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Elite was originally written for the BBC Micro in 1984 by Ian Bell and David Brabben. It managed to combine space shooter, with elements of adventure, strategy and role-playing, tied together with brilliant vector graphics - and all in less that 30K of memory. It was such an epic achievement that BBC owners were able to crow about their computer purely on the basis of this one game. The envy of Spectrum owners was short-lived, however, because a year later Firebird released the Torus-developed conversion. By this stage the game had almost become the stuff of legend and expectations were deleriously high. It lost nothing in the conversion and its Spectrum release popularised Elite in a way that was impossible on the BBC. You are a space trader, travelling between systems, buying and selling goods. The galaxy is a dangerous place though and you need a good ship to combat the pirates and the law (should you get on the wrong side of it). This costs money and there are different ways of making it. You can play it straight, trading legal goods and scraping a living. You can visit anarchic systems, blast every ship that moves and scoop up its cargo. Then there's slave trading and drug running, but these will put the police on your tail. As you battle and deal your way through the game, your rating will elevate from a lowly Harmless towards the ultimate accolade, Elite. Space combat is as 'realistic' as you'll ever find it and the technical details of your ship and those of your opponents are beautifully considered. Elite is undoubtedly one of the finest games ever made, for any computer.

THE COBRA'S huge engines moan into life as you sit tensely at the controls waiting to be shot out of the space station.

Your ship is the best of the medium-range, medium capacity, fighter traders and is ideal for transporting legal and illegal cargoes across the universe. It incorporates defensive screens, pulse lasers and missile launch facilities, while also being able to handle the jump to hyperspace.

Once you have cleared the Coriolis space station, orbiting around the planet Lave, you can look out into space, turning your 3D display window to look at the star fields.

Space travel can be achieved with small spurts of engine power or hyperspace, but only if aliens or police are not in the vicinity. If they are you must stand and fight. At the bottom of the screen you will find the flight grid scanner which displays other space ships or stations in your area. It is by using that, and the compass located on the right side of the screen, that you can track aliens.


You will know when the enemy approaches as everything is shown in gory graphic glory. The craft grows from a speck to a shape which is barely recognisable. Then it grows bigger until you can identify it as one of the 10 ships in the game. Those include Adders, Mambas, Pythons and the deadly Thargoid invasion ships.

Each has its distinctive shape which is illustrated in the bulky, but indispensible, Space Traders Flight Training Manual. If you miss it with your lasers or missiles it will approach quickly, trying to keep out of your sight, and either spin past you or fire its weapons systems.

The authors have built range factors into the laser systems so that you cannot, for instance, use them to destroy a ship which is small and hundreds of light years away.

In some ways Elite can be described as a simulation. You are piloting a space vehicle which will only take so much stress and strain and steering is more complex than in most space games. You can even become disorientated and have to rely on your instruments if you bank too sharply.

The aliens will not sit still while you target your weapons and you will find that on many occasions you must control your ship's movement as well as operating the lasers or missile guidance system. You should be careful, too, not to over-compensate on the controls. Such action can send you into a wild spin.

The alien ships react in a believable manner. If hit hard enough they will not explode into nothing but break up. You can pick up the odd piece of cargo in that way, but beware the larger debris.

Fighting the forces of law and evil in space is only part of the game. You must earn a living, by buying and selling commodities from different planetary systems.

Home in on the planet of your choice, using the long range scanner, and ask for a report on inhabitants, the political climate and products.

The political climate is important and can influence trading links and attitudes. If you warp into a system where anarchy prevails you will soon find pirate ships on your tail. Goods are there for the taking.

To get to a particular planetary system, you must switch your display to the long range scanner, position the cursor over the planet of your choice which is within range - and press the hyperdrive activation key. You will, however, only get to a new system if you have destroyed all the aliens in the current sector.

When you arrive at a planet you can look at the list of available commodities. They include shipboard resources such as fuel, textiles, food and even illegal substances. If you decide to traffic in black market goods you will be regarded as an outlaw.

