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Elite: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|''Right On, Commander''}}
Elite is a famous, popular (it eventually sold one copy of the BBC Micro version for every BBC Micro in the world at the time) and historically significant [[Simulation Game|game]], one of the earliest in the [[Wide Open Sandbox]] genre. It was written by David Braben and Ian Bell, and first released in 1984 for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron. In the game you start on Lave Station with 100 credits and a lightly armed trading ship, a Cobra Mark III. From here you seek fame, fortune and money via one of the many, many, different options open to you. You can:
* Collect bounties, which is dangerous.
* Become a pirate, which is more dangerous.
* Trade, the different planets have different economy types and tech levels that make this surprisingly complex.
* Perform military missions, when they come up and if you like death.
* Mine asteroids, if you like comas.
The name derives from the exalted highest combat ranking a pilot can have. Many aspects of the game make it rather hard, there are no lives, save perhaps the painfully expensive escape pods, not all of the systems are friendly (some are run by pirates, what a pity they tend to have nice stuff to buy), while you can upgrade it a lot you can never sell your Cobra Mark III and a warship it ain't and then there is [[Nintendo Hard|docking at space stations...]]
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''Frontier: Elite II'' and ''Frontier: First Encounters'' are later PC sequels by David Braben alone (the original authors having had a serious falling-out), with textured 3D graphics. Sadly, while ''First Encounters'' has good Newtonian physics (it was even possible to place a ship into proper orbit), it was an [[Obvious Beta]]. Various indie developers have hacked and modified the code to make it playable on modern systems, even going so far as to port the graphics engine to [[Open GL]]. One ambitious project, FFE-D3D, aims to rewrite the entire game with greatly improved graphics.
It has been cited as inspiration for [[
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* [[Easy Logistics]]: Averted, fuel and missiles have to be replenished.
* [[First-Person Snapshooter]]: ''Elite II'' has a class of military missions that involve taking pictures of an enemy installation on some uninhabited planet several light-years away.
* [[Generation Ships]]: According to the manual, you can occasionally run across these. However, that's the ''only'' place they exist in the game.
* [[Genre Popularizer]]: It paved the way for all 3D space simulators, and particularly space trading and open sandbox games.
* [[Hyperspace Is a Scary Place]]: A trip into hyperspace (or witch-space, as the game calls it) puts you at risk from ambush from Thargoids, who have a technology which allows them to lurk there. In some versions of the game you can force a hyperdrive failure by holding full pitch and roll while jumping, but you'd have to be either suicidal or very well armed to attempt it.
* [[Karl Marx Hates Your Guts]]:
** Averted, to say the least. The point of a merchant-oriented game is to buy low and find a planet to sell high.
** In the original game depending on the version, in the local planetary market buy prices are higher or equal than sell ones.
* [[Lightspeed Leapfrog]]: the manual for the first ''Elite'' says you can encounter an ancient [[Generation Ship]] still flying to its destination in your [[Casual Interstellar Travel|Casual Interstellar Travels]]. You can't.
* [[Intrepid Merchant]]: The player character is one of these, when not a [[Bounty Hunter]] or [[Pirate]].
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* [[One Nation Under Copyright]]: Some of the planets you can visit take this form.
* [[Press Start to Game Over]]: Elite was a very complex game for its time with unheard intrincated features and a step learning curve even after studying the manual (in an era where five stock lines in the back cover of the game where the norm)
** Beginning players must dock with space stations manually until they can afford to buy a docking computer for their ship. The catch is that all orbital space stations rotate, making said docking a hair-raising experience at best the first time it is attempted and causing a number of new pilots to plow into the station instead of flying into the docking bay.
** Engaging pirates --or simply jump to a dangerous system- before being upgraded with advanced weapons, armor, scanners, or fuel injectors also tends to lead to disastrous results
** Many a novice player applied arcade logic and shot the first thing in sight... the Coriolis space station that releases Viper Police like there is no tomorrow... [[Reality Ensues]].
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