Frontier: Elite II

The Good
The best part of frontier has got to be the variety of things you can do. You can be a merchant and travel from system to system buying and selling goods. You can kill other ships for bounty. You can even do missions for the federation or imperial (or both) and get various awards and titles.

There are a whole load of ships you can choose to buy, when you have the money. For some ships you may even need to employ staff to help run your ship.

The controls are easy enough. There are plenty of shortcuts available to save time. The only time I can think that the controls may be dodgy is when you're having a fight. The best way around this is to pause the game then change your view until you see the enemy, lock on to it, then autopilot, then KILL!!

I once read in Amiga Power that there was a shipyard orbitting a VERY distant world, something called the MIRAGE, a ship? A rumour? Who knows?

There are a few ways to cheat in the game:

For example, you can get unlimited cargo space, get unlimited money and even sell items to systems in Civil War at a massive profit.

To get lots of cargo space: 1) Buy at least 1 tonne of rubbish. 2) Leave your current space dock. 3) Hyperspace to somewhere where they don't mind you dumping stuff. 4) Go to the inventory screen, where you can jettison stuff. 5) Click just UNDERNEATH the box with rubbish next to it. 6) The game thinks you are jettisoning stuff, so it gives you 1 cargo space each click!!

Lots of Money: 1) Make sure you have enough cargo space for a passenger cabin. 2) Get someone in it. (Doesn't matter who, Doesn't matter where they want to go) 3) Go to the shipyard. 4) Look at the ship that will give you the most money if you part exchange it. 5) Attempt to part exchange. 6) The computer will not allow you to sell a ship that contains a passenger, but still willingly gives you the money for it. Hoorah.

I can't remember the exact coordinates of this system, but it's called Beinin. (around -13, -5 or -5, -13). It's definately in the -'s somewhere. It's worth a look.

The Bad
The only annoying thing about Frontier is the in-game protection, where if you accidently give the wrong letter a couple of times, the police put you in prison and you lose the game.

Okay, the graphics aren't great, but remember that Frontier was first written for less powerful machines such as the Amiga.

The Bottom Line
The most addictive, enjoyable, exciting game I have ever played. 10 out of 10