Braben Mad not to Return to Elite
A quarter of a century on and Elite still generates deep feeling.
David Braben - now of Frontier Developments but formerly the mind behind Elite, one of the greatest video games of all time - has told the BBC that Elite IV could very well be in the works.
He does this by telling the Beeb that he'd be "mad not to go back to the world of Elite and I'm very excited about it."
Despite the huge upswell of love for Elite in its 25th birthday week, we've got to hope that David doesn't mean a return to either Frontier: Elite II (1993) and Frontier: First Encounters (1995).
What would be excellent would be if he kept to the following, "We crafted every single byte and would work for hours just to free up three or four bytes so we could put in a new feature or ability.
"That level of concentration on things have been lost today when you have things that are many megabytes or even gigabytes in size"; and presented a game that was a superbly playable, imaginative and glorious as the original.
Happy Birthday Elite.
He does this by telling the Beeb that he'd be "mad not to go back to the world of Elite and I'm very excited about it."
Despite the huge upswell of love for Elite in its 25th birthday week, we've got to hope that David doesn't mean a return to either Frontier: Elite II (1993) and Frontier: First Encounters (1995).
What would be excellent would be if he kept to the following, "We crafted every single byte and would work for hours just to free up three or four bytes so we could put in a new feature or ability.
"That level of concentration on things have been lost today when you have things that are many megabytes or even gigabytes in size"; and presented a game that was a superbly playable, imaginative and glorious as the original.
Happy Birthday Elite.
Companies:
Frontier Developments
People: David Braben
Games: Elite Elite 4 (work in progress) Frontier: Elite II Frontier: First Encounters
People: David Braben
Games: Elite Elite 4 (work in progress) Frontier: Elite II Frontier: First Encounters
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Comments
irritant 21 Sep 2009 14:58
1/6
Is this news? I'm sure I read ages ago that Frontier Developments were working on a modern cross-platform MMO version of Elite.
It'll probably be s**t. Based on Frontier/First Encounters which sucked all the fun out of the original classic.
Original Elite on the DS - that's what I'd like to see.
It'll probably be s**t. Based on Frontier/First Encounters which sucked all the fun out of the original classic.
Original Elite on the DS - that's what I'd like to see.
Correction! 21 Sep 2009 18:34
2/6
The mind behind Elite (David Braben and Ian Bell)
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ergo 21 Sep 2009 20:33
3/6
Question: would any of you at Spong HQ actually sit down and play Elite today?
DoctorDee 22 Sep 2009 07:28
4/6
@ergo No, of course we wouldn't. Things have moved on and we acknowledge that. But in its day, Elite was one of the greatest games. Bring it up to date, with modern graphics and sound, but with the spirit that made the original, and THAT we'd play!
PreciousRoi 23 Sep 2009 05:43
5/6
@DoctorDee Agreed. Elite is one of the few games that has managed or bothered to pull off a plausible interstellar spaceflight/combat experience. The docking maneuvers (even with the autopilot it sometimes took forever), the unapologetic hours you'd have to spend running from radar contacts trying desperately to get your cargo of luxuries to the Corolis station orbiting the Anarch planet you were many mini-jumps away from...
Wow, I could waste a *lot* of time on a game like that...I'm not sure if, at my advanced age, and with a console controller, I could replicate the surgical precision which I was rightfully famed for throughout Galaxy 3 as a young lad in my Cobra Mk III...but I could sure have some fun trying :D
Wow, I could waste a *lot* of time on a game like that...I'm not sure if, at my advanced age, and with a console controller, I could replicate the surgical precision which I was rightfully famed for throughout Galaxy 3 as a young lad in my Cobra Mk III...but I could sure have some fun trying :D
Spoonhammer 23 Sep 2009 09:55
6/6
DoctorDee wrote:
@ergo No, of course we wouldn't. Things have moved on and we acknowledge that. But in its day, Elite was one of the greatest games. Bring it up to date, with modern graphics and sound, but with the spirit that made the original, and THAT we'd play!
What about EVE Online? Having played both extensively I think it's precisely what you're looking for.