 Well, what else
did you expect? This is a scan of the novella included with the game, from
the version I got for Christmas in 1984. Woo, that's a while back. It's
scary to think that many of the contributors on the Elite newsgroup (alt.fan.elite)
these days weren't even born when it was released..!
For the uninitiated,
this was a 3D space-sim wherein you had to trade, rob and fight your way
through the ranks from harmless to elite. I particularly liked the freedom
the game gave you. It was up to you how you progressed through the game
- a peaceful trader, bounty hunter, pirate or all-out prohibited-goods-selling
fugitive. Also, if you'd got a bit of a battering in a dogfight, you could
hang back and wait for your shields to repair before continuing - though
this didn't always work!
The exploration of the eight galaxies available
in the game enhanced the lifespan of the game, aided by rumours of generation
ships, space dredgers and other oddities that may be lurking on the far
side of the sun of planet Velaso in galaxy 5. Or possibly not, but we were
all tempted to go and look. Ported to just about everything, the 32-bit
Acorn version, commonly known as ArcElite, is now regarded as the definitive
version. From a programming point of view, though, the BBC Micro version
was an amazing piece of work. How on earth the game was squashed down into
the sub-20kb block of memory available on the BBC Micro, I don't know!
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