Screenshots
About the game
Elite drew its ships as 3D wireframes, which was rare on home computers at the time. Eight galaxies of planets were generated from a handful of numbers, so the universe felt enormous while fitting into a tiny amount of memory.
There is no story to finish. You decide whether to be a trader, a bounty hunter or a pirate, and the police react to what you do. Docking by hand with the spinning Coriolis space stations became a rite of passage.
History
Written by two Cambridge students, David Braben and Ian Bell, and published by Acornsoft in September 1984. It was a huge hit and was ported to almost every computer of the era.
Ian Bell later put the game and its source code on his website as a free download. Braben's company Frontier went on to make the sequels, up to Elite Dangerous.
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Ways to play
Extras
Only official, legal extras. We never link to scanned manuals or unofficial downloads.
Reviews
What the critics said. Scores are as published; summaries are our own. Follow the links to read the full reviews.