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

[@Alexander-the-ok]

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).

[@Hairyfoot_Studio]

Great video Alexander, Really great explanantion of the limitations and how they were overcome. Despite this it was a great time to be a kid in the early eighties. Thanks for the correction on the clock frequency

[@sulrich70]

2mhz was a pretty fast 6502 as well, c64 and Atari ran at 1mhz

[@Alexander-the-ok]

@sulrich70 Absolutely. There is an interview with Steve Furber somewhere where he mentions the higher clock speed and various peripherals pushed the 6502 to its absolute limit in the Micro.

[@Nezuji]

I think you meant to say "Last in, first out" at 21:45. That matches the rest of your description, and the operation of every other CPU stack that I'm familiar with. :)

[@sulrich70]

i have to say, the ambition of the computer project in the UK was amazing. and the BBC micro has to be one of the most serious pieces of engineering of any 6502 machine.

[@elfboy29]

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.

[@bjbj6002]

ROFL that would have been priceless!!!

[@theroadsnearyou...5088]

😂😂😂👍

[@pseudoengineere2469]

My mom tried to take away my c64 when she heard about that part

[@elfboy29]

@@pseudoengineere2469 What the heck is going on up there?

[@xitheris1758]

​@@pseudoengineere2469 Ah yes, the olde method of punishing your kids for coming to you with questions. 🤌

[@mickdriver3942]

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.

[@dandymcgee]

legendary librarian

[@RiversJ]

Ain't no way she didn't realize what was going on 😆 She just decided that hard work must have it's just desserts.

[@ALIENMACHINES]

That was brilliant :-)

[@Alexander-the-ok]

The librarian at the school my wife works at apparently secretly lets the kids play DnD without teachers’ consent (though my wife fully consents to that). Librarians provide a SERIOUSLY underrated service.

[@Nitidus]

​@@Alexander-the-okWhy would students need to get consent from teachers to be able to play D&D? Is it the 70s again? Once they're old enough to understand the rules in the first place, then they should be old enough to get a (more or less) civilized game together... When I was in elementary school, they illegalized Yu-Gi-Oh! on the schoolyard because kids were trading cards and apparently parents felt uncomfortable not having control all the time. (Also, there were horror stories on the news about children allegedly stealing money from their parents to buy new packs, so that was my lifetime's equivalent of a Satanic Panic...) Obviously, this didn't make us stop playing and trading Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. Instead, we went underground - quite literally, sometimes. We met in underground concrete tunnels or in the middle of bushes, in shady corners or somewhere that gave us a good overview of who was incoming. We developed a black market, illegal betting operations and an underground dueling scene. Nobody noticed. We were 8 years old.

[@IanBell-gi7rr]

I'm Ian Bell, coauthor of Elite. Believe that as you choose. I fully endorse this video. Factually (apart from Braben's Raspberry Pi cofounding), technically (apart from the 2GHz,FIFO, and (IIRC) unit normals), and politically.

[@fieryshrimp]

what do you think was the most interesting solution you came up with while coding the game? what problem made you the most happy to solve?

[@TwoFingeredMamma]

So how come this is dripping with Masonic references to Saturn worship and serpent worship. You must have been a Freemason to include those occult references.

[@IanBell-gi7rr]

@@TwoFingeredMamma Sorry but no. I wanted a non RNG-text naming scheme for the ships and reached for my Thesorus. I considered raptors and big cats but settled on snakes, partly because David's best ship design looked like a cobra head, I'm not aware of any other masonic stuff.

[@IanBell-gi7rr]

@@fieryshrimp For the orginal BBC Elte, the 3D motion of the playter and the enemy sjhips, and the enemy AI. So that things were actually moving in 3D.

[@IanBell-gi7rr]

To correct my correction: I now think David's orginal ship plot did NOT have unit normals. So the video is correct here.

[@rogerbennett]

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.

[@Wyrnikh]

I'm sure you get this a lot, but I would love an opportunity to offer some suggestions for you to take back to the various teams! I'm sure you've heard most of them though. Suffice to say, your work is still much loved, and we all want the best for Elite!

[@DarkNightDreamer]

I love Elite dangerous but it needs some work :(

[@CorporateZombi]

Playing Elite Dangerous on The Oculus DK2 was some of the best gaming I have ever played. So thank you!

[@AlgoFodder]

This video amply demonstrates E:D's amazing heritage. Everyone and their dog can tell FDev how to "fix" E:D, I just hope FDev don't lose sight of its incredible value and keep working to realise that in terms of player numbers. It really is still something special!

[@pSynrg303]

@@CorporateZombiMe too, it took me right back to the wonderment of what I felt playing the original, and still is one of the best VR gaming experiences. The scale, the immersion...

[@TomorrowSalad]

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

[@jannikheidemann3805]

Is Elite not playable inside of Elite Dangerous? It's just 22kB after all.

[@Parz1val465]

Hence the wireframe dashboards decorations

[@krovuz1232]

@@jannikheidemann3805 No, But I believe you can download a free version from the website.

[@krovuz1232]

A lot of videos made of Elite around on youtube I think. Computerphile did one 10 years ago. Is a good idea to check it out, and take at the early day of procedural generation stuff.

[@Nitidus]

Interesting, have you never wondered where all the lore came from? All the history that was there from the beginning? Or at least, have you never wondered what came before it was "Dangerous"? :D There are a whole lot of references to the original in Elite: Dangerous.

[@CanONuke]

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

[@aaronbredon2948]

Starflight was equally as impressive. There were a number of programmers figuring out how to go beyond the limits of the computer in that era. Both Elite and Starflight used pseudrandom procedural generation to create a universe that exceeded the memory capacity of the systems of the day.

[@akula625]

Im a fan of Elite dangerous as well and that brought me to this video but left me wondering what would the original fans of the game think of the game today. Thankfully you answered that question for me.

[@6StimuL84]

@@akula625 I'm one of those and I love the new ones looks and play, hate that it has no single player....Earned Elite in the original and still play it a bit.....

[@TheCzechmate007]

@@akula625 I'm also one of those. However, I started with Frontier: Elite II because when the original Elite came out, I was living behind the Iron Curtain, if you know what that was. 🙂 I was at first similarly excited as the OP's father, but my excitement faded after two years in E:D because the devs are so disconnected from what players actually enjoy and want the most. Instead, they focus on the grind and game loops that are not really that much fun. I used to play in VR, and the immersion was second to none. If they would at least let us walk around the ships, like Star Citizen. Oh well, you can't have everything, right? 🙂

[@Spaceopticsguy2010]

This was really the best days of early computer gaming .it will never be repeated. I remember reading about all the new games coming out on PC GAMER, the anticipation, driving to electronic boutique to pick them up. The excitement of playing a new game back in those days was epic. Some games were fantastic, some were duds. But it was an exciting time to be alive in the early 80s.

[@idlehands1238]

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.

