Most exciting thing about this game was sheer size. There were literally thousands of planets, each with unique name, size, economy, government ... As a kid I always wondered how did they put that in small (64 KB) memory of C-64. Years later I discovered they were procedurally generated, i.e. they run certain mathematical function which created whole Elite universe.
It was ahead of its time. I remember seeing it for the first time on the BBC Acorn and being blown away by it. It has everything; space combat, trading and planetary systems. David Braben and Ian Bell relied on assembly language (save on programming space) and Fibonacci's Mathematical sequence to generate small chucks of code. Those two revolutionized 3D games and simulators. The early pioneers of gaming.
You mean, how did they manage to write a game of that complexity for a computer with only 32k of RAM. It was written for the BBC Micro, only later did it appear on other platforms.
@@petermitchell6348 Didn't know back then it was written for BBC Micro (didn't know it even existed 😆) . There was no internet back then, only Top 10 games in oddball computer magazine (chosen by readers) where Elite was always No 1.
@@TheGlitch93 I would be very surprised if there was a single space sim game out there that wasn't inspired by this game directly or indirectly. This game basically invented the genre, and was crazy ahead of its time.
Honestly when you look past the graphics and faster frame rates at the actual game mechanics and systems of (some) modern games many of them really aren't a whole lot further along than this was then. Still true 4 years after you posted 🙂
Loved playing this a kid, spent many a hour. I remember having a little book with all the planets and prices, while the graphics look a little dated today the game play is much better than many games today
My dad told me that it was linked to the UK space program..if you got to elite you'd get recruited. I believed every word. Used to skip school to go ' train' for the space race.
Brings back fond memories. One of the most eye-opening aspects, after watching this, is just how far we've come in computer technology since this game was released back in the 1980's. Elite Dangerous is stunning by comparison.
Kindheitserinnerungen werden geweckt. Ich fand die Grafik und 3D Umgebung mal richtig Klasse, hatte mir nur mehr Farbe gewünscht. Hab das Spiel damals aber nicht richtig verstanden. Habe Jahre später mit Freelancer einen elite ableger gesuchtet. Freue mich sehr auf das Elite Remake.
I remember borrowing a c90 from a friend with a bunch of games on and finding this on there. I'd only seen it on the bbc so it was an exciting find. With no manual and trial and error i eventually figured out how to play it and what all the keys were. Realising a space station entrance always faces the planet it orbits made life a lot easier. Getting a decent laser made it a whole lot easier too. I got totally immersed in this at the time..... Alas, the future let me down. I should own a cobra mk iii and be doing this for real by now. Instead i have a van and elite dangerous to console me when i think of how crap the future turned out to be in reality when compared to the version of it i had in my head at the age of 13 :D
Hehe Well I believe you had much better vision of the future at the time you wrote this comment than it turned out now huh However this was great game indeed. Had similar experiance
Loved this game, so much time i eventually became elite but had to trade illegally. I had also remember buying a docking computer which made it all easier, and the blue danube played, like space 2001. Thanks for sharing brought back good memories, many many hours just staring in wonder at simple geometrocal shapes in awe lol
playing dangerous while i watch this. the series had one heck of a glow up, imagine if the original creators could see what it would become. (without having to wait 30 years)
@@heroictesticles6870 When I "acuired" this game, I worked pretty much everything out. Except the "J" for the jump drive. Whenver I tried it it would just beep. So it took me 20+ minutes for every jump. Now, of course, I know that I was mass-locked when I tried it and that's why it only beeped.
@@DougZbikowski I had it as a 10 year old in 1985. ZX Spectrum. I don't remember having any problems learning or playing and certainly had no help. It's one of the few games I remember playing at that age. One of the biggest accomplishments back then was buying your first docking computer after many hours of playing blindly with no guides. Docking manually was hard. Gaming is so easy nowadays, kids back then were forced to learn and have imaginations to make the graphics more realistic in our minds. Nothing in Elite Dangerous is particularly hard, everything is handed to you. The hardest parts are the grinds, which are only hard on your patience.
