Oolite Bulletins

What other games were people playing when Elite first debuted? And do we still play any of them, albeit in modified form? I'll start the ball rolling - the ones I played a lot then were Battlezone (a TRS-80 version, then much later on Windows) and Starglider (PC CGA graphics, there was later a VGA version with scenery etc. but it was somehow much less interesting).

For those who don't remember them, Battlezone was Atari's arcade game of tank versus tank, flying saucer, missile, etc. There was later a Command and Control / wargaming successor, but it was a lot less interesting, at least to me. Starglider came from the same stable as Elite, but was more like Battlezone - just an unending fight against increasing odds, with various power-ups and energy drains etc. - the main difference was that the tank could fly.

All three had similarities - vector graphics and a first person cockpit view especially - but only Elite was open ended, and of course is still the one I'm playing. I do still have a version of Battlezone (for iPad!) but rarely feel like playing it. Can't remember when I last heard of Starglider, but it was a LONG time ago.

Anyone else feel like commenting?

My favorite game, after Elite, was AH64-Apache, a helicopter gunship sim. I first played it on the C-64/128, then later on the Amiga. One of the neatest things was that you commanded a squad of Apaches, and could lead them into battle and/or split the squad and give orders for attack, withdraw, back to base, etc. It is available as an Amiga emulator for the PC, but still lacks modern graphics. I wish someone would do for AH64-Apache what was done with Oolite.

Mr Do's Castle
Simple, stupid even, but enormous fun from what I remember.

AcornSoft Aviator. Totally addictive.

Games I played a lot of at the time ... on the ZX Spectrum, no other open-ended games spring to mind, but I remember Rebelstar Raiders with some fondness. And Codename MAT. To be honest I can't remember if I played these a lot ... I don't think anything really grabbed me as much as Elite did. Tau Ceti had some impressive graphics (especially regarding lighting effects), but I don't think I ever completed it (I'm not even sure if I owned it ... it might have been a friend's copy I played). There was a sort of graphic adventure called Tir Na Nog, which took a lot of time but again, I don't think was ever played all the way through: it was just slow, as far as I remember!

Ooh! Now I think some more, The Lords of Midnight was quite a corker ... and a friend and I mapped the whole of Sabre Wulf on graph paper (a few days before a map was published in a magazine ... ).

Edit: you do realise that this is what it's going to be like in the old folks' home, don't you?

Revs. A lot.

Exile...

Disembodied wrote:

Edit: you do realise that this is what it's going to be like in the old folks' home, don't you?

They ain't keeping me in one of those places - I'll damn well escape, I swear!

on my TRS-80 I played their chess game almost full time. On my c64: wolfenstein castle, Submarine, Destroyer and I programmed it to create random #s for my Strategy and Tactics WAR in the EAST game.
,

When I got fed up playing Elite (which wasn't often) I played Revs and Chuckie Egg on the BBCs at school.

I didn't play many computer games but did like the adventure / RPG style genre: Bard's Tale, Pool of Radiance, and Questron to name three. They offered a relaxing diversion from Elite.

CaptSolo wrote:

I didn't play many computer games but did like the adventure / RPG style genre: Bard's Tale, Pool of Radiance, and Questron to name three. They offered a relaxing diversion from Elite.

Yes, Bard's Tale for me as well, plus many of the Infocom adventures.

Let's see ...
Thrust (now there's Newtonian flight done properly - though none of the modern remakes are quite as good as the BBC version)
Codename Droid (got stuck for ages trying to figure out how to disarm the crusher on level 4.1 there)

There were some very strange game concepts back then - Bonecruncher: a dragon grinds up skeletons to make soap for the bathing monsters; Frak: caveman fights monsters with a yoyo and collects keys with his giant nose.

cim wrote:

Let's see ...
Thrust (now there's Newtonian flight done properly - though none of the modern remakes are quite as good as the BBC version)

Yes, forgot about that one, brilliant! Never played the BBC version but thought the C64 version was quite great.

zork I,II,III

Oh yeah, Bard's tale for me too.

Let me see... The Hobbit, Mercenary, Football Manager, Rockstar Ate My Hamster, the keyboard-destroying HyperSports, Thanatos, Saboteur, and the utterly insane adrenaline fest that was Halls Of The Things (hilarious!)

There were others of course but those ones spring to mind.