[@Alexander-the-ok]

ha that's amazing! Not spending hours just playing Elite was honestly one of the major challenges in making this video.

[@DisorderedArray]

In the late 80s my grandfather bought me an Apple][e along with Elite, and he would play it with me sometimes, even though he had no interest in games. Even after playing it as a kid, with all my free time, I only ever got to 'Deadly' though. I do remember the first day I played it though, my grandad said the big circle visible after leaving Lave station was probably a safety target, and that we should fly through it - so my first experience of the game was a little disappointing... :D

[@TheChzoronzon]

Lords of Midnight, with its thousands of locations running in the Spectrum 48K, was another code compression feat

[@jasontaylor8658]

That's quite an achievement considering Elite on the ZX Spectrum wasn't released until 1985 ! 😊

[@ChrisM541]

@@jasontaylor8658 I remember purchasing Elite for the CBM64 in the mid 80's, and spent many hours playing it. I can't remember the exact year so if I said "1983" that would be wrong - but would it make me a liar? ;)

[@stevebaker3183]

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.

[@Harvestersz]

Great story. Thank You for sharing. And sorry for you loss.

[@booktrunk]

I'll make sure i visit.

[@TonyLawson-lk8fx]

Me too. O7

[@stevebaker3183]

@@TonyLawson-lk8fx o7

[@whiskeysk]

spent thousand of hours on Elite2: Frontier on my trusty Atari Falcon030, lot more than on the original Elite. Backed Elite Dangerous on kickstarter, probably rubbed shoulders with you at the launch party in Duxford :) Never had the opportunity to share game time with my dad (he passed away in 1986), but there is a planet and a station named after him out there in Elite Dangerous. And then there is my 8-year-old watching me massacring pirates and collecting engineering materials...

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

German here. Can confirm, Elite was HUGE over here and is still often mentioned when it comes to early Home Computer Games and space games. Heck i even have a boxed copy of "Frontier - Elite II" in my collection. You can tell THIS game must have been the biggest influence for the folks at Hello Games, who gave us No Man's Sky.

[@big924]

If ever there was a crossover that needed to happen…

[@r3cy]

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!

[@fungo6631]

Bruh, cars existed since the late 19th century.

[@kittentikkamasala69]

​@@fungo6631So, what? Their grandmother couldn't have been 98 in 1984? Oh right; I forgot about the British government's compulsory euthanasia law for 97 year olds... Well it was Thatcher in charge of course.

[@aeliphmassey1284]

Grandma is smart

[@VndNvwYvvSvv]

She had good reason to be wary of technology. We're in Orwell's 1984 on steroids, except Emmanuel Goldstein is real and the roles are reversed.

[@r3cy]

@@fungo6631 you are right, i misspoke. she did grow up with no cars around (and no electricity) but they existed elsewhere in the world at the time.

[@philsnewaddress]

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.

[@abduljabbarazam943]

I can relate to that. My favourite game now is Elite Dangerous.😁

[@DavidBrown-bs7gg]

Same here, 52yrs old dev who couldnt get enough of this as a kid. Fun fact, comedian Stanley Baxter did the TV ads for the game

[@BillAnt]

55 here in the US and still remember the day I played Elite on the Commodore C64. Let's just say the 3D was mind blowing at the time. :)

[@sdwone]

51 here (Almost! In about two weeks!) Elite is what got me into early game development and 6502 assembly. Indeed, it probably got me into Mathematics too! Fond memories as a kid playing this game for HOURS on the humble Acorn! Started to teach myself BASIC when my primary school ordered a BBC Micro just for me ;-) And my Life has NEVER been the same since! But it IS strange! Kids these days have access to some truly AMAZING tech but, it seems that in the vast majority of cases, this is all just taken for granted now! When I used to teach and inform some of them about the high level of Maths that involved in a typical triple A game... In a vain attempt to get them interested in the subject... Most of them just laugh at me! Oh how Times have changed...

[@curtispatrick8072]

I'm also a 5x software developer/engineer lifer. I'm a yank but lived near Bedford in the mid 80s. I spend untold hours playing Elite with my best friend on Timex Sinclair. It took absolutely ages to load that game from tape. I was already into programming at that point; but Elite made me hungry to understand how to achieve that awesome 3d look and even fundamental AI for those awesome dog fights!!! I could dog fight well...but I was pretty shit at rotating when docking. Oh, the good ol' days.

[@lawrenceredmacher4382]

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 😂

[@leftcoaster67]

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.

[@KabukiKid]

Oh yes... Sid Meier's Pirates! was amazing too... definitely how to do a "collection of mini-games" type of video game where everything snaps together just perfectly. :-) Loved it!

[@goopah]

Yes, so few modern games have that human element and passionate feel that these games from the "Golden Age" have.

[@jamesmaybrick2001]

Those guys were artists and genius's in a way no one needs to be today. So much innovation and talent. The guys that managed to wring Space Harrier out of a Spectrum? The design team that came up with The Sentinel? Giants indeed. They dont get the credit they deserve.

[@mingusmofaz5898]

​@goopah Eh, that's horsecrap honestly, there are tons of modern games made by extremely passionate people who put their heart and soul into it. I find it easy to appreciate the past without feeling the need to constantly shit on the efforts of the talented people making great things today.

[@goopah]

@@mingusmofaz5898 Perhaps I should have specified triple-A games. I agree that indie games are much more likely to have heart and soul. I certainly didn't intend to "shit on" those folks.

[@josheldridge8546]

"look around you" a man of culture, refinement, and exquisite taste

[@junkjunker842]

Remember to store any industrial calcium in a secure underground chamber, to guard against the possibility of Helvetica.

[@josheldridge8546]

@@junkjunker842 i have written that down in my copy book. bless you, junk. blunk.

[@SeanKelly-the-nutjob]

Have you worked out what we’re looking for? Correct. The answer is: Elite.

[@radfast1]

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.

[@baronvonschnellenstein2811]

Yes, Lords of Midnight and its sequel were glaring omissions from this video.

[@leandrodfcorreia2]

Knight Lore had so advanced 3D graphics for the time, they decided not to release the game and instead create another game with the same engine, Alien 8, to be released some time later. Simply because they knew every company would try to immitate Knight Lore.

[@richvandervecken3954]

Once you learned how to match rotation with the station the docking computer became superfluous.

[@tonyzed6831]

Knight Lore and Alien 8... and Gunfright. THE MEMORIES!!!!!!

[@deputydd4364]

@@richvandervecken3954 even now decades later I get cold sweats thinking about having to dock and match rotation....

[@monochromechaos9757]

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.

[@Alexander-the-ok]

The fact it’s still easy to sink hours into Elite today speaks volumes

[@sulrich70]

I was 14, and couldn’t believe it. Spent hundreds of hours obsessing over that game

[@captainyossarian388]

About the same age. It was mind blowing at the time. My mind was blown yet again with Elite Dangerous. I find it incredible that a galaxy of worlds are stored, so I can always go back to a great mountain range I found on a certain planet or a gorgeous ring system around a particular gas giant. And in VR it is doubly mind blowing. I will always feel indebted to Bell and Braben, especially Braben for his resurrecting Elite in Elite Dangerous. My dream job of galaxy explorer won't exist for a few centuries, but Elite Dangerous gives me a peek at how great it will be.

