.
It should be noted that I found the EV games before Nova to be much more satisfying. Nova is far too easy, not to mention too short. Though it's fucking sweet for the first ten hours or so (which one of the longer storylines can be stretched too if you're really thorough). It just always pissed me off that I could complete an entire story-line using just the Valkyrie that I bought in the beginning after like two cargo ferrying machines, hellhound missiles (the only worthwhile missile in the game) and fusion pulse cannons (the only worthwhile gun in the game). The game is further unbalanced by the availability of cheap ship maneuverability enhancements that have no drawbacks whatsoever besides the price tag.
I played EVE for a long time, but I eventually found it hard to justify when no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get into any interesting pvp in 0.0 and was spending a lot of time in it feeling more and more bored. The sense of exploration and adventure is very good though, especially with how incredibly beautiful and well-done the visual and aural aspects of traveling are, and - dare I say it - the long travel times.
Scholar and a Gentleman? Critical of bad science and religion? Skeptobot - Is for you!!
And there was also Independence war 2. Not as free form as elite, but a good game non the less, and still very good looking.
To bad it seems like these types of games are falling out of flavour. Perhaps we will see a re-emergence od free form type games with the release of Spore. At least one can hope...
For story haters like me who want a freeform experience. Don't worry. In escape velocity nova there are 7 or so different campaigns, with different factions (starting one, rules the others out).
You can drop in and out of them. I hate stories in sandbox games with a passion - and I liked them. Their more like fleshed out miltary missions and so on.
And one story line gave me the ability to have my own psychic space ship. It was bad ass.
Scholar and a Gentleman? Critical of bad science and religion? Skeptobot - Is for you!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBn3Wogtc1c&mode=related&search=
When I first stumbled on it I had no idea what it was, and for a minute I thought that some crazy person had updated frontier... but alas, it is only a fan-made remake of the intro. Still, it makes me want Elite 4 so hard it is not even funny....
That music's so kickass.
SoogaGames Blog
For fellow Mac owners, Oolite is a freeware clone of the original. Google is your friend.