ELITE | Commodore 64 (1985)
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- Опубліковано 5 лип 2024
- Elite, for the Commodore 64, is a free-form space trading and combat simulation, commonly considered the progenitor of this sub-genre. The player initially controls a character referred to as "Commander Jameson", starting at Lave Station with 100 credits and a lightly armed trading ship called Cobra Mark III.
Most of the game consists of traveling to various star systems, trading with their inhabitants, gaining money and reputation. Money can also be gained by other means besides trading; these include undertaking military missions, bounty hunting, asteroid mining, and even piracy.
Manual - tinyurl.com/4nfrcdtj
Novella: tinyurl.com/2ajtvcxc
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00:00 Introduction
00:12 Elite
01:06 Starting The Game
01:43 The Galaxy
02:01 Your Ship
02:48 Controls & Display
04:29 Trading
05:10 Enemy Craft
05:39 Trumbles
06:16 My Thoughts
06:44 Thanks & Game Suggestions
07:31 David Braben Talks About 'Elite'
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#elite #commodore64 #cheekycommodoregamer - Ігри
I helped get the C64 version to get distribution in the USA. I travelled to the Consumer Electronics Show with 2 Firebird executives, and acted as a consultant. We negotiated a distribution deal, so I got a five-figure bonus! As I was self-employed, I didn't feel rich!
Fantastic! I'm glad you helped to spread the love for this awesome game 😇🕹️👌
I absolutely lived for this game back in the day. I still have it and still play it. I treasure it - the game, the big box it came in and everything that came with it in the box … as well as the fantastic memories from playing it as a teenager. To me it’s the best. Awesome!
Good times and the big box is a treasure to have as well, looks absolutely epic on the gaming shelf 😇🕹️👌
What a game. I was blown away when I approached a space station and a space crim burst out of the airlock pursued by two police ships. It only happened once. I got as high as ‘competent’ I remember.
Good memories, great times... such an epic game. Theres only a handful of games that can truly leave an impression on your after all these years - but Elite does just that 😇🕹️👌
Played this more than any other c64 game. It came with a novella setting the universe.
But a whole review and no mention of Thargoids? They were the Borg before the Borg existed!
Brilliant time to follow up with either Psi 5 trading company or Mercenary, one for the trading and one for the vector graphics and exploration
You certainly know more of the lore thats for sure! I recall that race from Elite Dangerous... brings back memories. Yeah PSi & Mercenary are both superb titles... certainly ones for the list 😇🕹️👌
So many days of my youth spent on this epic game...
Like you say, an absolutely epic adventure 😇🕹️👌
Ohhh BOY! ELITE!!! I absolutely spent more hours on this game then any on the C64 short of Ultima IV. This game was a complete paradigm-breaker when it came out and was ported to the far more popular C64 from the Beeb. At first I was beyond frustrated with the flight mechanics although everything else absorbed me. As Cheeky notes once you master the roll mechanics you will do so much better, but I resisted learning for some reason. The first thing I saved up for was not better guns, but the docking computer so I didn't have to go through the painful process of docking with starbases! I read SO many books while the 'Blue Danube Waltz' played and my Cobra Mk3 slowly and painfully docked with the latest station on my established trading routes so I could start playing again.
Once you save up enough to buy military lasers for your forward guns, nothing can stand against you except maybe a horde of Thargoids. Encountering them was a true 'death or glory' moment because if you survived the battle, you made bank scooping up the hordes of 'tharglet' drones for sale left after the motherships were wiped out. I don't think I actually made the rank of Elite before moving on, but I was at least Dangerous if not Deadly. 🙂
Elite 2: Frontier and Frontier: First Encounters especially really did a good job in building on and expanding the original concepts (and letting you fly new ships!) but nothing can take the place of your first experience in Elite of un-docking from the Lave starport and knowing the universe was your oyster, especially once you found your first storyline mission, though that took literal years for me LOL. Ideal choice for a big thumb, Cheeky! May your mining lasers never over-heat!
Some absolutely brilliant memories there, I could see your voyage in my minds eye especially when tackling the Thargoids. I think I was absolutely decimated by those back when I was a kid so never managed to obtain any of the drones 😇🕹️👌
I wish we had this game as a kid, this is the sort of thing I love and it would have been crazy addicting back then.
Certainly was addictive, I'd spend sessions of 5 or 6 hours at a time... just travelling across the galaxies. Superb memories 😇🕹️👌
I played this to death when I was younger, I got to the trumbles mission. It started my love for Elite, owning Elite 2, 3 and Dangerous, sinking thousands of hours into each.