[@Grunchy005]

I had a pirate copy of Elite for C64, and it was great. I didn’t get too far in the game because of lack of instruction manuals, plus missing the “Dark Wheel” novella. I dunno, this was the time when S.S.I. were making these hugely elaborate strategy/wargame simulations that weren’t very approachable and in fact seemed kinda tedious. Prior to Elite, I loved playing Star Trek on the Commodore Pet (and being able to beat it with trigonometry), and positively salivated over Star Raiders on the Atari 800. For “space trading,” honestly, I much preferred M.U.L.E. And for space strategy, I way preferred Macintosh games Spaceward Ho! and Bolo. The best 3D wireframe game was Stunt Driver, but only the arcade version.

[@grahameida7163]

Ditto 🤣

[@AlexanderWilithinIII]

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.

[@Axgoodofdunemaul]

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.

[@comlitbeta7532]

i can game with you if you want 😀

[@Franfran2424]

The game you describe sounds like a modern day renderer. Povray from the 2000s is likely closer in form to what you were used to.

[@DeltaNovum]

That sounds like an incredible time and things to have lived through! What kinds of games do you like to play? Might want to check out: Empyrion, Star Citizen, Space engineers, Elite: dangerous, Cosmoteer and No Man's Sky. If you haven't already. My personal favourite is Empyrion even though it's kind of a janky indie game. Love to try and play something (and talk about your experiences, if you're up for it) together. If we're not a fit you can find someone else for sure. Just throw out multiple hooks by asking on different platforms. There will 100% someone you can have fun with, playing games.

[@lordcanti6674]

Must hurt to see what happened to society over time..

[@Axgoodofdunemaul]

@@lordcanti6674 Yes, I can't believe Americans actually voted for a cheap grifter like Trump. It's not my USA any more.

[@mattg.8605]

I’m from the U.S. and had never heard of Elite and had no idea it was the predecessor of Elite Dangerous. What an absolute marvel of engineering and imagination! This was so well put together that I watched this entire video. Kudos!

[@daviddavies3637]

You missed out. As I did. The one platform it was never released on, which I owned (and still do) was the Atari 8-bit, although there is a British Atari homebrew developer currently working on a port, but it's taken him years so far. I did get to play it on a friend's BBC Micro and Sinclair Spectrum. Just remembered that I did own a copy for the Atari ST.

[@aleksazunjic9672]

Elite was big on home computers, and US was mostly into consoles with dumbed down button mashers.

[@tomcombe4813]

Britain was a haven for computing back in the 80s. It was amazing what an entire generation with access to cheap computers came up with. The raspberry pi continues that legacy today.

[@mattg.8605]

@@tomcombe4813 Great connection. I own 5 raspberry Pi's so I'm still reaping the benefits.

[@vaelophisnyx9873]

don't worry most of this video is a british man going on and on about how good and smart british people are/were; down to the opinion stated as fact "most influential and best selling franchises of all time". This couldn't be further from the truth.

[@Lupinicus1664]

I spent most of my career writing assembly language for realtime systems. When I began, in 1980, RAM was a limiting factor (even for mainframes). I worked on IBM mainframes but wrote programs for Z80 (Amstrad) and BBC B in 6502 as a bit of a hobby. I am truly amazed at the skills shown to cram Elite into the BBC. I have been a player since '84, was a contributor to Elite Dangerous. This has been a very good video to help non-programmers understand the sheer genius of this game. Good job 👍 and thank you for all the effort to produce this video. NB: Most modern programmers have so little appreciation for assembly and the necessary knowledge to be effective, this kind of video should be required viewing for modern coders so they can begin to understand what is really going on...

[@petevenuti7355]

I miss self modifying code

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

8 Bit Technology is still soooo super fascinating because it is so intuitive and accessible and really allows a single developer to really learn a lot about computers in a much better way than today. Especially on older platforms where you have a LOT less layers of software between the user and the hardware and you have a hardware architecture that you can actually understand. The ONLY modern computers that come close to that are those amazing singleboard Computers like the famous Raspberry Pi or Arduino series. I have a deep respect for everyone who knows assembler and REALLY letting their software run on the direct hardware layer, without any interpreters in between and really using 100% of the hardwares capabilities. :)

[@Kholaslittlespot1]

​@@KRAFTWERK2K6can I ask about your involvement in ED? I was born when you started working on this stuff, and I am currently throwing my life away working in an electronics sales role. My passion is tinkering with game engines and thousands of hours of 3D modeling. One day, I will finish a game.

[@willcool713]

A few of us mixed the Traveller RPG with Elite. Each Space Station was another world to explore. And we used a "skeleton crew" (the GM/NPC pilot) to travel between stars (usually), while the others were in "cryo" (between gaming sessions). But we drifted apart and that group fell out completely after a few years. I continued playing Elite on my PCs into the '90's. I loved imagining my apartment was the ship, and my desk the pilot's control console. I'd just let it run while I was cooking or watching TV, approaching a system, until I heard a warning noise. My personal rule was that I couldn't save the game until I was docked. Elite wasn't so popular here in the States, but I really liked it.

[@ellenripley4640]

A friend and I did a similar thing. We kept the game running and pretended we were pilots on the ship and played it out in the real-time. We played chess to bridge the time until we reached the space station (or got rudely interrupted by pirates).

[@EssensOrAccidens]

Traveler was such a imagination-catalyzing game.

[@BooBaddyBig]

The other reason they did the XOR thing was because if they drew something twice it was the same as completely removing it. And that works no matter what else is on the screen. If they'd just written black on it, it would have created shadows as things moved.

[@silverlining5796]

My favourite game of all times , despite being only a handful of kilobytes it is more than just a game, perhaps the only one i would want to take with me on to an interstellar trip with weight limitations. You made an absolute gem of a video. Thank you for your dedication and work. I am quite sure you really enjoyed putting it together ;)

[@Alexander-the-ok]

Thanks. Yeah I really enjoyed this one - I’d been wanting to do it for years.

[@goopah]

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.

[@dnoordink]

I still play F:FE (FFED3D) now. Don't know how many hours I've put in, but it's a lot. Amazing games :)

[@joshuawargo6446]

also what i loved about this video. feels like i actually understand a bit better. one you wanna rewatch cause you feel youre actually learning

I loved playing Elite on my C64 back in the 80s. Elite will be always on my top 5 games for the C64.

[@TheChzoronzon]

Elite felt special, back them. Same as Lords of Midnight, another milestone

[@EVPaddy]

Yep, it was my first original game. And probably my only one for the C64.

