In fairness, being able to fly straight to planet surfaces from orbit and switch to terrestrial flight, without ANY load screen or other interruption, was a hell of a technical achievement for a 3D game that could run on a 386. A lot of space games today can't even do seamless ground/space transitions. Not to mention that the planets were spinning realistically in their orbits the whole time, another jawdropper in 1993. I was never any good at this, but I did have some fun basically just playing space tourist. Setting down on Titan and watching Saturn-rise happen in realtime, in front of me, was absolutely mindblowing. Movies hadn't even attempted to visualize that, and here's a game which can do it as part of its own simulation without any scripting or FMV or anything. Absolutely amazing.
Thanks for doing this video. I spent many happy hours on Frontier on my A500 and again with First Encounters on PC. I also had the star map on my wall, and I used to love reading the short stories which came with the manual.
A wonderful game. Myself on an Amiga 4000 and a friend on his 486 used to compare notes a lot. Played FFE more recently thanks to modern versions being available that fix the bugs. Looking forward to your views on that.
Best thing on this game was to rub the single floppy disk under my friends noses and tell them "this contains the whole milkyway and you can visit every star of it!" Still blows me away thanks to the wormhole bug that we can explore the accurate modsel of the milkyway. Even if the names dont match
I remember being caught up in the hype for Frontier, purchasing it for my ST and being oddly disappointed. So i went back to playing Elite instead and poked a Thargoid with a metaphorical stick..
I met David Braben at FX17 - great guy. I loved FE2, also Frontier First Encounters - which is now actually playable due to fan patches. Great video! Just realised, I commented with my old account a couple years ago!
Amazing that as a 14 year old I played the original Elite on my BBC every night for a couple of years.. As a 20 year old I played Frontier on my A1200 most nights for about a year and then as a 40 year old I paid and downloaded Elite Dangerous and never even took off...I became old!
There is an open source clone of Frontier called Pioneer Space Sim. It's had many many years of development and is now a deeper game than Frontier with a lot of additional content and features.
Great video, thanks. You really captured the appeal of the game i thought. I played it conpulsively on our first PC. I definitely got that ship, and without cheating. Just endless loops of the same couple of trading runs from memory, in the days when I had the time to do that. At which point the battles became trivially easy and there didn't feel much point in carrying on. Not even sure I then bothered exploring the wider world that much. Still thoroughly enjoyed it though - it definitely had an atmosphere and I was immersed
Diaries of an awesome kid who got fully engrossed in an open world game where imagination was part of the appeal. A game made by a man with a decades-long history of hostility to fan projects, players, and even to his wonderful co-creator Ian Bell who is the polar opposite sort of person. David Braben: Space Wanker.
So here's something weird. I had an A500+, so mine ran the slower way... until we got a hard drive and I installed it on there. Then it looked the way your A1200 footage does. I'm sure that's an exaggeration and it wasn't running at full speed, but it made a *huge* difference to skip the floppy drive. I remember commenting to my dad, grasping for comparisons, "it looks computer generated!!" which he didn't leave uncommented upon. So. Wonder what was going on there?
The 'autopilot' method of dogfighting is terrible. Try switching off your engine, and using return and shift as forward/reverse thrust, and mouse control for targeting. Becomes way more engaging.
Being of the same generation but in the US, there are a lot of treasured c64/amiga memories that must admit sound kind of insane. Not this though. I would have lost my mind to have this as a kid
I'm looking forward to playing this again with the A500 mini. I'm hoping you can emulate an A1200 on it as that looked way smoother than the A500 version. I remember playing this for years as a teenager and it was totally engrossing.
Someone help me. I keep getting a message from the police saying they are doing spot checks to see if you're a rightful owner of the ship you are flying. After getting this message a certain amount of times they kill you. I assume this is an anti piracy measure since I downloaded the game for free. I can't find anywhere to buy the game and the source I downloaded the zip from seemed legit. But I keep getting the same message, I've downloaded 3 different versions and still have the same issue
If braben would just go back to Frontier and add 2Ghz worth of assembler coded improvements I'd pay... At least $100. Modern elite had none of the charm of Frontier.
In fairness, being able to fly straight to planet surfaces from orbit and switch to terrestrial flight, without ANY load screen or other interruption, was a hell of a technical achievement for a 3D game that could run on a 386. A lot of space games today can't even do seamless ground/space transitions. Not to mention that the planets were spinning realistically in their orbits the whole time, another jawdropper in 1993.
