Date   : Mon, 18 Aug 2008 17:26:17 +0100
From   : samwise@... (samwise)
Subject: Elite on '5'

>> As far as games for the Beeb go, I'm afraid to say I never really
>> 'got' elite.
>
> No, I didn't either.

's what all ppl who failed in their bid to become a member of the
Order of Elite say, I expect.  ;)

> It was better than the PC version for sure, but I still
> found it incredibly dull. I think it was something to do with the limits of
> the technology available;

I dunno.  I think what people really found engaging with Elite was
actually majorly attributable to two things:

1) the novella The Dark Wheel and the Space Traders Flight Training
Manual, both by Robert Holdstock.  These weighty documents really
fired the reader's imagination up and conjured up a truly imaginative
universe.

2) Uncertainty.  These days, countless people have been through the
source code of the original but, at the time, noone knew for sure what
was actually in the game and what was just part of the mythos being
created by Holdstock.  For years after the game's release, players
would debate the existence of Generation Ships and the ultra-rare
Cloak & Dagger ship across the various versions.  It was a deliberate
policy to tweak the missions and add new features to the various ports
to make them distinct, and this really added to the uncertainty of
just what you might bump into, on your next run.

As a game on it's own, you might be right - but if you really emerge
yourself into the Elite universe, it really was like nothing that had
been seen before - unlike Star Trek & Star Wars, you felt like just
one tiny cog making your way in a very unfriendly universe.

It deserves all the acclaim it received at the time (tho, I'm so sick
of the Bell & Braben squabbling and the Elite histories that been
written and rewritten that I think I'd rather someone banned all
future Making Of ... articles, until the two of them are ready to
settle their differences and show off a beta of Elite IV!).

Peter.