[@boogieknee3781]

ELITE search on google. for android users....alite for pc......oolite Last time I checked...these were still free. I myself now prefer x3 reunion...(vanilla/no mods) I still use my c64 regularly as it is the only computer that bill gates cannot deliberately destroy with his forced updates.

[@BillAnt]

It was a bit slow on the 1 MHz C64, but hey it was like nothing before that. :)

[@EVPaddy]

@@BillAnt yep, there wasn’t much for me to compare it to :) Also, one gets accustomed to everything. I was able to see what ship is attacking when they were maybe 3 pixels big at times… somehow those 3 pixels behaved differently depending on what ship it was :)

[@jonathanj.3695]

This game blew my mind as a kid, and it still does to this day. A 3D, open world, sandbox game. All on a cassette tape. Let that sink in for a moment.

[@EyMannMachHin]

The whole feel about Elite was exactly right, a bit of commerce, the sense of adventure, the use of roll and pitch for attitude control, when you only have 2 axis to work with. And that iconic radar, that gave me exactly the information I needed for spatial awareness. Thank you for the throwback into my teen years and learning 6502 Assembler on my Apple II.

[@TheFinav]

Can't thank you enough for this trip down memory lane! I was indeed one of those kids who - thanks to the BBC Micro - learned 6502 assembly. Whilst I attempted to produce games all by my 12/13/14-year-old self, I did not yet have the organisational skills to build every aspect of an arcade game. So I contented myself by replicating aspects of the games I loved, such as horizontal scrolling (as in Scramble), or tracer bombs dropping from the sky (Missile Command). But with Elite I never had a chance. It was as if the creators had conjured up magical abilities from the micro that had previously been hidden from us all. In later years I would do a degree in Computer Science, where I would of course learn linear algebra. But even knowing this I still marvel of what the Elite creators achieved. I'm approaching 60 now and I never stopped coding - all due to the BBC Micro and the programming challenges that the games set for me. A small remark on your flickering 3d animation: I recall this can be addressed by rendering to the video buffer in sync with the screen refresh interrupt. I'm pretty sure Elite didn't flicker for this reason. My guess is that it was simply pushing the hardware to the absolute limit.

[@Alexander-the-ok]

Yep, you're absolutely correct on my screen flicker. That's something for me to implement another day...

[@Dogfacedbloke]

Same here. I was about the same age, and did the same thing making functional snippets of games using assembler instead of full offerings (although with me it was the ZX Spectrum, Atari 800 and - mainly - the C64 which also used the 6502). Smooth scrolling was the holy grail, so difficult, and 3D graphics were something I didn't even attempt. I also did Computer Science, and for my Graphics project coded a 3D room designer and viewer on PC. Even using Pascal, with a whopping 32K, it was challenging.

[@dazhigh9208]

The game that got me well and truly biten by the gaming bug in 1980's. Still blows me away and the fact it was written by just 2 people. Amazing. Great video and worth the watch on a very important game. Many thanks for covering this iconic game from me and my Dog Max on the East coast of Lincs UK 🙂

[@Juttutin]

I am 55 and got a Model B at 15 on a "meet the rellies" trip from NZ to the UK, which came back home with us. My brother and I were took shifts playing ELITE. Nostalgia overload.

[@krashd]

That day your Kiwi cousin nicks your computer 😂

[@iwouldprefernotto4381]

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

[@drsk6029]

Thank you for creating this… just shared it with my geeky friends. It is a tardis back into my happy place.

[@peterscott1784]

As someone who programmed more than several 8 bit games on the BBC and Electron, who followed in the footsteps of Mr B and Mr B, I really enjoyed your video. Wonderfully accurate, technically literate and hopefully accessible to any level of geekery. I remember pouring thru various explanations of how that split screen mode worked, and pooling resources to try something similar. Getting it working - specially on the Electron, with its even more compromised hardware but only for one screen size and in the same mode - was a very rewarding thing. Congrats on the vid sir, and the (totally justified) crowing of our country's leading role in taking video games from little squares on a screen to the astonishing artistic achievements of the biggest interactive experiences of today.

[@originalshadowfax]

This brought back so many memories. At the time I was teaching basic computer literacy to YTS students. We had a network of around 10 BBC model B's with a "server" consisting of a 10 Mb Winchester hard disk. As the tutor I had twin disc drives on my desk and as the BBC discs were double sided, I had in effect 4 drives. Played Elite whist there were gaps in the IT training as the basic training was only for 10 days per student and then they decided to go back to the woodwork, sewing, photography or cooking. Had the Word processor and spreadsheet on ROM and had a ROM copier, easy I eventually persuaded the manager to open a computer section and we went "up market" using Amstrad 1512's, I naturally had the 1640. I wrote a training programme which was certified by C&G and had a pass rate of around 80%, this was to kids who had failed to get into the ITEC training centres. Some rough kids from rough areas but they were (mostly) a pleasure to be taught, just had to give them respect and they gave it back.

[@simontillson482]

Lol. I was one of those YTS students. I remember writing an 8 line program that allowed me to type rude things on other student’s screens at random. Fun times until the management were all arrested for embezzling money for computer upgrades that never got delivered. 😂 The only thing I think we actually achieved was making a database of the entire script of Blackadder.

[@originalshadowfax]

@@simontillson482 Sunderland? Ginger? StaTco?

[@josh_2230]

I had been lived 2 years at the space of ELITE when I was a middle school student. The game is so wonderful.

[@diskoBonez]

The visuals showing data flowing between each component were awesome! Thankyou for breaking down individual lines in such intricate detail!

[@davep5698]

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

[@DoctyrEvil]

Thanks for sneaking that Look Around You reference in there.

[@scaledtuna]

I found this video really interesting. The way you delved into the technical challenges and hardware limitations that David Braben and Ian Bell faced when developing Elite was engaging and presented in a way that made it easy to grasp. It's evident you put a lot of effort into creating this .. thank you.

[@robocelot]

That NES port of Elite is really fascinating. It pushes the NES CPU really hard and was designed run on the PAL (50Hz) UK NES from the ground up. It's so close to the bare metal of the hardware that the timing differences between NTSC and PAL are enough to throw the graphics display off and the game is glitchy and unplayable on North American systems. ISTR Ian Bell having an explanation on his web page about why it was written that way. Also, thank you for the call out to Zarch/Virus, which I think deserves a historical video all on it's own (and it's another triumph for David Braben, along with Frontier: Elite II). Very underappreciated game that Braben didn't dumb down the controls to satisfy casual gamers... you needed to learn and master the controls first, by trial and error with no tutorial

[@RipOffProductionsLLC]

Getting this to run on the NES at all is impressive, computer programming was so intrinsically tied to the hardware back in those days that a port more often than not meant rewriting from the ground up to try and make a facsimile of the original on new hardware. Having a stumbling block over the differences between European and American refresh rates throwing everything off is fairly minor.