I was never any good at this, but I did have some fun basically just playing space tourist. Setting down on Titan and watching Saturn-rise happen in realtime, in front of me, was absolutely mindblowing. Movies hadn't even attempted to visualize that, and here's a game which can do it as part of its own simulation without any scripting or FMV or anything. Absolutely amazing.
it is still much better and playable than that elite dangerous bs
Thanks for doing this video. I spent many happy hours on Frontier on my A500 and again with First Encounters on PC. I also had the star map on my wall, and I used to love reading the short stories which came with the manual.
A wonderful game. Myself on an Amiga 4000 and a friend on his 486 used to compare notes a lot. Played FFE more recently thanks to modern versions being available that fix the bugs. Looking forward to your views on that.
Best thing on this game was to rub the single floppy disk under my friends noses and tell them "this contains the whole milkyway and you can visit every star of it!" Still blows me away thanks to the wormhole bug that we can explore the accurate modsel of the milkyway. Even if the names dont match
I remember being caught up in the hype for Frontier, purchasing it for my ST and being oddly disappointed. So i went back to playing Elite instead and poked a Thargoid with a metaphorical stick..
I met David Braben at FX17 - great guy. I loved FE2, also Frontier First Encounters - which is now actually playable due to fan patches.
Great video!
Just realised, I commented with my old account a couple years ago!
I wish there was an "HD" version for Frontier: Elite II
There's of course the "Pioneer" but it's not the same thing.
Amazing that as a 14 year old I played the original Elite on my BBC every night for a couple of years.. As a 20 year old I played Frontier on my A1200 most nights for about a year and then as a 40 year old I paid and downloaded Elite Dangerous and never even took off...I became old!
There is an open source clone of Frontier called Pioneer Space Sim. It's had many many years of development and is now a deeper game than Frontier with a lot of additional content and features.
Yeah I mentioned in the blurb I missed that
I remember the game .. a bit many bugs .. but they got the atmosphere planets there
the short story collection that came with the game was awesome too
Great video, thanks. You really captured the appeal of the game i thought. I played it conpulsively on our first PC. I definitely got that ship, and without cheating. Just endless loops of the same couple of trading runs from memory, in the days when I had the time to do that. At which point the battles became trivially easy and there didn't feel much point in carrying on. Not even sure I then bothered exploring the wider world that much. Still thoroughly enjoyed it though - it definitely had an atmosphere and I was immersed
Diaries of an awesome kid who got fully engrossed in an open world game where imagination was part of the appeal. A game made by a man with a decades-long history of hostility to fan projects, players, and even to his wonderful co-creator Ian Bell who is the polar opposite sort of person. David Braben: Space Wanker.
7:15 - no fuel in your tank mate...
So here's something weird. I had an A500+, so mine ran the slower way... until we got a hard drive and I installed it on there. Then it looked the way your A1200 footage does. I'm sure that's an exaggeration and it wasn't running at full speed, but it made a *huge* difference to skip the floppy drive. I remember commenting to my dad, grasping for comparisons, "it looks computer generated!!" which he didn't leave uncommented upon. So. Wonder what was going on there?
The 'autopilot' method of dogfighting is terrible. Try switching off your engine, and using return and shift as forward/reverse thrust, and mouse control for targeting. Becomes way more engaging.
You can see in the video I wasn't just doing autopilot targeting, it's just what I remember doing most as a kid
@@Bransfiiiield My bad. There's a tonne of people who never get beyond that point.
Being of the same generation but in the US, there are a lot of treasured c64/amiga memories that must admit sound kind of insane. Not this though. I would have lost my mind to have this as a kid
So this was like No Man's Sky before No Man's Sky
Frontier (and Elite, and First Encounters) were definitely influences on NMS, yeah
I'm looking forward to playing this again with the A500 mini. I'm hoping you can emulate an A1200 on it as that looked way smoother than the A500 version. I remember playing this for years as a teenager and it was totally engrossing.
Nice diary
Someone help me. I keep getting a message from the police saying they are doing spot checks to see if you're a rightful owner of the ship you are flying. After getting this message a certain amount of times they kill you. I assume this is an anti piracy measure since I downloaded the game for free. I can't find anywhere to buy the game and the source I downloaded the zip from seemed legit. But I keep getting the same message, I've downloaded 3 different versions and still have the same issue
Yeah it's copy protection. See if you can get the CD32 version of the game, that had copy protection removed. Or try glFrontier.
30 years since release? No... Don't want to think about that.
I was rounding up, 29 if you want to feel a bit better
I will turn 40 this year if it makes you feel better
I want to hear more about the 1337 version of the game...
Nice
It's impressive how long ago elite solved 3d radar , The L shapes just work.
I prefer the Wing Commander flattened-cone radar, myself. It has slightly less info but is much more intuitive and readable at a glance.
If braben would just go back to Frontier and add 2Ghz worth of assembler coded improvements I'd pay... At least $100. Modern elite had none of the charm of Frontier.