@@davedogge2280 I got my games mixed up. Echelon for the Commodore 64 came with the "Lip Stik" headset/mic combo you spoke commands into. I used to play Elite constantly also. Excellent game. I never used my Commodore 64 with a TV. I used a monitor and you could plug a headset into the monitor itself.
Got Elite: Dangerous about a year ago now and heard this existed from some friends. It's kinda cool to see how similar the ships look given the vast difference in hardware. ♥
Played this one...played ED...this one was more fun :)...this one at the time was revolutionary...nothing like it in that era...ED gets repetitive after some time and im THE fan of Elite...i think i played every edition ever..
@@sjale2007 yeah ikr! it's fun, but I want to see more. Since they're still updating I'm hoping they'll add some new plot or features. I really like the Thargoids, though! The ships look like giant flowers :>
I had 100k+ cr, cargo always half full of gems and precious metals, 256 space each (kg for gold/silver, g for gems) which i sold when the price was finally fine. That was on top of the standard trading. Don't remember if the tribbles quest activated on the cpc 464 but afaik I read in a review that they become furs once they are killed off by flying by the sun. Anyway i had enough cr for all the equipment and found the mining laser superior to military.
I bought the alien and it doubled each time jump I performed :-) At the end my spaceship exploded because of all the alien replicates and all the cr. were gone. I'm still traumatised.
+gforce527 better but not faster, if you just flew straignt to the coriolis with rear view (to fly faster) and when the base appeared on the radar you turned docking computer on and switched to galaxymap or cargo secreen, then the game ran 10x or more faster and docked superfast within seconds :)
Replying to an oooold message. On MSX version the docking computer was instant. On C64 they showed the whole thing and I've actually had it crash the ship on docking.
You need to go from Poor Agricultural to Rich Industrial buying and selling computers and food. I had over 100,000 credits before I finally stopped playing. Never made it to Elite though. Dangerous was as far as I got. Interestingly, I'm still only bloody Dangerous in the new Elite. Sigh.
That message at the end. Is that just for completing the 1st mission or is that the ending? Does this game even have an ending? What happens if you complete all the missions?
Elite is one of my favorites, but the C64 had better games. Like Microprose jet & submarine & ship simulators. And Pirates. And Mayhem in Monsterland. Spy vs Spy. Mission Impossible.
Looking for a game similar to this one. Any ideas? Platform: Commodore 64 Estimated year of release: Very late 80s Opening music of the game is space odyssey theme. You are controlling a plane and start shooting some chopters first. Then you land on the ground and start shooting tanks coming at you, sliding right and left. Then you fly again and start shooting jet planes that are faster than chopters in the first stage. Finally, you shoot other black planes that come behind you and you can see them before they come from your rear mirror.
But there were other missions after Constrictor. I had thought that the rank "Elite" was the goal. And for that 4000 kills were needed. That was only a rumor but I tried hard. Failed because it was not allowed to use escape pod. Maybe this was also only a rumor XD
@@dot1298 which is impossoble in my opinion. The current game I stopped at "dangerous" again. I think the number of is comparable and I dont want to spend yrs! My post is 7 yrs old 🤣
Younger people would not understand, but after playing first this in C64, the PC version felt so smooth and good. For me this looks very nice and playable, but the PC version had filled polygons that took the graphics to the next level. But the later versions of elite - Frontier and First Encounter were so much better than this original, that I would not go back to this game for long plays.
all I remember was getting through 8 maps then it just went back to map 1 sometimes a regular warp would put me in space with no sun or space dock was that a glitch with a huge amount of ships shooting at me but it was rare
I believe the manual mentions that - you were intercepted by the Thargoids in some alternate realm. I *think* if you took them all out you were able to jump out, but not sure.