[@D.Nobile]

As a massive fan of Elite Dangerous, having played it for most of my life in highschool and long after leaving highschool (I'm still an active player 9 years after I started), it's absolutely wonderful to see this look into Elite's history, and the wider history of gaming as a whole! Excellent video!

[@Rich_H_1972]

I remember the CLP when I was in junior school, spending my lunchtimes inputing games from magazines. My school bought Speccy 48k machines rather than BBCs as part of the programme and I got one later as a birthday present. My experiences of Elite and the Lords of Midnight will stay with me until I die - two incredible games that I used to write stories about, especially Elite, and spent all weekends looking for things within the game (like Generation Ships) that didn't exist but were mentioned in the awesome manual. Such great memories. Thanks for the video Alex, really nicely put together and learnt alot from it. What an awesome achievement Elite was! Right on Commander!

[@DukePaprikar]

When I was introduced to this game by a friend, I was floored. Fell in love with it instantly. Spent countless hours playing it. I had ZX Spectrum at the time, and the friend had C64. After some time, we temporarily swapped computers for a while so I could enjoy the legendary auto docking sequence while listening to the Blue Danube in a dark room in the middle of the night. Can't describe how awesome it felt. Getting chills just remembering it right now.

[@KabukiKid]

It was also somewhat amusing that once you were finally truly proficient with manually docking your ship, you had enough money for a docking computer and you never had to do it again. lol ;-) But yes... loved that Blue Danube sequence while docking, as well. :-)

[@domi-no1826]

This is one of the only videos over 1hr that i have the attention span to complete (good job)

[@BM-jy6cb]

The IT investment programme of the Thatcher government was anything but an accident. I have a load of government literature from the time and it was a huge and very deliberate and forward-thinking strategy with huge investment in modernising British industry and introducing computers into both primary and secondary education. For a while, the "computers in schools" programme led the world in getting kids using computers and it evidently paid off. I sat browsing through it a few months ago thinking "where did all the forward-thinking politicians go?" Whatever side you're on politically, you've got to admit the current lot in parliament are a complete clueless shower compared to their predecessors.

[@sycration]

I'm not sure what happened, but it feels like everyone has just given up on actual policy. It's the same three percent of this or that being fought over, with a heap of nonsense talk on top. Even Thatcher administration, (in)famous for deregulation, had serious policy positions. Kyrie Eleison.

[@KopperNeoman]

Ordinary people succeeding and owning stuff is filthy dirty capitalism, comrade. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is where its at.

[@MartinRogers1967]

There was a huge and significant "wave" of UK programmers coming out of that era, which you could see the legacy of for decades afterwards in software companies around the world and particularly in the US during the 90s. I worked for a US software house at that time and everywhere you went there were a few British programmers who'd been recruited

[@directorstu]

As a pm in 2000 i saw the tech savvy Scandinavians earning great money on the back of far sighted ed tech decisions and investments. The UK did it too. Now Stem education is talked about but with little funding attached . R&D funding has been slashed, in spite of pledges and the self evident reality that tech engineering is the UKs USP.

[@jensBendig]

I envied my british friends in the 80s. In germany with interest in computers, one was a freak. But I made my way into it. It was a magic time.

[@raresaturn]

Elite was mind blowing on the c64 back in the 80's. Not just the game but the packaging was top notch, and felt like something really special

[@ghostdog4330]

I've still got my old save game from Elite on cassette tape. I must have read the space traders flight manual hundreds of times too.

[@oscarjimenezgarrido7591]

Game artwork and packaging was something else in the 80's and 90's, and I don't say it out of rose-tinted glasses nostalgia but deep knowledge of the trade - I started working as a comic book artist at 17, around early 1992, and I'm still going. RIP the great Bob Wakelin. The biggest (not necessarily the greatest, but a clear contender too) European VG producing company of the 80's, Imagine/Ocean, migh not have been so big without him.

[@JohnHoggard_aka_DaddyHoggy]

Firebird did themselves proud with that one.

[@doehg9000]

as a fan of elite: dangerous, this was a crazy video to watch. i had no idea elite dan had a history of predecessor games, and seeing all the things that stayed the same was interesting. seeing the ship, the station, and the radar and thinking they looked similar got me thinking, but then hearing the ship *was* called the cobra mk3 and, shortly after, seeing the box art finally got me and i started quietly, excitedly yelling at my screen about everything that was the same. like, the core gameplay loop has honestly barely changed?? i cant imagine what it would have been like to have played a bunch of elite way back when, then just coming across elite dangerous today.

[@jonrutherford6852]

It's a joy to come across a video that presents information of historical and technical interest in a lucid, low-key, understandable, and well-engineered manner. It's also very rare. Congratulations. This brought memories of learning the basics (!) of Assembly Language, COBOL, and Fortran at an IBM center -- a two-week crash course paid for by my (government) employer in order to be a mainframe operator (IBM 360/40 and later 370). It was 1968 or '69. I had no idea what I was getting into or how important that moment was historically.

[@65gtotrips]

‘The Secret Life of Machines’ was and is a British TV series that I still love to this day. I was just reminded about it when this video’s host was talking about the BBC series about computers.

[@aeternosolus52]

Elite became a part of my existence growing up, and down the years myself and my brother played every version that was released. It's good to remember those times as my brother sadly passed years ago, but memory lane is a wonderful place to stroll down. Thanks for the vid.

[@duncanny5848]

Absolutely amazing. This brought back some great memories. Weirdly the original ELITE is the ONLY game I have EVER got addicted to. I will never forget it. Thanks for all the great reminders!

[@404-ThisUsernameIsAlreadyTaken]

Commenting in the hopes that the fickle youtube algorithm recommends this video to others. I've been teaching myself about computers and come to realize that I'm staring down a deep, dark rabbit hole of knowledge - learning C and messing around with Linux is really only scratching the surface. Seeing how it's possible to make a game like this with such scarce resources is very inspiring!

[@nfterry]

Really, really great explanation video (minor errors aside). Combining gaming history with explanation of compute and coding architecture in a very logically presented and entertaining manner. Well done sir!

[@marksims3904]

As a proud ZX Spectrum owner in 1984 I could have ever dreamed hat a game like this could exist. I was too busy playing Sabre Wulf and others on the Speccy, and when a friend of mine invited me over to his house and told me he had a groundbreaking game on his BBC Micro I scoffed, but went round to see what it was. to say my jaw hit the floor would be an understatement, my jaw crashed through the floor, into bedrock and carried on through the planet. And it was all done in 32K!!! That was what makes it even more incredible, thirty two kilobytes!!! I bought the Spectrum verson when it came out and it was fantastic, but it didnt have the same pull as the BBC Micro verson, old gamers will know what I mean!! BTW my friend Wally Beben did the music for the Amiga, I can still hear it now, the carousel sounds. Love Elite.........

[@Alexander-the-ok]

The closest equivalent I can relate would be when Half Life released in 1998, i was only 10 at the time but it was staggering for its day. I can only imagine what it was like to experience Elite in 1984 - I don’t think there’s been a game since that made such a significant leap.

