Commodore 64

Elite

Trivia

Ian Bell's brother, Aidan Bell, enjoyed a spell of success writing for musical theatre; sooner or later his muse led him to his brother's enormous success story, which (believe it or not) resulted in 1989's completion of Elite: the Musical, furthering the storyline set forth in Robert Holdstock's novella The Dark Wheel. The book and lyrics, with mp3 recordings, (c) Pink Hippo Productions Ltd, can be perused.

Whether or not this musical has ever been produced on the off-Broadway stage is unclear, though one figures the chances are slim to nil.

Elite's two creators, Ian Bell and David Braben, were not on the best of terms for a long time, ever since development on Elite 2 was cancelled. This erupted into open confrontation during 1999-2000 when Bell decided to release all versions of Elite as freeware. The dispute was settled and all files relevant to Elite and Braben's version of the matter can be found in Ian Bell's website.

Two versions were supplied with the DOS release, Shaded and Line Drawn, at the selection screen this message is displayed regarding the shaded version;

"...but unless your machine is powerful (6MHz 80286 or greater) it will not run very quickly and you should select the line drawn version"

On start-up you can cycle through the ship models with F9/F10

The original version for the BBC Micro system was so successful that its sales total equated around 2/3 of all BBC system in use. This was even more incredible considering that the BBC was mainly used in schools for educational software.

Extremely popular in the UK when it was released for the BBC Microcomputer. This was apparently the first game, or among the first games, to have a fan club.

The package came with a novella about how your father sacrificed himself and saved you by dumping you in the lone escape pod in the ship, and how you managed to "acquire" this ship that you are driving at the beginning of the game.

The docking sequence is borrowed from the movie "2001 - A Space Odyssey". Also, the music ("On the beautiful Blue Danube") used in this sequence is the same as in the movie. The only difference is, that the space station looks different, but the one who played the sequel to "Elite", namely "Frontier: Elite 2", knows that this got corrected... ;-)