Took me a whole year of playing every day to get to Elite. I was all excited about hearing the music that would play (according to a friend who had witnessed it once) to welcome me to that privileged rank. Nothing happened. The disappointment was crushing. Nothing changed with Elite Dangerous either, no rewards for achievements. Stopped playing both when I realised this. Braben is a short sighted, emotionless robot not to see such an easy to fix game killer right in front of him.
But there were other missions after Constrictor. I had thought that the rank "Elite" was the goal. And for that 4000 kills were needed. That was only a rumor but I tried hard. Failed because it was not allowed to use escape pod. Maybe this was also only a rumor XD
Hi Thomas...great play. Unfortunately, I never managed to obtain a mission...I hadn't a clue that specific equipment was required (but...why????)... which exactly? was that the only requirement?
MrDavide914 that is different on each system you play elite on. C64 has others then pc and so on. But there are lists on the net where you can see, what is needed to get a mission. Just use Google and you will find them on the First page.
Most exciting thing about this game was sheer size. There were literally thousands of planets, each with unique name, size, economy, government ... As a kid I always wondered how did they put that in small (64 KB) memory of C-64. Years later I discovered they were procedurally generated, i.e. they run certain mathematical function which created whole Elite universe.
I played it on ZX Spectrum, it was the same with 48K. Truly amazing feat!
It was ahead of its time. I remember seeing it for the first time on the BBC Acorn and being blown away by it. It has everything; space combat, trading and planetary systems. David Braben and Ian Bell relied on assembly language (save on programming space) and Fibonacci's Mathematical sequence to generate small chucks of code. Those two revolutionized 3D games and simulators. The early pioneers of gaming.
You mean, how did they manage to write a game of that complexity for a computer with only 32k of RAM. It was written for the BBC Micro, only later did it appear on other platforms.
@@petermitchell6348 Didn't know back then it was written for BBC Micro (didn't know it even existed 😆) . There was no internet back then, only Top 10 games in oddball computer magazine (chosen by readers) where Elite was always No 1.
@@petermitchell6348 BBC version fitted in just 22K or less I believe...
Elite is in the TOP5 c-64 games of all times. Just immense, just incredible. TOTAL
This game has so many happy memories for me. Used to play with my dad. I was co pilot and watched the radar..thank you for post.
This was amazing as a kid, now I'm sitting on an alien planet in PSVR2 in No Man's Sky, how far we've come.
💯
I think Sean mightve gotten some Inspiration from Elite imo, a lot of similarities. I love both games
@@TheGlitch93 I would be very surprised if there was a single space sim game out there that wasn't inspired by this game directly or indirectly.
This game basically invented the genre, and was crazy ahead of its time.
I used to play this game constantly back in the day....I remember it as being soooo advanced!
It was, for the time.
Honestly when you look past the graphics and faster frame rates at the actual game mechanics and systems of (some) modern games many of them really aren't a whole lot further along than this was then.
Still true 4 years after you posted 🙂
Yeah, it was. I'm still amazed that they got this working back then
Loved playing this a kid, spent many a hour. I remember having a little book with all the planets and prices, while the graphics look a little dated today the game play is much better than many games today
My dad told me that it was linked to the UK space program..if you got to elite you'd get recruited. I believed every word. Used to skip school to go ' train' for the space race.
Brings back fond memories. One of the most eye-opening aspects, after watching this, is just how far we've come in computer technology since this game was released back in the 1980's. Elite Dangerous is stunning by comparison.
Thank you for the memories.
Kindheitserinnerungen werden geweckt. Ich fand die Grafik und 3D Umgebung mal richtig Klasse, hatte mir nur mehr Farbe gewünscht. Hab das Spiel damals aber nicht richtig verstanden. Habe Jahre später mit Freelancer einen elite ableger gesuchtet. Freue mich sehr auf das Elite Remake.
