Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Playing Elite II

If there ever was a game that I've played as in a sandbox-style, it was Elite II - Frontier. Liberty City and San Andreas might be huge, but do they compare to our entire galaxy?

(image taken from Mobygames, contributed by Halleck)


Having played the Amiga version, I also loved to listen the classical music featured in the game (a trick borrowed from Kubrick?).

Although it was possible to engage into several missions, you could play it just for relaxing - in non-game mode, if you will. Open-ended was hardly a buzzword back then.

Another impressive fact: the whole game would take around 700kb. It's interesting to notice that Will Wright is bringing back this compact/procedural approach with Spore.

However, I cannot find working versions of the game for windows XP. Does anyone have any ideas on how to play it on modern computers?

2 comments:

Chris said...

Braben has stated that the use of the Blue Danube for the docking computer in the Commodore 64 version of Elite was inspired by '2001: A Space Odyssey' (obviously!) so your supposition that the use of classical music in Frontier was borrowed from Kubrick is apposite.

Incidentally, the other Elite-style game of this era, Federation of Free Traders (FoFT) also used classical music for its soundtrack, this time in the intent to outdo Elite by having more than one classical track. I remember enjoying the Sabre Dance by Khachaturia. :)

Best wishes!

Chico Queiroz said...

That's actually the first time I hear about FoFT - and apparently some people like it better than Elite!

Well, the influence of 2001 on Elite's soundtrack sounded too obvious to be wrong... it's good to get a confirmation, though ;)

Take care!

Copyright, Chico Queiroz