I have great memories my my dad tying to play this, went stretched up to Elite Dangerous before he died.
Good memories my friend, ones that will last a lifetime 😇🕹️👌
I spent hours on this masterpiece, on BBC and C64. Probably the absolute best game on the C64. Thanks.
Same here, a truly immersive classic once you overcome the initial learning curve 😇🕹️👌
This game took me forever to get good at. It was one of the more rewarding games I played at the time on my C-64. Such an important and exciting game.
Was one of those games that you'd need to invest some time to get the rewards... most of my pals were very impatient and this game didn't appeal much to them. Yet, I'd spend literally HOURS on this as a kid. Love it 😇🕹️👌
Arguably the best game for C-64, with Pirates! being close second. Both were "open world" with a "career" you would advance and improve your ship. Both could be played for months which was something unheard of on 8bit machines.
You make a good point there as many of the games we'd play would be simply 'ended' once the power switch was flicked. But games like Elite or, as you mentioned... Pirates, could have true 'career' modes that kept us coming back for more. Superb games 😇🕹️👌
As a little kid, even though I had no idea what I was doing, I was fascinated and always returned to Elite. Later, when I played it on the Amiga as a teenager, I could finally appreciate it properly -- excellent game!
My brother told me he's play it LOADS on the BBC micro at his school... alas, we only had Daredevil Dennis and Grannys Garden when I was at school, mind you... I am a bit younger than my brother 😇🕹️👌
Brilliant! As a kid back in the days this game had this magical almost mystical aura to it. It felt very special. And when i finally got to play it, I was blown away. Being so young the crude graphics didn't matter at all. It probably added to the experience since the brain filled all gaps. I love this game and the follow up on the Amiga. Sadly my experience with Elite Dangerous scared me away from that game entirely. Still haven't played that one. But I'll take the c64 version any day of the week
All we needed back in the 80s was a little bit of patience and a whole load of imagination. Like you say... Elite certainly got the proverbial gaming juices flowing thats for sure 😇🕹️👌
Loved Elite on my breadbin, loved Elite Frontier on my Amiga, love Elite Dangerous on my PC.
Elite is the Dr Who of gaming.
This... all this.... probably one of my all time favourite games ever. Played it on the Beeb in our computer classes at school at first, until I spent an uncounted number of hours on the 64
I can imagine this being right up at the very top of many Commodore 64, or indeed BBC, owners' best games of all time... it certainly left its mark on me as a kid 😇🕹️👌
yes.... 😂I was waiting for this.
An absolute classic. I spent months with this great game on my C64. Back in the eighties 😅 It took me weeks to understand it, because at that time there were no instructions available in the schoolyard. 🙈
I had similar issues to yourself, as we first got this on the 'schoolyard swap scene'... but I was so much into the game that eventually I managed to borrow a manual and copy page for page onto my own notepad back when I was 7 or 8 years old haha. Good times 😇🕹️👌
@@CheekyCommodoreGamer 😉👍 See you tomorrow. I hope I don't forget the stream. 🙈😜
This is definitely one of my favourite games, I have played this on so many different Computers. Genius programming all the way.
Superb isn't it. I suppose the ultimate version was on the Beeb... even so, decent enough on the C64 too 😇🕹👌
I think I originally played this on the spectrum and loved it. Seemed to remember it came with a “Remlock” device which allowed you to read characters on the screen to prove you had not pirated the game. I recall reading the short novella several times too. I remember the the tribbles so must have played on C64 too. What a great game which gave me many hours of enjoyment.
Some good memories right there... those tribbles were a pain to get rid of and would drain your resources. A truly wonderful game all around 😇🕹👌
I spent sooooooo many hours playing this on the C64
Same here my friend, so many hours whittled away playing this absolute classic 😇🕹️👌
Great memories of the game, although looking back I was crap at it and generally crashed every time I tried to dock.
I remember those days oh too well! Took me a while to actually control my craft correctly and had many crash, bang, wallops into the side of many stations! 😇🕹️👌
One of the few games that I didn't buy or have bought for me because a friend did me a copy. A game that could have so easily been surpassed but it's simple foundation makes for a still as wonderful game despite being a little slow of course. Frontier did away with saving only while docked and with it destroyed any sense of risk vs reward tension from quick save cheats which I found to be a bizarre inclusion given how well it worked in Elite. I play C64 Elite on the Mist fpga so you can enter into 128 mode and speed up almost twice so it's actually very reasonable. Another excellent vid cheers
The additional speed certainly helps! Nice tip... I think that should be the way to play this actually, especially for more modern games experiencing this for the first time. The 128 mode that is 😇🕹️👌
Loved playing this on my C64. Had a friend from school who told me about a version which allowed you to link two C64s and to play together. Amazing how I believed him, even to the point of taking my C64 setup around his house and trying to get this dual version he had a copy of (on tape) to load, but failing...