I remember borrowing a c90 from a friend with a bunch of games on and finding this on there. I'd only seen it on the bbc so it was an exciting find. With no manual and trial and error i eventually figured out how to play it and what all the keys were. Realising a space station entrance always faces the planet it orbits made life a lot easier. Getting a decent laser made it a whole lot easier too. I got totally immersed in this at the time..... Alas, the future let me down. I should own a cobra mk iii and be doing this for real by now. Instead i have a van and elite dangerous to console me when i think of how crap the future turned out to be in reality when compared to the version of it i had in my head at the age of 13 :D
Hehe
Well I believe you had much better vision of the future at the time you wrote this comment than it turned out now huh
However this was great game indeed. Had similar experiance
Loved this game, so much time i eventually became elite but had to trade illegally. I had also remember buying a docking computer which made it all easier, and the blue danube played, like space 2001. Thanks for sharing brought back good memories, many many hours just staring in wonder at simple geometrocal shapes in awe lol
the blue danube still plays in my head from Elite
playing dangerous while i watch this. the series had one heck of a glow up, imagine if the original creators could see what it would become. (without having to wait 30 years)
I am currently playing elite dangerous and I love it, but the original is where I started. This video brings back a lot of good memories!
Now I remember to not buy one of those thrimbles. If you do, the only way to get rid of them is to fly very close to a star. Thanks for the memories.
Hommage to Star Trek original series. The trouble with tribbles.
To the present day , with maniac Mansion the best video game of all time!
Holger v.d. Linde I LOVED Maniac Mansion!!!
Don't forget Impossible Mission!
@@vhulheim “Another visitor. Stay a while. Stay forever!”
Back in the 90's I was unable to find out how to play this game.
Me too, but now I know how boring it is, and I am not sad anymore
Why would you need to be told how to play it? 10+ year olds figured out how to play this game from the mid 80's without internet to guide them.
@@heroictesticles6870 When I "acuired" this game, I worked pretty much everything out. Except the "J" for the jump drive. Whenver I tried it it would just beep. So it took me 20+ minutes for every jump.
Now, of course, I know that I was mass-locked when I tried it and that's why it only beeped.
@@heroictesticles6870 I had it in the 80's- it didn't really come with much on how to play...it was very abstract.
@@DougZbikowski I had it as a 10 year old in 1985. ZX Spectrum. I don't remember having any problems learning or playing and certainly had no help. It's one of the few games I remember playing at that age. One of the biggest accomplishments back then was buying your first docking computer after many hours of playing blindly with no guides. Docking manually was hard. Gaming is so easy nowadays, kids back then were forced to learn and have imaginations to make the graphics more realistic in our minds. Nothing in Elite Dangerous is particularly hard, everything is handed to you. The hardest parts are the grinds, which are only hard on your patience.
I had the headset you used with this game the year it came out. Man, the memories.
headset ? I don't remember that. you mean headphones for the ssound from the TV ?
@@davedogge2280 I got my games mixed up. Echelon for the Commodore 64 came with the "Lip Stik" headset/mic combo you spoke commands into. I used to play Elite constantly also. Excellent game.
I never used my Commodore 64 with a TV. I used a monitor and you could plug a headset into the monitor itself.
I love the intro theme and the wussssh when docking
Got Elite: Dangerous about a year ago now and heard this existed from some friends. It's kinda cool to see how similar the ships look given the vast difference in hardware. ♥
Played this one...played ED...this one was more fun :)...this one at the time was revolutionary...nothing like it in that era...ED gets repetitive after some time and im THE fan of Elite...i think i played every edition ever..
@@sjale2007 yeah ikr! it's fun, but I want to see more. Since they're still updating I'm hoping they'll add some new plot or features. I really like the Thargoids, though! The ships look like giant flowers :>
The Soundtrack is Awesome
12:24 - why I imagine two spaceships dancing with each other while the music is playing? xD
damn, i played that... like maniac, and i play it today ... in VR!!!
Here another maniac :) Think it's proper word for me too. Miss my 8-bit days
o7 @@n35h4.n
loved this game as a kid. Thargoids scared the crap out of me!
