Before any fight, a good fighter knows where his style comes from. Games are similar. In 2018, people playing Elite Dangerous could pay a visit to the series’ roots: Frontier Developments was offering the original 1984 Elite for free on its official store.
The package included the disc image of the BBC Micro Model B version and BeebEm, a BBC Micro and Master 128 emulator, so the game would run on a PC with Windows XP or newer. A powerful machine was not needed: the requirements were minimal. Today the old store page no longer shows the download.
It is worth understanding the scale of this classic. Elite was released on September 20, 1984 by Acornsoft, created by David Braben and Ian Bell, who met at Jesus College, Cambridge, and wrote the game in machine code over two years. Braben would later found Frontier itself.
On an 8-bit computer, the two achieved 3D wireframe graphics, the outline lines, with hidden line removal, something rare on home computers of the time. The universe is also impressive: eight galaxies with 256 planets each, procedurally generated, without having to store each planet’s data in memory. You are Commander Jameson, you start with 100 credits and a Cobra Mark III ship, and you decide your own path among trading, combat and bounty hunting, rising in rank up to the title that gives the game its name, Elite.
The BBC Micro version sold about 107 thousand copies, and Ian Bell estimates some 600 thousand across all platforms. The influence went far, reaching games like Grand Theft Auto, EVE Online and No Man’s Sky.
What came next
Elite Dangerous, released on PC in December 2014, on Xbox One in 2015 and on PS4 in June 2017, got the Odyssey expansion on PC in May 2021. In March 2022, Frontier cancelled further content development for the console versions.
Where to buy
Source: Frontier Developments.
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