While I was considering the list of the seven Atari ST games I wanted to feature I thought to myself, "You know, I should probably stop choosing my favorites, because they're all big name games that everyone's already heard about. I should opt for games that were perhaps exclusive to the ST and Amiga, or never made it to the US in any capacity. Give people a glimpse into that platform's unique library of unusual one-man projects with high-concept premises. Shine a spotlight on the thriving UK Indie scene of the 80s."

And then I thought, "Eh, I kinda just want to play Elite instead. I really like Elite."

Elite

Elite is, along with Star Raiders, one of the earliest examples of what we now consider to be "space trader" games. Those that, instead of forcing the player to perform a linear series of escort missions like almost every other space sim at the time, allowed them near-unlimited access to a near-unlimited universe and a handful of suggestions they were free to pursue to acquire fame and fortune. The more famous you got, the stronger your opposition became. But, of course, with all that accompanying wealth you'd be well-equipped in expensive ship upgrades to deal with any danger that might arise.

Elite was originally released in 1984 for the BBC Micro (and its little brother, the Acorn Electron), but it's the 1988 Atari ST port we'll be playing here. They filled in all the vector ships of the original; that's how classy this version is. (Elite, famously, only contains one piece of music: a MIDI version of Strauss' The Blue Danube Waltz, a cute homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey. If you're into MIDI classical music, by all means have at it.)

For now, though, we'll leave Commander Jameson and his ludicrous fortune alone. He probably has enough to buy his own tropical planet and retire, but ideally it would take many hours to reach this point with innumerable obstacles along the way. For instance: Thargoids, the imperial insectoid alien race that will overpower practically any human vessel you can throw at it. Those giant pink octagon battleships of theirs still give me the willies, but not as much as getting trapped in witchspace - an endless void absent of stars that sits in the subspace between hyperdrive jumps. There's nothing there besides other vessels that have also had their hyperdrive crap out on them, and the Thargoids are the only other ones besides yourself and high-level pirates with that tech. It's like getting stuck in an elevator with your worst enemy.

Anyway, Elite's kinda basic, but also addictive. At least, it was at the time. It perhaps requires a little too much patience: a quality I had in abundance as a child but not so much these days. If you can remember what all the buttons do, I'd say it still holds up remarkably well.

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Elite is rad in all it's forms, though my favorite remains Frontier: Elite II, with a stunning 8 classical MIDI tracks to choose from.

I don't remember how the first Elite handled government types, but in Frontier and onwards it determins what kind of goods are legal (slaves being illegal in democracies etc.), and I think it was the same in the first.

@fisk0: Ah, that makes sense. I wondered if certain ones were more militaristic in nature too, which would mean a good deal on firearms and medicine trading.

@mento: yeah, I've mostly played Elite: Dangerous recently, and there it's explicitly stated that dictatorships favor weapons trade, and I think anarchy systems are into drugs. Not sure if there have been any changes in who favors what over the years though.

Edit: Found the Elite 1 manual on Ian Bell's home page. It doesn't detail all government types, but goes into how the government types generally affect trading and safety within the system: http://www.elitehomepage.org/manual.htm#A45

For the benefit of new traders, a brief political summary is given below, but reference should be made to Kroweki & Carr's PsychoHistory and Economic Theory in the GalFederation, 2845. Planetary governments, or federations, determine the relative safety of their Solar Space. Ranked in decreasing order of safety, the 2040 officially registered worlds of the Galactic Federation can be classified as

• Corporate States
• Democracies
• Confederacies
• Communist States
• Dictatorships
• Multi-Governments
• Feudal Worlds
• Anarchies

CORPORATE STATES

Like ENGEMA and ZAATXE, these are well-ordered worlds, which have usually developed from settlers who practiced a free trade form of competition. Taxation is high on such worlds, but the living standards are high also. Corporate planets with to protect their trade, so goods are expensive, but luxuries are welcomed. Import licences are often necessary.

Engema is an agricultural world, run as a single farming co-operative. Farmers receive a fixed payment for their crops, whether or not the harvest is good, and selling prices do not vary greatly. It is a dependable market, and customer relations are good. Luxuries, machinery and raw materials sell well here.