Imagine how brilliant it would have been to be able to multiplayer this for the C64! Your friend was cruel to tell you this haha 😇🕹️👌
What is there to even say about Elite that hasn't been said? It deserves all the praise and glory that it gets.
Completely agree - an absolute banger of a game on all formats 😇🕹️👌
When I finally learnt to dock and then to sell narcotics and slaves, this opened up the whole Elite universe to me. What a classic.
Yeah!! The illegal trading was when the fun really started ramping up! Such a class game 😇🕹️👌
I never knew if this back in the day, but found out about it several years back. As much as I would love this, still have to play it.
Book a day off work, or have a peaceful weekend - fire it up on your Commodore 64 and experience one hell of a ride 😇🕹️👌
Elite was brilliant. I don't think I ever got to the missions yet on C64, but a few years later on Atari ST I think I completed most of them.
Playing on C64 was kinda more exciting tho... If you messed up and got in trouble with the cops, you could just reload if you were playing the ST version. But on C64 it was faster to crawl back to the system sun to refuel (if you had the fuel scoop) and escape that way. I always remember how the game would slow down when it had to draw that sun up close, and you could speed up the game a lot by switching to a side or rear view...
I used that technique too! Whenever there was an incredible 'slow down' to the graphics, I'd just switch my view haha... I thought it was just me that did that 😇🕹️👌
This how its done, Star Wars! I was very impressed by the graphics and the setup of Elite, but too impulsive to really get into the game, back in '85. But the game surely deserves a decent revisit, maybe the C128 enhanced public domain version will get me hooked
You should try the BBC micro version too, runs super slick! A little too fast in places though, especially when battling 😇🕹️👌
Oolite is a pretty good revisit that's still very retro in looks and style.
Only ever played it on BBC and DOS. Probably the only serious go I had was on DOS with the Jameson cheat. I've since downloaded and played a bit of the C64 version, but it was never really a game that completely hooked me.
Certainly ran much smoother on the aforementioned machines, however I had nothing to compare it to as a kid and didn't really notice the speed comparison until now as an adult, looking back. I remember that cheat too! I think I used it when I played it on my PC 😇🕹️👌
Elite. The One. Thank you again, Cheeky!
One of the best isn't it 😇🕹️👌
Never had the C64 version but got it on Amiga. Played it for months and got to deadly rank. I later read the "SARA" cheat in Zzap Amiga. So much fun
Was much easier with the mouse interface thats for sure 😇🕹️👌
Ever since i gave a try for the first time
with ELITE on my Amiga 500 as a little boy,
i was absolutely amazed and surprised 😺👍🕹️.
Even the loading screen was legendary 😺👍🕹️.
This game deserves a purrfect score 10/10!
Sadly, i have never played its sequel,
FRONTIER: ELITE II 😹.
Frontier: First Encounters (aka Elite III) is even better then Frontier. Give it a try under DOSbox, Arrtu! Even today you won't be disappointed. It may not be Freelancer or even WC Privateer, but it has it's own charm. An Assassination mission I was given I still remember as making my heart literally pound in my chest as I stalked my prey from his takeoff point to the time I was able to hit him without drawing the police. I didn't feel such a rush again until PVPing in EverQuest half a decade later.
I was really tempted to play 'Eve' online! 😇🕹️👌
A perfect game, for certain 😇🕹️👌
@@CheekyCommodoreGamer I played EVE for a couple of years, but unless you are willing to devote your life to it and join a major corp you are fairly limited in what you can do after a while, thought theres quite a lot that's been added since i last played.
I had this game as a kid... but didn't have the manual. So I had no idea what I was doing. I was too overwhelmed at the time. A friend of mine really enjoyed the newer Elite Dangerous game on Steam... and would play it all the time. He tried to get me into it, but I honestly never gave it a fair shake. I should probably give this C64 game and/or the newer game a try.
I feel your pain there - without the manual this game was mega tough to understand. I linked both the manual and the novella in the description for those who want to reminisce 😇🕹️👌
@@CheekyCommodoreGamer Thanks! I may give the C64 version another chance. I'd also be tempted to give the newer Elite Dangerous (which I heard David Braben was involved in the development) on Steam a try. However, my friend who was trying so hard to get me to play it passed away last year. So that kinda killed my incentive for trying out Elite Dangerous.
