The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

For those of us of a certain age it will be hard to believe its been 25 years since Elite first appeared in the nascent computer game market on the old BBC Micro. The starship trading and combat game, created by a couple of students in the mid 80s, revolutionised video gaming with its 3D graphics and perspective and long, compelling game play and a sense of a full galaxy to explore.  Most modern 3D games owe a debt to this early, mould-breaking  game, one of the earliest video game bestsellers (its estimated that the number of games sold  was equivalent to the number of BBC Micros -- then the only platform for it -- which had been sold, essentially every single owner of that early home computer had bought the game).

It even amazed the professionals at Acornsoft who couldn’t understand how the young students had made the computer perform tasks they thought it wasn’t capable of (Francis Spufford documents the making of Elite in the highly enjoyable Backroom Boys: the Secret Return of the British Boffin). Today video gaming is a massive industry, competing -- some say converging -- with movies, designed by large, specialist teams and worth millions, but when Elite came out most software houses were tiny; many still sold literally home-made games via back-of-mag ads (“100% machine code action!”) and it was still common to laboriously type in software from computer mags by hand. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has fond memories of long hours spent with friends jumping star systems in Elite, dodging pirates, eluding space cops; it was a game you could come back to endlessly. As part of a celebration of its 25th anniversary for Elite one of the co-creators, David Braben, discusses the game and more is promised to come. (via Boing Boing’s Offworld)