[@marksims3904]

@@Alexander-the-ok me neither. I think the only game that cold come close would be either Goldeneye on the N64 or Shenmue on the Dreamcast. Shenmue...........don't get me started on that game. I will avenge my father's death, but I have to feed this kitten.

[@dylang3998]

I really want to play this now. It looks damn, damn awesome. I think a lot of these games are so good because along with beautiful graphics they have real vision in the story and immersion. I experienced this for the first time with half life aged 17, year 2001. And then with doom 2 a year later. Previous to this we had had macs and I had only had goes on friends PCs. Doom 2 is really cohesive and immersive, it will take you on a journey if you have time. Also has legendary tech because of PCs limitations then. Still in awe now.

[@marksims3904]

@@dylang3998 do it. Get an emulator, download the rom and dive in. You wont reget it..........

[@0MoTheG]

@@Alexander-the-ok How was Half Life revolutionary compared to other titles of the time as Unreal ?

[@noscreadur]

I'm 53, and something about elite put's me right back in those teenage days. I was already coding when Elite came out, so I was completely blown away densely packed Elite was with incredible technical tricks. That split screen: wow!

[@mapesdhs597]

Same age here, and ditto. :D I hope you sent your programs to some magazines or publishers though; I never did, grud knows why. Elite made me obsessed with 3D. I kept pestering the maths teacher school with questions about 3D equations which he couldn't answer.

[@beebox5229]

Well done. Superb video with a lovely blend of technology, history, education and exceptionalism. I bought by model B around 1983 and it sparked my entire career.

[@alanbeckett4]

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.

[@snafu2350]

Likewise the split screen (remember BBC B had separate modes for hi-res & lo-res GFX) & useable (& easily understandable, hence playable) 3D radar - all in ~20K !!!

[@soundspark]

He even released the code to the NES version.

[@EvoraGT430]

Even the copy protection and bespoke loader of the disc version was amazing. Great fun hacking that!

[@squicker]

Ian had created a version of pre-release Elite that had 64,000 systems, but publisher advice was that was too overwhelming for any player, so they tuned it down to the 8 galaxies with 256 systems in each that was released.

[@a.karley4672]

I "missed" Elite when it came out (and met it in the late '80s, on a different oil rig to Alex, from a Trinidadian Directional Driller) because I was studying, amongst other things, crystallography and not realising my mainframe account had an email address. The hidden-face discarding makes total sense if you've ever had to diagnose a crystal's symmetry from 100 goniometer readings and a Wulff net.

[@MegaCadr]

I am just floored by the amount of work you put into this. So well done and enjoyable. 🎉

[@Alexander-the-ok]

Thanks. Tbh, this video floored me too. I'll probably need a bit of a break before starting the next one.

[@brucethen]

​@@Alexander-the-ok, I would suggest that while taking a break, play Elite lol

[@GraemeWolfendale]

🎉

[@williamhoward7121]

What an amazing documentary, I can't imagine the effort that went into this. I programmed in assembly in another life and you did a really good job of explaining how it works. Kudos!!

[@zaphus]

Incredible work, really informative. I remember playing this on my math teachers BBC micro, wonderful memories. In terms of size, you could fit more than 10 copies of the original Elite inside the windows icon for the current Elite Dangerous game! (256x256x32bit)

[@dave_s_vids]

What a fantastic video, thank you so much for making that! I remember my Dad coming home with a BBC B complete with a twin 5.25 floppy drive in about 1990. Elite was one of the games we had and I was fascinated by how much better it looked than everything else I played! So many memories :)

[@Pxsdaemon]

By far the best game of the 80s & one I spent the most time on in my youth. You did a wonderful recap & thanks for a trip down memory lane!

[@nickoutram6939]

I wrote ‘Twilight Zone’ on Spectrum, 1984 @16. Z80 XOR was my goto logic function for sprite screen rendering.

[@BenHeckHacks]

It's good to raise awareness of how important the UK was to the development of computers, from Alan Turning to the ZX and Acorn which evolved into the almighty ARM.

[@sdwone]

Agreed! The BBC Micro was probably one of the BEST things that this corporation has ever done! The model B was my first home computer! Many... MANY fond memories ;-)

[@Alexander-the-ok]

In all honesty, ARM may be the biggest contribution the UK has made to the world in the last 50 years.

[@ruadeil_zabelin]

How "Acorn" isnt amongst the tech giants of today boggles the mind.

[@SuAlfons]

​@@ruadeil_zabelin well they are and they aren't. ARM is what is left over from them. There is a nice video about Acorn. As a German, I wasn't aware of the Sinclair ZX, BBC and other Acorns until this kind of videos came out. Acorn and also DEC are companies that would deserve producing hardware still today

[@ruadeil_zabelin]

⁠ye I meant in name also. A real case of amazing tech but bad business decisions or just unlucky I suppose

[@LusoCMD]

What an amazing video, I loved this game in the 80's so much, and one of the games I'll never forget...I'm 53 years old now.

[@ProfMoose123]

AMAZING video! thanks for making that! as an owner of the BBC micro when it first came out, and countless hours spent playing elite, that was a fantastic nostalgic trip down memory lane - not only that, but I am a computer programmer, so the insights into how this was squeezed into such a tiny amount of RAM was really really interesting! EXCELLENT!

[@BelaMadeira]

17 minutes in and I’m transfixed, takes me back to my childhood. I still have my Acorn Electron which I used to play Elite “lite” on, great times. Very well made video, and thank you for the nostalgia! ☺️

[@danwentz]

Having worked for former Sublogic employees for decades, starting with the second true 3D PC game, Descent ][ - This is facinating history. Thank you!

[@robertleem5643]

I normally just scan through videos but this is the first video where I sat for the full 1hr 2 minutes and enjoyed every bit of it. Well put together and many thanks for explaining it all. Even as a software developer this was fascinating. I spent many hours playing Elite on my ZX Spectrum and as many reached the status of Elite, I even found an emulator and still play it today, have never played Elite Dangerous though

[@martinmartin6300]

I never understood the obsession for this game. Now, I am watching an hour long documentation to find out lol

[@maboleth]

I had this game on my ZX, but I never played it. Way too complex, with so much geometry-madness involved. Only later I learned to appreciate the sheer complexity of all of this. Still, it wasn't until Frontier that I actually showed any interest in this.

[@hemi-pilot]

A most excellent video, Sir! Thank you for the trip down memory lane. I was 14 at the time Elite was released and my school in the Netherlands was one of the first to include Computer classes. First on the Atom, then the Electron and finally they bought a whole classroom worth of Masters, all networked. I was one of those nerds who within a couple of months knew more about the system then the teachers did. What a wonderful time that was. I bought a Master 128 a couple of years ago, including 2 disc drives. I restored the case to it’s former colour and repaired the motherboard. It now includes switchable 3-way ROM, raspi coprocessor and a sd card drive.

