Zahlen, bitte! Universe in 2048 planetary systems: The space game Elite
Elite, the first open-world game, was the result of a crazy idea by two students. It packed a universe with 2048 planets onto 32 kilobytes.
On September 20, 1984, Elite was launched as a groundbreaking game: As Commander Jameson, you were in the Lave space station with 100 credits in your pocket and your spaceship, a Cobra MK III. Outside, a universe was waiting to be explored. The "universe" consisted of eight galaxies, each with 256 planets. The 8-bit graphics on the Acorn BBC Micro were simple: The polygons weren't even filled in, just wireframe patterns – After all, the game had to make do with 32 kilobytes of memory. For the time, however, the graphics and gameplay were fantastic and groundbreaking. The game has been imitated by many to this day.
Elite combined 3D action with a space simulation and trading elements. It gave the player a completely free hand in how they wanted to master it. Do you want to earn credits through trading or mining or as a smuggler? Try your hand at bounty hunting or even piracy? Elite, developed by David Braben and Ian Bell, is considered by many to be the first open-world game ever.
(Image: Markus Will)
In the 3D space simulation, you jumped between star systems and landed on space stations. Within these, you traded various goods or accepted missions. In total, you could fly to 2048 planets. The planet properties were created by a random generator: they were the same in every game as they were calculated on identical values, but the generation saved valuable memory space.
The ranks of a space pilot were determined by kills. With 0 to 8 kills you were considered "Harmless". The highest rank, which gave the game its name, was – "Elite" – This was achieved after 6400 kills.
Landing on the space station needs to be learned
Before that, however, the developers had set a challenge: You had to learn how to land on the space station, which rotates like in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" to generate artificial gravity. On the one hand, you had to slowly approach the square entry area and align yourself with the rotation of the space station by rolling the spaceship's body – Parking in driving school was no more difficult. If you had scraped together the money, the automatic landing system was usually the first extra you treated your ship to.
David Braben and Ian Bell had a lot in common at the time: they both owned an Acorn Atom, they were both studying and each programmed computer games on the side. They first met at Jesus College in Cambridge and became friends.
Ian Bell programmed games because he had no money for software after buying the computer. When he later bought an original game, he noticed that it was much worse than his own games, but was sold for money. David Braben had also already programmed games and at the time was developing a 3D space environment for a game called Fighter that was never finished.
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They quickly realized that they could achieve more together and developed the idea for Elite, programmed an initial demo version and then approached the publisher. They realized how far ahead of the times they were with their game when they showed their game idea to Thorn EMI. The company was not enthusiastic –. Instead of a complex space simulation, they would have preferred a fast-paced game with a high score and 3 lives, which was the typical structure of arcade games at the time. At Acornsoft, on the other hand, they immediately recognized the potential and were enthusiastic.
Huge success for the 8-bit system
Backed by an advertising campaign, the game was launched 18 months later for the BBC Micro and was a huge success: although the game cartridge was not cheap at 17 pounds, and even required a blank cartridge to save the game, 150,000 units were sold – This was equivalent to the number of BBC computers sold at the time! The press was equally enthusiastic. Yet the game was so atypical: a 64-page manual was required for players to understand what the game was about and how to fly the spaceship. Almost the entire keyboard was also filled with commands.
Something the makers did not expect at all: To be entered in a leaderboard, you were supposed to send a postcard as soon as you reached the rank of "Elite" with over 6400 kills. They expected to receive a few dozen postcards – but instead, a few months later, thousands of cards arrived.
(Image: Markus Will )
Through clever negotiation, the rights to a conversion of the game remained with Bell and Braben, so they later auctioned them off. Telecomsoft won and through Firebird, Elite was launched for 8-bit home computers such as Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Schneider CPC or Apple II. With 16/32-bit conversions such as Commodore Amiga or Atari ST, graphics and sound were greatly improved. The conversions were also a complete success.
Direct successors with massive weaknesses
The good sales figures led to the need for a successor. Frontier: Elite II was to have a much larger universe; it was to be possible to land on graphically detailed planets and there was to be more depth overall. However, Ian Bell was no longer involved and publisher GameTek wanted to get the game out as quickly as possible – The polish that characterized the first game was missing this time.
As a result, a game was released in 1993 for Amiga, Amiga CD32, Atari ST and MS-DOS, which was certainly still fascinating, but annoying with bugs and unfinished features. In addition, the space controls were adapted to Newton's laws, which certainly seemed more realistic, but also took away the appeal of space battles. The game was generally not under a good star.
Even at the copying plant, something seemed to have gone wrong at the time: The author of these lines, beaming with joy, invested his teenage birthday money in the department store for an original version. Once home, there was frustration, as the packaging and manual were localized in German, but the game was copied onto the disks in English, which required an English manual query. With another trip into town, the game was exchanged, with the same result. Upon returning the game, the seller scowled back as if he had seen through the latest pirating scam. After all, it still sold around 500,000 copies.
(Image: Markus Will)
In 1995, Elite 3: First Encounter was released for MS-DOS, in which the developers made the same mistakes as in the second part: It came onto the market full of bugs. This time, the press was critical of the banana software, which, apart from a few more textures, was only slightly better graphically than its predecessor. This was also reflected in the sales figures: Only 100,000 units were sold.
Elite was then quiet for a long time until David Braben collected 1.9 million euros for a new part via Kickstarter in 2013, plus 0.9 million euros from another campaign. On December 16, 2014, Elite Dangerous was released for PC with a huge online universe and detailed graphics, many parts of which were inspired by the original. The macOS and Xbox One versions were released in 2015, while a conversion was released for PS4 in 2017. However, the game is now only being further developed for PC. Further development of the macOS version was discontinued in 2018 and the console versions in 2022. Although the console versions can still be played, they have not received any upgrades since then.
(mawi)