I played this game quite a lot, although I was always disappointed that I never got offered any of the missions. That's probably because I bought the galactic hyperspace jump as soon as I could afford it, and then used used it. I probably did the same in the second galaxy, so by the time I reached the rank where I'd be offered missions, I'd already moved past the galaxies that you get them in.
I was very disappointed with the Amiga version. Initially, I liked it with it's fast and smooth graphics, but the more I played it, the more empty it felt. Unlike the 8-bit versions, there are no friendly or neutral ships. Any time you encounter another ship(or ships) while jumping toward a planet, they're ALWAYS hostile. It feels more like a shooting gallery than a living universe. Thargoids are also supposed to be the enemy of all other races, but they show up alongside other prates. I was once bumping up my kill rating by sitting just outside the safe zone on an anarchy world, waiting for pirates to attack, flying inside the safe zone so that they would break off, and then flying back out to destroy them one at a time. Eventually, a Thargoid showed up, but it didn't break off when I entered the safe zone. I decided to fly to the station and the Thargoid followed me, hammering my ship all the way. I eventually decided to return fire. The station immediately launched police Vipers, who came out and helped the Thargoid kill me.
Today, a worthy successor to Elite is the freeware Oolite. It's like an updated version of Elite, with the base game having all the same ships, all the same planets, all the same cargo, etc. You can also easily expand it by just dropping expansions into the add-ons directory, no complicated install process needed, and removing them is just as easy. Oolite portrays a living universe where other ships go about their business independent of the player. On the downside, it's not unusual to get jumped by a pack of 20+ pirates at once. If you're lucky, you may get help from nearby ships, or you may just get blown to pieces. Oh and the one time I encountered a Thargoid ship near a star, it wrecked me in seconds as they no longer seem to have a front and back and can fire constantly no matter what angle or direction the ship is facing.
A good write up of events, some good nostalgia right here even though you had a few snags along the way. I'll definitely check out Oolite when I get the chance, sounds interesting! I'll be able to get into that 😇🕹👌
This is one of those games that benefits greatly from the CMD SuperCPU 20mhz accelerator. Running on a 1mhz machine was quite the challenge but it is absolutely playable still.
I can believe that! It runs a lot smoother on the BBC too, yet the C64 had a great rendition of 'The Blue Danube' playing in the background which made it all the more epic 😇🕹️👌
@@CheekyCommodoreGamer Granted, the BBC Micro ran at 2mhz so it had that advantage. Considering that Commodore owned MOS Technologies it's kind of amazing that they didn't create a faster version of the 65xx for their computers.
There are faster versions:
6502A 2 MHz
6502B 3 MHz
6502C 4 MHz
The 65C02 models from WDC are official up to 14 MHz, the 65C816 in the SuperCPU is overclocked to 20 MHz.
The CMD FD-2000 floppy uses a 2 MHz 65C02, the FD-4000 requires a 4 MHz 65C02 because it has a different floppy controller which allows the use of 3.2 MByte ED disks.
I upgraded my FD-2000 to an FD-4000 with the new floppy controller, new ROM and an Mitsubishi ED drive. But I didn't expect a CPU upgrade.
@@JustWasted3HoursHere VIC2 chip is hard coded and synced with CPU, 1 MHz. Early versions use heatsinks. I can’t imagine 2 MHz version (in 82).
Elite! Sweet...
..and incredibly neat 😇🕹️👌
Dogfights were a nightmare on the C64, not least due to the lousy framerate. The 16 bit versions were _much_ more forgiving and managable. As soon as you could afford a military laser in the rear position, you could always just flee from attackers and pick them off with the 6:00 gun - something that was not possible on the 64 version.
Be awesome to be able to shoot behind!! That feature was definitely lacking 😇🕹👌
I remember having to restart so many times because we accidentally knocked the c64. And the infernal docking computer that would sometimes drive straight into the side of the station. curses!
Haha yeah it would glitch for me too and just drive me straight into the side of the wall 😆🕹👌
I really loved Elite back in the day and spent months of playtime into it. The novelle that came with it fired up my hunger for sci-fi even more. There's one thing i'm wondering after watching your video - did you cheat to get the docking computer ? Because it took me months to finally get it and it made Elite so much more fun to play, basically it was an essential. But i doubt that it was possible to get the docking computer within six hours of playing the game .. 🤔🤷♂😅
There may have been a few helping hands for that haha. Ahh I found the Novella too I think, is this the one you mean? tinyurl.com/2ajtvcxc 😇🕹️👌
@@CheekyCommodoreGamer yes that's it 😃 .. i remember it to be a great teaser and motivation for the game, it was definately worth reading.
