What was the first version of Elite you ever played?

jonnycuba · Post by **jonnycuba** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 9:45 pm

BBC tape - was a bit gutted when I learned there were no secret missions - but not that gutted

Murgh · Post by **Murgh** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 10:33 pm

T'was on the c64 I think xmas 85-86. Loading the tape took surely 40 minutes, but the sleek book and crucial-to-study ID poster made it an enjoyable ritual. Top shelf memory.

-Greetings and nods to longtime no see folk. May you all have been exceptionally well.

Arexack_Heretic · Post by **Arexack_Heretic** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 10:46 pm

Heya Murgh!

't was on a second-hand C=64 with SpeeDos accelerated 5.25" floppydrive. I had saved my allowance, birthday money, oddjob salaries for two years to purchase it.

My version of Elite was hacked...don't remember the crew.
This somehow caused the trade screen to overflow so that only the precious goodies were easilly visible.
This also caused me to (still) have only a copy of the manual and no nice novella added.

I made up for this piracy by buying all derative works of Elite since...even when I had no computer that could run them.
(I only got to play FFE thanks to JJ's fix just before I discovered OOlite. A good thing, because the combat sucked in FFE)
Still, I had to use my galactic hyperdrive to clear my legal status.

Should check the retro-store in town again to look for a copy of the original...

My commanders name was FOX### as I needed the additional # to store the successive savegames (rather than manually deleting the save-file each time).

zeep · Post by **zeep** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 3:29 am

MSX-1 casette. Still have it, the MSX aswell. Always wished i could get my tape savegames onto disk and use them with the MSX emulator i have Elite running on.

Rxke · Post by **Rxke** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 6:58 am

Oolite.

I definitely knew about Elite, read up a lot about it, was pretty intrigued etc. but never ever bought games. Those were the days you made your games yourself or typed over them hex listings from magazines, heehee...

The only game I ever bought was starcraft, in the 'old games' bin, somewhere in the late nineties.

EDIT: oh, and the totally brilliant Combat mission: Beyond overlord... http://www.battlefront.com/index.htm

CaptKev · Post by **CaptKev** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 9:32 am

Rxke wrote:
typed over them hex listings from magazines, heehee....

The good old days, it's a shame they never worked!

Arexack_Heretic · Post by **Arexack_Heretic** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 9:44 am

the days before "copy-paste" was invented.

Wolfwood · Post by **Wolfwood** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 12:12 pm

Rxke wrote:
Those were the days you made your games yourself or typed over them hex listings from magazines, heehee...

Oh, my, I remember those days. Whoever got the idea that printing 3-4 pages of numbers in a magazine so that someone else could write them to their computer to play some simple game must have been insane. And I was even more insane when I actually did write those pages of numbers and letters onto my computer and tried to get the games to work, hunting for that one typo that wrecked it all...

Making your own games from the get-go was a lot smarter idea and I did make some text adventures and text combat games in C64 Basic...

TGHC · Post by **TGHC** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 12:23 pm

I bought whole books of the bloody things!

Gareth3377 · Post by **Gareth3377** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 3:56 pm

Usbourne had loads of type in listy programs. I can remember one - Island Of Secret (or something like it) I spent a whole half term typing it in and it never worked. Always a syntax error hear. BTW, did anyone else type mismatch on the Elk when it asked you to? Only me eh? Oh well heh heh?

Star Gazer · Post by **Star Gazer** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 5:59 pm

I think I've still got some of those books!!!

davcefai · Post by **davcefai** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 6:25 pm

Always wished i could get my tape savegames onto disk and use them with the MSX emulator i have Elite running on.

I believe it can be done. I've come across this in a Spectrum Emulator. You play the tape into the sound card input.

Sorry no references but it may be worth doing some googling for this.

Cmdr. Maegil · Post by **Cmdr. Maegil** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 8:55 pm

You can look for emulators at the World of Spectrum. They've ot a lot of different ones and maybe one of them may help. I really dunno...

DerekHartley · Post by **DerekHartley** » Thu Mar 22, 2007 9:37 am

Seemed an appropriate place to put my first post. My first Elite game was Frontier: Elite 2 on the Amiga although I have since played the original Elite (also on the Amiga). What I loved most about it was that it seemed so realistic compared to other games. Things taking time to happen, realistic-feeling spaceflight, ships not being indestructible. I also loved the open-endedness of the game where you could play it any way you wanted. Aside, perhaps, from joining the Police! (hm, there's an idea)
Loving Oolite so far, I just need to learn not to press A when I'm trying to change speed and end up a bloody offender. Again!

Uncle Reno · Post by **Uncle Reno** » Thu Mar 22, 2007 10:36 am

Hi Derek, welcome to the board. Good to hear you are enjoying Oolite!

If it makes you feel better, I've been playing for quite sometime with the Oolite standard keys and I've just tried shooting up a spacestation rather than increasing speed towards it!