Yes because they were impossible to beat, so meeting a Thargoid meant dying
Great to see the Switch get a port.
SpaceX played The Blue Danube Waltz in the orbital coast phase. It was genius for me.
Ich glaube, ich muss dieses Spiel mal wieder spielen. Wechselt das gesuchte Schiff die Galaxie?
I had 100k+ cr, cargo always half full of gems and precious metals, 256 space each (kg for gold/silver, g for gems) which i sold when the price was finally fine. That was on top of the standard trading. Don't remember if the tribbles quest activated on the cpc 464 but afaik I read in a review that they become furs once they are killed off by flying by the sun.
Anyway i had enough cr for all the equipment and found the mining laser superior to military.
ISS docking sim from spacex reminded me of this
The mother of all games. Elite. I have this as my ring tone on my iphone. Bell & Braben. Thanks for this brilliant game guys.
Iv already planned the c64 blue Danube docking music as my see you later tune when I fail to respawn
The most exciting part is when the line touched the pixels and a lot of fast beeping and booping happened :D
I bought the alien and it doubled each time jump I performed :-) At the end my spaceship exploded because of all the alien replicates and all the cr. were gone. I'm still traumatised.
Nostalgia, seemed like a few years back....But it wasn't :(
Docking computers were useless, by the time I had enough money to buy them I was already better and faster at docking than the computer
+gforce527 better but not faster, if you just flew straignt to the coriolis with rear view (to fly faster) and when the base appeared on the radar you turned docking computer on and switched to galaxymap or cargo secreen, then the game ran 10x or more faster and docked superfast within seconds :)
Replying to an oooold message. On MSX version the docking computer was instant. On C64 they showed the whole thing and I've actually had it crash the ship on docking.
they sometimes even crashed you into the station.
The Blue Danube Waltz was worth it though.
@@davedogge2280 the docking computer in elite dangerous still does this. they should blame it on preserving the "nostalgia" ;)
You need to go from Poor Agricultural to Rich Industrial buying and selling computers and food. I had over 100,000 credits before I finally stopped playing. Never made it to Elite though. Dangerous was as far as I got. Interestingly, I'm still only bloody Dangerous in the new Elite. Sigh.
at least my laptop can run this version
That message at the end. Is that just for completing the 1st mission or is that the ending?
Does this game even have an ending? What happens if you complete all the missions?
To die of boredom!
I LOVE C64 ❤❤ FOREVER ❤❤❤
I could never get past the copy protection it had.
You could get Elite status by mining a moon and speed up time...
Hmm, is such graphics blinking on 3D scenes normal for c64 Elite ? ZX Spectrum port has nothing like that.
Probably emulated in this video, I don't remember the real version flickering.
One of the best games ever. Would say best game on C64, for sure.
Elite is one of my favorites, but the C64 had better games. Like Microprose jet & submarine & ship simulators. And Pirates. And Mayhem in Monsterland. Spy vs Spy. Mission Impossible.
Looking for a game similar to this one. Any ideas? Platform: Commodore 64
Estimated year of release: Very late 80s
Opening music of the game is space odyssey theme.
You are controlling a plane and start shooting some chopters first.
Then you land on the ground and start shooting tanks coming at you, sliding right and left.
Then you fly again and start shooting jet planes that are faster than chopters in the first stage.
Finally, you shoot other black planes that come behind you and you can see them before they come from your rear mirror.
I had to find everything by trial and error, eventually i aimed for the cougar ships, much better than constrictors.
80's EVE Online
But there were other missions after Constrictor. I had thought that the rank "Elite" was the goal. And for that 4000 kills were needed. That was only a rumor but I tried hard. Failed because it was not allowed to use escape pod. Maybe this was also only a rumor XD
@@dot1298 which is impossoble in my opinion. The current game I stopped at "dangerous" again. I think the number of is comparable and I dont want to spend yrs!