Such a classic and agree on the time it takes to get good at it, but sooo much game play and repeatable game play in it.
Literally hours and hours were poured into perfecting this game, good times 😇🕹️👌
was wondering when would you get round to this brilliant game ❤❤❤
Superb game this one isn't it - with the more 'epic' games they just take much longer to record and narrate... so a lot of the D&D/SSI games may take some time to get around too as well but I'll definitely get there someday 😇🕹️👌
this game was such an achievement, super impressive
Mindblowing for it's day really, the sheer scale of the game 😇🕹️👌
What a game
Superb game this isn't it 😇🕹️👌
I did not understand that Elite was a major extension of Atari's Star Raiders. This seems to be what Star Raiders could have been with 8X the available memory.
Never had the Atari I'm afraid... in fact, nobody I knew ever had an Atari either It was like a skipped generation of the 8-bit era here in the UK. I believe Star Raiders is a great game though and must play it sometime 😇🕹️👌
@@CheekyCommodoreGamer I'd love to see your review of it. Looking at your review of Elite, I think you'll find it quaint, and see it as the parent of Elite. The difference of what you can do with 8k vs 64k .... I would have found stunning in the day. I latched onto F-15E Strike Eagle as my fav flight sim on my C64. But by '85 I had switched onto programming over gaming with my computer time.
Pro Tip: Always buy the Tribbles... .. .
They're soooo noisy though 😇🕹️👌
@@CheekyCommodoreGamer om nom nom nom
Loved this game but it was painfully slow. Whenever appraching a sun for refuelling, I'd switch to rear view just to speed it up. A mate of mine had the ZX Spectrum version and it was superior.
That seems to have been a decent little trick to speed things up, by switching the view to the rear of the craft... good thinking too. I wish I would have known to do that back in 1985 hehe 😇🕹️👌
One of my favs, until Frontier Elite came along. The only other game like this I REALLY enjoyed by Freelancer (Still play it with Crossfire Mod).
I relly enjoy space exploration games even to this day - I play 'No Mans Sky' on my PS5 every now and then too 😇🕹️👌
@@CheekyCommodoreGamer Same
This game had Lenslok protection.
Very true... I can imagine loads of us Commodore 64 gamers didn't realise this due to the 'schoolyard swapsie scene' we were all accustomed to haha. But yeah the original had that daft lenslok protection that was quickly phase out 😇🕹️👌
Better lets say 'was cracked out'...
A great walkman for computer kids in Britain would have been the Sony WM-W800.
I was able to quickly rank up to Dangerous. But for the life of me, I could never reach Elite. I played as Dangerous for many months but was never promoted to Elite. :(
My rank was generally, 'competent' haha... but sometimes I'd be able to rise the ranks, especially back in the day. Superb game this one 😇🕹️👌
How on Earth do they make vector graphics on a c64?
It is a bag of tricks, but I guess the main tricks are: precalculated lookup tables for math functions and step patterns for line drawing
Some incredibly talented programming! 😇🕹️👌
The first issue of Zzap had the game
An iconic game indeed 😇🕹️👌
Kids at my school were addicted to Elite on the BBC Model B after school, I understood how amazing it was with a mammoth sized universe all fitting in 32K with a very clever algorithm, but I found it boring. It was one of the few games that was better for the BBC since calculating 3D vector graphics relied upon processing power. The Commodore 64's processor ran at roughly half the speed and it's custom hardware that would usually leave the BBC for dust in most games could barely be used with Elite, the only advantage was more memory. They did an amazing job optimizing Elite for the C64, but I still hated it and preferred playing games the C64 was best at, E.g. 2D scrolling shoot 'em ups.
Very true - it was certainly more sluggish on the C64 but it was the next best thing as no way could we afford the BBC micro back in the early 80s... however, after playing it for a few hours you dont actually notice the speed issue too much - it is such an immersive adventure into space. Love it 😇🕹️👌
Loved it but never had any idea what I was supposed to do. I'd just get blasted out of existence every time. Everybody in this game hates you and wants you dead.
Hehe, only if you were careless in shooting your guns off in a civilized system, or were careless enough to go flying into anarchy systems unprepared and run into pirates. It was a game with a lot of depth to it for it's time, far from a simple run n' gun. I used to crash into the stations or get shot by the cops for ages until I learned.
Definitely a learning curve but once you really get into it, the game becomes a truly magical experience 😇🕹️👌