[@mikehibbett3301]

I was a teenager in the 1980s. I have given away all of the computers I had during my youth (ZX81, C64, Amstrad 1640) but I kept my first computer, the Acorn System 1. It's on a shelf behind me :)

[@pwalk4160]

I grew up in Poland and had an Atari 65xe. One of the "3d" games I played was Eidolon, released in 85. My first contact with a BBC Micro was a couple of weeks ago, in a computer museum😃It's interesting to learn about the impact of this machine in the UK.

[@DingKong]

For me - 1984 was a watershed year in home gaming. Elite was a truly groundbreaking title. The first true open ended, sandbox game I can remember playing. Everything about it was absolute class. However, other games appeared that really showed a shift away from straight shooters and on-rails limited scope games. Jet set Willy Skool Daze Pyjamarama Knight Lore Tir Nar Nog Combat Lynx The Lords of Midnight To name a few. Great video!

[@BillyNoMate]

I spent weeks trying to become "Elite" but never managed it, best I could do was "Deadly". many years later i found out that there was a bug in the Electron version that prevented you from reaching "Elite". Bastard! I was chasing the impossible!

[@mapesdhs597]

Thankyou for solving a decades-long mystery! I played the Electron version for 6 months straight at the time, became an absurd baddy-killing machine, racked up oodles of cash and kills, but never saw the Elite status. Now I know why. Funny thing, a little later on a train journey to London, probably 1986 (when I was 16), I got talking to a girl of similar age who was also a big Elite fan. As surprised as I already was about a girl being into games that much, especially Elite (nobody like that at my school), I was more amazed to learn she'd entered the competition for the game and eventually received the Elite/Deadly badge, which she had with her. She gave me the badge, which I still have; with hindsight a quite extraordinary gift. The game made me obsessed with 3D gfx. I wrote various programs for the Electron, started to learn asy, but the timing was off, ended up going to uni in '87 just as I was trying to figure out how to do 3D math in 6502, so I never took the coding further (duh me never sent any of the programs to magazines or publishers). However, the obsession led to my now long involvement with SGI machines, so I guess it kinda worked out in the end. :) Do you still have your Electron? I have mine but it needs repair, a project for next year maybe.

[@Julius_Hardware]

That explains where 6 months of my life went... Loved the Electron though, sadly overlooked little computer

[@antonyparker6112]

Damn! Never knew this, and 40 years later explains why my mate hit Elite on his Spectrum but I could never get there on my Electron. I took so much grief from him at the time. Constant ribbing about my apparent lack of prowess at the helm……

[@grantvandongen]

I cannot believe I just watched an hour long youtube vid and did not realise that much time had passed! Elite 1 was my first C64 game of love that I managed to sacrifice my first semester of college to alongside of my high school mate that I roomed with. We would take turns on the C64 - I would do one jump/trade into a system, save and then he would have his go. Such great memories. What interested me was the complexity involved of condensing a game as good as it was down into 21k RAM! One of the best in depth vids I have watched. So I will leave you with my farewell comment "Right on Commander!"

[@Nacimin]

Used to play Elite and Elite:Frontier on my Amiga 500 many many years ago but i still remember the excitment i felt every time. Truly magnificent games. Thank you for the video!!

[@daviddahlstrom192]

An "elephant in the room" that was missing from the intro is Atari's 1980 release of Star Raiders for their 8-bit home computers. While still arcadish, it is a first person 3D space battle "simulator" with both tactical and strategic elements, multiple screens, and not just a score to break. In fact, sessions could go quite long. I've always viewed this game as the mother of all advanced first person space shooters. I remember being blown away by the the ability to actually fly through the debris field of an exploding ship in forward view, and then after passing through, switch to aft view to now see those particles flying away. Amazing! Even the long-range scanner represented a 3D view in which you could rotate space around your ship in realtime to orient oneself to distant targets. Then there was the ability to pick target sectors from a map, control one's warp through hyperspace, manage one's velocity, computer, and shields; and even dock with space stations for refueling (even modeling a tanker that would visit your ship and return to the station--and which you could even shoot and destroy if you were in a particulary evil mood). And all this fit into just 8K. Once again, amazing! I would also take slight exception to the statement that at the time, other than the flight sims mentioned in the intro, that there were no true 3D games for home or arcade. This would be because, besides Star Raiders (though one could make an academic argument that it was pseudo 3D rather than "true" 3D), there was also 1976's Night Driver, which is often cited as the first game to use true 3D polygons (for the pylons along the road), and one of my all-time favorites from the era was 1979's Tail Gunner by Vectorbeam which presented beautifully animated, true 3D wireframe ships that fragmented impressively when you shot them. And while Elite deserves all the accolades you give it, if you ever give Night Driver or Tail Gunner a try, you might be amazed at how incredibly fast and smooth their graphics are in comparison.

[@fredjones554]

I loved star raiders on the 8 bit. It was just magic. It was star wars but just for me.

[@0MoTheG]

Do you mean Starglider on the Atari ST? Aside from the music and the high resolution it was a shitty game.

[@Jimbaloidatron]

And if only there was a home computer that could effortlessly change video mode resolution mid-way down the screen - oh wait!

[@daviddahlstrom192]

@@0MoTheG No. Star Raiders was a 1980 title developed by Atari for their 8-bit computers; Star Glider was long after that (1986 for the ST) by some company called Rainbird. They are not comparable.

[@medes5597]

​@@daviddahlstrom192While Star Raiders is a far, far, far better game and really in a class by itself for both it's era and what it accomplished, Star Glider was a hell of an accomplishment. It was designed to be able to be ported to any system easily with it's wireframe graphics and very optimised code. This is why it ran on the Spectrum and Apple 2 despite them not being the workhorses that the ST and Amiga were. However the most interesting thing about their optimised code and graphics routines was that it allowed the devs to make a demo for the Nintendo Entertainment System running the first few levels of Starglider under the name "NESGlider" and a reworked port on the Gameboy called X. The devs sent these to Nintendo, who were so impressed they asked if they could make a polygon 3D game for their upcoming SNES console, using a 3D add on chip Nintendo had developed but was having trouble utilising. Thus the heavily optimised Star Glider code was ported, expanded and repurposed for polygons over wireframe and Star Glider became Star Fox on the SNES and Argonaut software turned a visually impressive but poorly playing Atari ST game into a worldwide hit that went on to sell millions of copies for Nintendo and Argonaut briefly became one of Nintendos go to studios for "impossible" coding feats. Star Raiders is fantastic but I wouldn't dismiss Star Glider. Also Rainbird/Firebird/Silverbird published some amazing games on the UK micros. Worth checking out at some point if you're into retro gaming.

[@retrosim4197]

The description of how the procedural code generation worked was really innovative for the time. I remember watching a postmortem video with David Crane, who used a similar method for designing the levels in Pitfall on the Atari 2600. Another true pioneer of this industry.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

MS BASIC on Commodore had a random number Generator. I am pretty sure that you can seed it ( maybe with a poke ).