My post is 7 yrs old 🤣
Boy, the time i was able to buy Docking Computer. Later i learn how to dock even without slowing down.
I still dont know how to use Mining Laser.
waRUN schießt du alles alles ab, was dir vor die Linse kommt?
Today I cant't believe I spent so many hours and days with this nice piece of sh**. :/
Younger people would not understand, but after playing first this in C64, the PC version felt so smooth and good. For me this looks very nice and playable, but the PC version had filled polygons that took the graphics to the next level.
But the later versions of elite - Frontier and First Encounter were so much better than this original, that I would not go back to this game for long plays.
Trying to win a C64 on Ebay just so I can play this game. That and to fix it if broken.
the Grand daddy of eve online
No, grand daddy of Elite: Dangerous
ruclips.net/video/LhTTpV5qFrs/видео.html still plays in my head and is relaxing
unerreicht :-)
how the hell do you even play this game?
I remember playing this for what felt like 100's of hours, until suddenly some furry animal started crawling across my screen. I almost pissed myself.
Michael Schröder tribbles!
Bat Fink Trumbles lol
Christian Dietz that's it lol 😂 bloody things 😂😂😂
Bloody hell, Bat Fink! Haven't seen you since I was a kid in the 80's. Still fighting the good cause?
p l u m e Yup with my super sonic sonar radar and trusty companion Karate! Hugo ago is running scared 👍
Give me the space rpg: starfield.
I said the real space rpg: eve online.
Perfection: elite
if they double buffered it, they would have gotten rid of the flashing.
Maybe yes. But I'm still amazed about the smoothness of the animation
This game released in 1984 givr them a break 😂 *not this specific version tho this is not the original version.
How many slaves are in a unit, I wondee
all I remember was getting through 8 maps then it just went back to map 1 sometimes a regular warp would put me in space with no sun or space dock was that a glitch with a huge amount of ships shooting at me but it was rare
That was no glitch, but an ambush.
That was not a glitch, but an ambush.
I believe the manual mentions that - you were intercepted by the Thargoids in some alternate realm. I *think* if you took them all out you were able to jump out, but not sure.
That was not a glitch, but an ambush.
That was called 'witch space' and the ships shooting would be the thargoids!
Lol, narcotics
Merchant Prince of Thrun is the tipical nigerian prince scammer of the old days!
Took me a whole year of playing every day to get to Elite. I was all excited about hearing the music that would play (according to a friend who had witnessed it once) to welcome me to that privileged rank. Nothing happened. The disappointment was crushing. Nothing changed with Elite Dangerous either, no rewards for achievements. Stopped playing both when I realised this. Braben is a short sighted, emotionless robot not to see such an easy to fix game killer right in front of him.
Played my whole youth , never got there. Pilot, I salute you.
Not so different than with Elite: Dangerous
Pretty much the exact same game just re hashed :)
Too slow to be worth playing on a c64, framerate affects combat gameplay badly especially if the sun is in view
God...how wrong you are :) i remember playing this as a kid...and there was 10 dudes watching me playing it...
FRAMERATE LOL
back in 1985 the word framerate didnt exist
@@Zone_Survivor yes it did.
This looks absolutely terrible, but I imagine being a kid at that time, this would hsve been the bees knees.
i have bad memories of playing this as a kid. F this stupid game
But there were other missions after Constrictor. I had thought that the rank "Elite" was the goal. And for that 4000 kills were needed. That was only a rumor but I tried hard. Failed because it was not allowed to use escape pod. Maybe this was also only a rumor XD
The goal of this Video was more to show what Elite was like. If i recorded all Missions it would have been Weeks till its done.
Hi Thomas...great play. Unfortunately, I never managed to obtain a mission...I hadn't a clue that specific equipment was required (but...why????)... which exactly? was that the only requirement?
MrDavide914 that is different on each system you play elite on. C64 has others then pc and so on. But there are lists on the net where you can see, what is needed to get a mission. Just use Google and you will find them on the First page.