Classic Elite

Elite
Developer	Ian Bell David Braben
Publisher	Acornsoft Firebird Torus Microprose Telecomsoft Hybrid
Latest version	Elite Elite Plus ArcElite
Release date(s)	1984
Platform(s)	BBC Micro Acorn Electron Commodore 64 Sinclair ZX Spectrum Amstrad CPC Apple ][ IBM PC Atari ST Amiga MSX Tatung Einstein NES Acorn Archimedes

Elite is a seminal space trading computer game, originally published by Acornsoft in 1984 for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron computers and subsequently ported to many others. The game's title derives from one of the player's goals to raise their combat rating from Harmless, through Mostly Harmless, Poor, Average, Above Average, Competent, Dangerous, Deadly, before reaching the exhalted heights of Elite.

The BBC version of the game originally came on cassette in a box - this is a photo of the front and back. The box included

• a wall chart for identifying ships
• a copy of The Dark Wheel novella and
• The Space Traders Flight Training Manual.

Start-up screen for Classic Elite on BBC micro, Disk version (1984)

Firebird's quite original Elite ads as seen in Zzap!64

The authors

For the time (1983) it was relatively unusual to have more than one author for a game, but David Braben and Ian Bell realized they were working on similar projects and collaborated whilst undergraduates at Cambridge to produce Elite.

Elite's creators at the time of launch in 1984

See how David Braben and Ian Bell created Elite, by watching the documentary Brits Who Made The Modern World.

See also

• Classic Elite ships
• Classic Elite ships firepower
• Classic Elite ships wireframe
• Classic Elite sounds
• Classic Elite entity states
• Classic Elite planet descriptions
• Legends of Elite

Links

Most of the various Elite sites have foundered over the past two decades. These still worked in 2020.

• Ian Bell's site
• Acornarcade
• Frontierastro - also good for Frontier
• the original game code
• The Holy Scripture of Elite