Elite

Developer: Mr. Micro	Graphics:
Publisher: Firebird	Sound:
Year: 1989	Difficulty:
Genre: Strategy	Replay value:
Number of players: 1	My overall rating:	8/10

Asimov you know? Fondation, times of galactic traders. You start from scratch: a small vessel, a handful of credit and that's about it. No missions, no levels, no lives, only a hugely vast universe to explore endlessly. That's how games should be made!

Wander freely from system to system, buy and sell all kinds of goods, some of them more legal than others. Make profit, shoot some pirates en route to earn a bounty, or become a pirate yourself! Forge yourself a reputation as a killer at the risk of attracting the attention of cops and mercenaries of all kind.

Getting used to controls takes some time though. Learning to dock with an orbiting space station, for example, is quite a challenge. But once the stage of hysteria is behind you, the game is terribly addictive!

Elite has been developed for the BBC Micro in 1984. The Amiga version is naturally greater though well under the capabilities of the machine. If you want to play this game again, make sure you find the version 2.0 (equivalent to Elite Plus on the PC) which fixes some bugs. In 2003, Advanced Elite, a modified version was released for the Amiga by fans.

See also: Frontier: Elite II.

Places to download:
Amiga Island
Amiga World
Emuparadise
Planet Emulation
The Game Archives
The Old Computer

Other sites of interest:
The Elite Home Page
CARE
Frontier.co.uk

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