Games of Yore: Elite (Mostly Harmless)

Sometimes I indulge in a few reminiscences of the games we old geezers played way back in the last millennium. This time it is: Elite!

Elite was created in 1984 by Ian Bell and David Braben. They made one of the first open world games. Its procedurally created worlds spanned 8 galaxies with 256 worlds each, later ports and upgraded version had millions of possible star systems (OK, in the game that means millions of same-looking space stations) – and more color. (I played Elite plus on DOS on full 256 colors!)
For its time the game had revolutionary graphic, allowing a real 3D experience.

(original BBC Micro screenshot) wikipedia source

As first computer game ever Elite (original version) also included a novella.

Elite became a yardstick for space trading games and is one of the most influential games ever. It was inspiration for dozen of other games, for example EVE Online, Privateer and the X series.

Elite also had two sequels, but they both did not get the fame nor commercial success as the first game, partly because of bugs that made many players (like me) not buying it.

Recently Elite: Dangerous was released, a modern version of the game. It got mixed reviews, because the always-online universe was quite empty for most players after the first rush.

Elite and Mostly Harmless

The name of the game is reflected in the rank a player can attain. It started at harmless and after a lot of fighting you could get all the way up to elite. The rank “mostly harmless” changed itself into a sort of meme/inside joke after the fifth book of Adams “increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhikers Trilogy” and Elite players have an additional level of fun with it.

Gameplay and such things

Elite presented itself with The Blue Danube music piece, which I only learned a decade later that it was a waltz.

The players started with a nearly empty Cobra Mark III spaceship which they could upgrade through money made from trade or fighting bonuses. The latter possibility was way harder though.
Especially with the first laser it was very hard to do the needed damage due to the low damage and high “heat” of the laser, meaning you had to really hit every time or the enemy's shields would load faster. And some enemies where really hard to hit when dancing around!

And don’t dare to even scratch any other (non-pirate) ship in the sight line of a station! Police ships are good!

wikipedia source

Speaking of stations: They were rotating in space (for gravitys sake) and infamously hard to land on. You could auto-land but that cost 50 credits and together with the fuel costs made trading unprofitable in most cases because of the lack of cargo space.
One of the first purchases of a player therefore was an expensive docking computer.

Besides trading, of course you could get money for shooting down pirates. You could also mine asteroids and “harvest” the remains of any shot down ship. Sometimes scrap would just zip through space, too.

Elite was an Elite game, setting standards, and those who survived to outfit their ship rightfully got the title Elite, too!