On the other hand, considering what happened to "Starship Troopers"...
Starship Troopers was different in so far as it was started as an original, but then it was discovered that the story is so close to the novel that there could be legal ramifications. For that reason the rights were purchased and some small changes made to the script.
Diziet Sma wrote:
Well, a screenplay was actually written for The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.. and it's not too bad. It's not easy to track down, but I happen to have a copy, should anyone wish to read it.
There are several websites with thousands of scripts, some original, some adaptions, written by enthusiastic writers, that were never used. I wouldn't be surprised if there's more than one circulating.
Ian Bell actually offers Elites for download in his site. I have played PC version. Traveled through the first galaxy, iron assed my Cobra with Military Lasers fore & aft, jumped to next galaxy, quit playing it soon after.
Spent considerable amount of time with Frontier. Gave test runs for Elite Plus and First Encounters. One of the best things in the bunch are news articles in First Encounters: shortage of medical supplies = business opportunity
When I was a little boy (around 10) my dad worked for heathrow airport and was involved in the development of CCTV and flight information boards (the old flapboards). These were all controlled with a BBC B (via some very clever programmers) and he was allowed to take the development BBC B home every so often when the programmers didn't need it. Luckily they were in to games and we had a twin Cumana 5 1/4 drive with all the latest games including elite, chuckie egg, zalaga etc. I remember being so excited when the computer came home
Me and my dad flew around for ages with me making notes and him flying. I eventually flew myself and with my dog as co-pilot I played Elite as much as possible and even wrote stories about it as part of my creative writing at primary school!! I ended up getting an electron for my birthday and became dangerous on both - the electron was such a pain in the arse as it was tape based and we had to turn off the plus3 to get it to work.
A few years later I played frontier on an A600 and became elite - I still wear the t-shirt much to my mrs disgust
Now both me and my dad play oolite - with the benefit of retirement he made elite last week however as a worker I'm well off and deadly
Still playing? And how is your dad? I much preferred the old flapboards - the new ones where the entire list is split between 2/3 screens drive me nuts!
I can't claim to have played Elite on the BBC or the C64, but I did try it for a while on my first Atari ST in the late '80s, because it came bundled (I think). I much preferred Frontier/FFE though, until I stumbled across Oolite 1.80 in 2013, after which I never looked back