Zaatxe is an example of a rich, industrial state (Tech level 12). It produces luxury goods, elaborate and innovative machine systems, and specializes in Prototype design. Prices fluctuate depending upon the level of inter-state competition, but it is always a safe bet to buy recently- developed machine items which have not yet spread very far across the galaxy.

DICTATORSHIPS

Dictatorships such as the worlds Lave and Enzaer, are only moderately safe to trade with, but are well worth the risk (provided the trader is well defended and combat trained). Very often pirate attack will not occur because of an agreement between pirate fleets and the world itself. A proportion of all incoming trade is "allowed" to be stolen by pirates, who will then leave the world alone, and protect its shops from aliens or rogue traders. It is an uneasy liaison, which often breaks down.

Lave is an agricultural world, and Enzaer an industrial planet, but a similar principle operates on both surfaces. There are two trading standards, that of the People and that of the Aristocracy. Standards of living are artificially generated, a veneer of progress, and luxury goods, machinery and textiles sell well - usually. The great demand, however, is for basic commodities, especially foodstuffs, clothing and raw materials. These will sell well when the voice of the People has been raised in protest.

ANARCHY PLANETS

A trader can make his biggest profits here and reach his grave the quickest. Worlds like Onisou and Xeesenri have vast wreck-yards in far orbit, the dead places of ships that came to trade honestly, and fell prey to trickery.

These are lawless places, and have usually become so because the original settlers completed too hard when there was too little resource material. Those worlds which survived holocaust did so because of uneasy and bloody alliances between clan families. Pirates and mercenaries were hired for protection and assassination purposes. Anarchic worlds will trade readily in narcotics, slaves, firearms and exotica, and the price will be good... if you get a price at all. These worlds are almost always supplying invisible Masters, usually elite trader/combateers who have turned to crime as the most profitable way of life. Such form loose federations, and trade on the black market extensively throughout the galaxies.

These worlds pay highly for goods they cannot produce themselves, because they know that traders avoid them. Their own products need specialized, illegal outlets: weaponry, narcotics, eavesdropping devices... if it's covert, then anarchic worlds are producing it. Trade in these items and you will get rich quick, or dead quick, or at least become a "Fugitive".

Oh, by the way, I really like the visual treatment they did to the ship outfitting and cargo/trading screens in this version of the game. I had only played the original CGA PC version, Elite Plus and the unofficial remake Elite: The New Kind previously, and they all used spreadsheet style lists instead of images for that stuff.

I've downloaded the ST version of the game off Ian Bell's site, but haven't gotten around to setting up a floppy drive compatible with my ST to play it yet.

@fisk0: Yeah, having icons for various things made it way easier for a younger me to process, I suspect, as well as it making it easier to hold my interest. It's still a very patient, contemplative game with its lengthy trips across space, but nonetheless I found myself playing it for hours. It probably went a lot way towards inspiring my fondness for non-linear open-world games.

If I could make a recommendation, it's a lot easier to navigate the ship with the keyboard rather than the mouse or joystick. Something about using the arrow keys makes it easier to line up your ship/reticle. It uses a lot of keys too, but they're all fairly intuitive and I'm sure they're very similar to the key layouts of the versions you've already played. Keyboards haven't actually evolved that much in thirty plus years, turns out, besides for a couple of extra function keys.

Yeah, after having way too many modern keyboards break within an unreasonably short time frame, I dug up one of my old PS/2 keyboards from around 1988-89 again and have been using that with my PC for about 4-5 years now, and the only thing that can be a hassle is keyboard shortcuts that use the windows key, which I of course don't have. Most of them have alternate combinations that don't require that key though.

I was a nad's hair too young to fully appreciate the original BBC Elite (I had it on the Speccy) but combined the sale of my beloved 128, pocket money savings and a generous Christmas present to buy an Atari ST, mainly for the remade Elite.

To this day it's my favourite game, and the only one I played (along with a mate) for 24 hours straight.

@mento - Have you played Oolite? It can never be the ST Elite but gives a decent flavour of it. Not tried it in a few years though.

EDIT - Argh. Downloaded the latest Oolite and they've modernised the graphics - Don't know how I feel about that...