Elite is an unbelievably complex game with arcade, strategy and adventure elements. It will, inevitably, be compared with games such as Starion from Melbourne House. The graphics on both games are similar, but Elite has the edge with its 3D control panel, instruments which are constantly updated, and denser star field.

When you are not playing the game you can read the novel included in the package. The Dark Wheel by Robert Holdstock, a noted science fiction writer, develops the background to the game.

Take up the challenge. You are unlikely to find another space game of Elite's calibre this year.


Publisher Firebird Price £14.95
Memory 48K Joystick Kempston, Cursor
*****

John Gilbert

"Spectrum owners will soon be able to get their paws on Elite, the hit BBC game, now that Firebird have snapped up the Z80 rights to the game.

Firebird hope to change the game as little as possible in converting it and predict that the Spectrum version will be in the shops by late spring. An Amstrad version should be available shortly after. Firebird have not yet committed themselves to producing an MSX version."

Personal Computer Games,
February 1985

The game also won the Crash! Annual Readers Award in 1985.

Producer: Firebird
Memory required: 48K
Retail Price: £14.95
Language: machine code
Author: Torus

Starting life on the BBC, Elite was converted for the Commodore and, has just appeared for the Spectrum, a mere three months late. It will go down in history as the first major piece of software to be supplied with the Lenslock protection device - a cunning way of preventing piracy by supplying a plastic decoding lens which is used to discover the encrypted access code for the game. In essence, after loading you need to look through the lens onto the screen in order to see the code letters which must be input before the program will RUN. The cassette is also accompanied by a slim novella which sets the scene.


Converted by Torus, creators of Gyron, Spectrum Elite follows a very similar format to its other incarnations. With stars in your eyes and a Cobra Mk III in your charge, you've set yourself the task of becoming Elite, a combateer of the highest ranking. To become Elite you'll have to rise through several distinct stages starting with the almost derogatory rating of 'Harmless'. The more ships you kill, the higher your rating will rise, though mindless violence is not the only aspect to the game.

To become an efficient killer you must have a well equipped ship, replete with weapons of destruction. When you start, the ship you're given is a pretty poor machine, not really up to the rigours of deep space combat, so the best thing to do is to buy extra equipment from the space stations you'll find in orbit around every planet. Most of the military hardware doesn't come cheap and seeing as how you only start with one hundred credits you will need to make some money. This is where the mindwork comes into play. You will have to trade.

Every planet in the eight galaxies has a tech rating and some information detailing the world's economy. Using a trader's cunning, you can buy goods at one planet and take them to another and sell them for a profit. To be sure of making a profit it is wise to sell goods naturally rare on the planet you're trading with. For example a tech level 12, highly industrialised planet will probably have to import food, making the market price quite high. If you buy food from a low tech agricultural planet you can ferry it to the more advanced planet for a good profit margin.

Information about each planet's political state is available, which will range from corporate state to anarchy. It is not wise to travel to an anarchic system with little in the way of weaponry as the place will be crawling with pirates. And pirates are doubly aware of you if you're carrying any cargo.

Different cultures aren't too friendly with each - you can't land on planets. This makes trade awkward, so it's effected through a system of space stations. Each trading planet is orbited by a Coriolis space station which you need to dock with - a time consuming and awkward task. Once docked, you can refuel your ship and barter your wares inside the hanger. If you get rich, it's possible to buy a docking computer to make life easier.

Fuel is only expended when you use hyperwarp for interstellar travel. Pottering around in planetary space bums no fuel and trips can be costed in fuel terms on a the short range chart. If you've bought some fuel scoops you can pick up free fuel by flying close and raking energy from the a star's corona - sun skimming.

Bounty hunting is lucrative and simple: jump into an anarchic system and blast away at everything. A kill point is awarded for each ship destroyed and your credit status grows with the bounty. It is, however, best to go in heavily armed, and with a fair amount battle experience. Other loot gathering activities include asteroid mining, slave trading and drug running - but the last two are illegal and harm your legal status.

You see the action from the cockpit, viewing a 3D representation of space. Three other views are available through left, right and rear windows. The display is mainly monochrome; vector graphics represent ships and objects. Colour appears occ