Adventures in Gaming Part 6

ADVENTURES IN GAMING Part 6

Elite on the Commodore 64 was an uniquely special game. Not only was it a brand new genre, but having played lots of wireframe flight simulators on the BBC previously (especially Aviator), I took to Elite easily. Visually it was incredible, with its beautifully simple three dimensional space model that was perfectly functional. Elite was an immense technical achievement, spread across eight huge galaxies, each populated by hundreds of planets, each with their own economic situation. You could literally get lost in the game for months.

I read the introductory novel and also the instruction manual from front to back and began playing.

Flying the Mark IV Cobra and learning how to dock was difficult, but rewarding. It took patience and skill, with rewards coming in the form of more money, better ships and weaponry, and rightly so. There was no story or mission, other than those you created yourself. You decided where you flew and what cargo you bought and sold. Occasionally you would be offered a simple quest. Once you earned enough money you could buy a very expensive docking computer, and I remember the first time I engaged it on the Commodore 64, the docking music from the film 2001 started playing, The Blue Danube. As a side note, the ZX Spectrum never had this music when you engaged the docking computer. When you activated auto land, it jumped you straight to the space station.

There were three downsides to the docking computer. Firstly, while you were waiting for your ship to dock (you could engage the docking computer at any distance from the space station) you could still be attacked by pirates or the police meaning you would have to disengage the docking computer and manually fly and kill your attackers, which once accomplished often left you further from the space station than before. Secondly, it wasn't perfect, and it would sometimes crash your Cobra Mark IV into the space station. And thirdly, by using the docking computer all the time, you got out of practise doing it manually. The music really added to the feeling, and while the combat model wasn't brilliant, the three dimensional radar has been copied many times and worked a treat. Having a fully tooled up ship with military grade weapons on all four viewports was enjoyable. Other essential upgrades included a fuel scoop so you could skim the suns to refuel and recover dropped cargo from destroyed pirates, and a rear mounted mining laser to earn money from asteroids and derelict ships. Because you have four viewpoints, forward, backward, and left and right, you had to arm each view with a weapon. You really did feel you could go anywhere and do anything. The highest rating I achieved in Elite was Deadly, but by that point I had played through all eight galaxies, visited countless planets and built a reputation and ship worthy of the title, Deadly. And finally I came back home to Lave and Diso. I didn't have the passion to continue on, even though I was certain I wasn't far from achieving the Elite status tag. I really did feel like Roy Batty from the film Blade Runner, in that I had been to places and seen things you wouldn't imagine possible. I later found out that your Elite status was based solely on the number of enemies you had killed.

While my brother showed interest in mainly driving games, he did have a talent for numbers and whilst I did all the flying and combat in Elite, he would take over and do all the trading. This was where you made the real easy money by knowing which cargos to run between which planets. I understand the game had a rudimentary economy system meaning you had to spot an opportunity and take advantage of it when it appeared. It didn't take long with his help for me to have a full set of Military Lasers on all four viewpoints.

Elite was originally released on the BBC, and was quickly converted to almost every format of the day. Of all the conversions of the game, the Commodore had the best version. What marvelled most was how they managed to simulate eight huge galaxies in such a tiny memory space. It was at that point that I realised how talented you needed to be to program and get maximum efficiency out of slow computers. It seemed both British and European programmers were the most competent at getting the most out of each computer cycle, whereas the Americans preferred to just come up with faster processors, more memory and more storage.

When you started the game you had two statuses to maintain. One was your legal status and would determine how other pirates, police and independent traders would react to you. Break the law by killing innocent ships or firing upon police and you became a wanted man with a bounty on your head. And the other was the infamous Elite status. You started out as Harmless, but slowly you improved your rating to Mostly Harmless. It was an incredible accolade to earn. But not only could you slowly rise the ranks of Elite status, but also you had to be care with your criminal status too. Indulge in too much piracy and you quickly earned the wrath of the Galactic Police who’d put a bounty on your head and ship, so you not only had to watch your cargo, but also the legal status of the planet to see if they would welcome someone who was a wanted man. Also certain types of cargo attracted the attention of both pirates and police, so if you were going to carry something illegal or desirable, you needed the firepower to defend your ship.

The innovative radar screen that Elite employed would become a staple of the three dimensional space combat games for all time and always left you with no doubt as to where the enemies were attacking your from. Combat was something to be enjoyed in Elite.