Elite: "The game that couldn't be written"

The BBC Micro ran at 2MHz, not 2GHz. It wouldn't be an 'Alexander the OK' video without a units error. Thanks @MegaCadr A stack is last-in-first-out, not FIFO as I stated. Thanks @skonkfactory At 30:21 I simplified how branching operations work. Only a single byte is updated in the program counter for a branch - not two as shown. I didn't think anyone would notice this simplification but it's been pointed out enough times that It's best I clarify it here. The third row on the XOR table at 52:47 is incorrect. This is a case that isn't applicable for writing to the framebuffer, hence me forgetting to change it (the second column should be black).

Still remember the aghast looks on my parents faces when I went downstairs and asked my parents what narcotics were as they had amazing prices.

My best friend and I volunteered to set up a database on the brand new BBC in our school library. We were given a note to skip PE so that we could do this in school time. We got on very well with the librarian. she was a lovely lady, and we were always quiet and respectful, and in truth I think that our help in the library was actually useful to her. It took us maybe two full periods to set the database up. Thereafter we spent every PE lesson for the rest of our time at that school, two full school years, playing Elite in the library. If a teacher walked in the librarian would always speak to them so that we knew to quickly restart the BBC and make it look like we were busy. It's only looking back that I realise that she might have been doing it deliberately.

I’ve played a lot of Elite Dangerous and I’m frankly ashamed I hadn’t heard of the original Elite before this. It’s incredible to see such recognizable ships and stations in the original 1984 graphics

I remember the first time my father saw me playing Elite: Dangerous. He asked me what I was playing and I went like "It's a space simulator called Elite: Dangerous" and he immediately went "That's ELITE? You're joking. No fucking way! Look at the graphics and the detail!". I was at first confused and then excitedly he started telling me about how it was the most impressive game of it's time, how amazing and revolutionary it was, you should've seen his face. You could see the same excitement he probably had when he was 14-15. This wasn't the excitement of a man who has 30+ years of experience in IT and programming but the excitement of his childhood. Thank you for this video. Now I understand and relate to his excitement even better. o7

I loved Elite in the mid 80s and I'm currently the technical lead on its successor, Elite Dangerous. It's still really great to see historical breakdowns like this, love your engineering passion and the historical context.

My dad was 43 in 1984. I once came down for breakfast before school and he was still playing this on my ZX. He even reached "Elite" level. I was baffled as he'd never shown interest in gaming before or since.

I think this is why old computer games are so good. So much effort with so limiting constraints. It rewarded innovation and thinking outside the box (Or BBC Micro). Elite, and Sid Meier's Pirates! Were phenomenal.

Okay, that was really good. I'm not a programmer, but one of my first PC games was "Frontier: Elite 2" in 1993, and that game blew my mind, especially the seamless universe, which nobody has managed to replicate to this day. Years later, I wrote to Frontier Developments and asked them how they did it, and a programmer there actually wrote back with an explanation of sorts that I still didn't understand. I was just impressed that someone bothered to write back at all. Anyway, thanks to much for your detailed explanations that even I could follow. The Elite series holds a special place in my heart even though I'm in the USA, and I'm so happy that it is so fondly remembered by so many. I still have my boxed copies of "Elite Plus," "Frontier: Elite 2," and "First Encounters" sitting proudly on my living room shelf, just waiting there for an unsuspecting guest to ask me about them.

I tried showing this to my grandma when i was a kid, I was so excited by the idea of being able to create and explore a whole universe. I later heard from my dad (who was in the room watching) that my grandma was visibly scared of the computer, which I was completely oblivious to, being a small excited kid. Imagine being born before cars existed, and then seeing shit like this in your lifetime!

Watching my Dad play this on his C64 when I was 5 is what got me in to computers and gaming. We got an Amiga 500 some time later and used to take turns playing. I always dreamed of playing it together in our own ships. Then Elite Dangerous happened. We both backed it and went to the launch event, meeting Braben and sharing some stories. Also played it on an Oculus there and were blown away. So of course we both got VR… Dad was a leftie and such was his commitment to flying in a wing with me that he learned to use a right handed HOTAS. If you play Elite Dangerous, maybe pop to SVP station in Andancan. It’s named after the IT business he started in the 2000s. Sadly he died unexpectedly a few years back and I can’t yet face playing without him. But anyway - this video would have made him smile. Thank you.

It strikes me that Bell releasing the source code actually made people think that he and Braben were far cleverer than everyone had thought. People had speculated on how the program worked, but they must have really been blown away when they saw how it actually worked (as I was when I watched this video!). The hidden line treatment was amazing; clever, elegant and simple.

as a kid I rented this for the NES. it came with a note on the game case: "Warning: hard." There was no manual. It was the worst rental choice I ever made, I had no idea what I was doing 😂

I'm a 53 year old British software engineer. I've been working professionally for 30 years and programming for 40. Elite changed my life. I remember I went camping with the scouts. The whole weekend I couldn't wait to get home and resume my life in the game.

Back then, I was in my 40s and 50s, but I had been a sci-fi reader all my life. I was READY for first person computer games, because they were in the stories I had read. I had some kind of cheap computer and I was immensely proud of myself when I created a "game" that consisted of a transparent cube that did nothing but hang in space, but I could look at it from any angle of distance. My computer took about a minute to redraw the cube after I had laboriously entered the location and viewing vector. I only knew one person who could understand what it was about, and he was 17 years old. Now I'm 81 years old and I can't find ANYBODY to game with. Thanks for giving this great history of UK game development. I knew nothing about it.

And ditto Elite II: Frontier! That felt about a decade ahead of its time. Beautiful graphics and THE SWEET, SWEET MUSIC.

I really like the history voice over, while showing the disassembly/restoration, and with the notes about what happening, its brilliant, good stuff.

I was 15 in 1984. I still remember playing Elite for the first time as soon as it came out. It was absolutely mind blowing.

Besides its technical achievements Elite also had great gameplay. The progression was real, the feeling of superiority once you had Docking Computers or good lasers, the poverty when you were down to your last few credits and had to go mining asteroids for a while just to be able to afford fuel. It's perhaps worth mentioning other people in the era were also squeezing amazing things out of the limited hardware: a decent chess program in 1Kb of memory on the ZX81, Lords of Midnight/DoomDark's Revenge on the ZX Spectrum (a complex adventure game/wargame with almost an open world), Citadel on the BBC Micro, Knight Lore and other isometric games from Ultimate.

I'm a big fan of Elite: Dangerous, and when I got into it I had no idea that it was a long-standing franchise with its roots in the 80s! Was cool to see this history lesson on the work that went into it and the legacy it went on to have.