[@eggsbox]

Recently installed a Win95 VM to play its port of _Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure,_ and that port used a rendering eXodus, which Microsoft was so impressed by that they hired its team to work on a successor called DirectX. Yet another paradigm shift in the industry brought on by Pitfall!

[@eggsbox]

rendering engine called*. KZbin won't let me edit my comment on mobile. useless!

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

@@eggsbox you mean direct draw? So Win95 came with BlitDibmap. Kinda like the typed array in JS, where you are allowed to address a pixel using the address bus of the computer and the databus to write the color ( thanks to protect mode, this is safe ). No Idea why OS designers ever thought that one should call putPixel() for this. Don’t they know that compilers can compile the pitch of the buffer into the code?

[@gator36]

Great video. Your explanation of the order of CPU operations using the animations was very helpful, possibly the first time I've seen it explained that wasn't convoluted or over explained. Looking forward to more in the future!

[@marksterling8286]

I remember playing elite on the bbc master, it was very impressive. I love how elite effectively changing modes while drawing the screen allowing colour at the bottom half of the screen

[@derektaylor2941]

What an excellent video, thank you. I must admit to being lost on parts of it and will watch it again, but it is by far the best explanation I have seen yet. Don't overlook Elite 2: FRONTIER. That might have been an evolution rather than revolution, but it was a worthy successor and I hate to think how many hours I spent on that.

[@tomriley5790]

Yes I played lots of that too but I must admit the strict newtonian flight model made it a bit crap - virtually impossible to have a proper dogfight and lots of shooting at dots on the screen. Not to mention you couldn't fire one of the turret son the Boa without shooting yourself. Still in terms of atmosphere!

[@derektaylor2941]

​@@tomriley5790I never found those issues. What version were you using? I had the Amiga and for games it was, at the time, leagues ahead.

[@Т1000-м1и]

After seeing the length, title and style of thumbnail, I knew what I was going to comment. But now especially more so after watching the video. Though the only thing that needs to be said is that this is a truly great project, this video.

[@38911bytefree]

Stunning how the manage to put that in 22K and made it run like a champ on the 6502. Of course by this year was mind blowing. I used the C64 and games up to 84 were not as mature compared to the ones at late 80s. Kinda, took some time to get more impressive games on the C64. Elite is like to early into the party plus, it fitted in less than half the RAM .... Good vid !!!,

[@PRAR1966]

When this game dropped - I started gathering the hardware to run it the very same day.....a theme that has stayed with me ever since. Well done Elite and thank you Alexander for this historical treat.

[@Alexander-the-ok]

I did the same for Half-Life: Alyx

[@PRAR1966]

@@Alexander-the-ok Things got very busy around that time with Windows 98 and PC (re)building and then once the dust settled Freelancer dropped !

[@DenisThornton]

Brilliant video thanks. Played Elite endlessly on my ZX spectrum-awesome to see how it was developed and Bell & Braben must have been geniuses to a) develop an actually great game concept and b) code it.

[@TJH1]

One of my life long regrets is not sending off for the physial Elite badge you could earn in the game back in the day.

[@andypayne2743]

There was a badge?! No way! I don’t remember that!

[@richardvernon317]

@@andypayne2743 There was, until somebody found a backdoor in the program that got you to Elite level in a heartbeat and told the world, after a massive increase in badge requests with the correct codes, they stopped giving the badges out. Also some bright spark wrote some hack code that gave you unlimited everything that allowed you to get to Elite level in a few hours play and put that into a computer magazine. Only time I ever played the game was with the hacks, otherwise it was totally F**king boring.

[@Debbiebabe69]

'Castle Quest' has a reward you could send off for if you completed the game in 6 months.... Still never completed it.......

[@omegahunter7147]

The badge was only for the BBC Micro version (played that at school as a duo with a mate only reached the rank of dangerous). The Spectrum version didn't offer the badge :(

[@richardvernon317]

@@omegahunter7147 I had the Spectrum version and the form for the badge was most definitely in the cassette.

[@malcolmhall7248]

I'm 64 and did Computer Science at university. I used to get the dedicated BBC Micro magazine, which printed basic programs you could type in. After I started work and saved up some money I drove up to Watford Electronics and spent 400 squid on a one (twice what my car cost). One of the guys I worked with sold patches to Killer Gorilla on cassetes to increase lives etc. Elite was quite addictive for me ... the Missions and "Right on commander!"

[@tjb3171]

This is an amazing video, super in-depth and definitely worth a sub. Thanks so much!

[@notsillyone]

Splitting the screen into different modes was possible on the Atari 800 released in 1979. It had a feature called a Display List which let you divide the screen horizontally into any combinations of different modes including graphics or text. It wasn’t limited to just two modes on screen, you could define as many as you like in any order that would fit in the 192 scan lines available. Star Raiders has been mentioned a couple of times in the comments. It used display lists to divide the screen similarly to Elite. I loved both elite and Star Raiders. But did not come across Elite until I had an IBM clone.

[@djmips]

It goes without saying that all you did was mess with the video chip on every scan line on it's predecessor the 2600. You can clearly see the evolution of using the CPU to handle the display list to the dedicated hardware in the 800 and the Amiga

[@TalismancerM]

As a teen I played Elite obsessively as it was based loosely (via the trading system) on one of the earliest role-playing games, "Traveller" that our group regularly played at the time. It always astonished me just how small the executable for this game was...tiny! It really was the impossible game.

[@KabukiKid]

Yes, when I first saw this game at a friend's house, I was mind-boggled that it was completely memory-resident and didn't load again from the disk. (I experienced the C64 floppy version, at the time.) And oh yes... I also was a Traveller TTRPG player, so I was also amazed/impressed that there was a game that was obviously born from it. :-) I still have my little black books for Traveller, in fact! heh

[@BeYourOwnRoleModel]

I was introduced to Elite Dangerous from a friend a mine a couple years ago- and it was my first time hearing about it. Since then, I have put in over 3k hrs into the game, have ventured far into the deep darkness of space, and have made great memories along the way. This game not only took my gaming experience from console to PC but helped bring me back to happiness during the depths of the pandemic. Since then I have been engaging myself in learning more about the game's lore, background, and what the future may hold. I can not express how much this game and the community mean to me. Thank you for making this video and sharing some great history. Until next time.... o7 cmdrs

[@gregwilliams2746]

I had Elite on the Commodore 64 and can confirm it was a mind blowing revelation! I had to import it to New Zealand sending a cheque and waiting weeks for it to arrive. It didn't disappoint!

[@SteenLarsen]

Oh what memories! I used to work for the Danish BBC micro importer and loved Elite! Amazing what we all managed to cram into 32Kb memory!

[@___Rick___]

Had a BBC-B and added a 32k Watford Electronics PROM. Remember typing in BASIC games from magazines and saving to tape, and then Elite came out and I spent hours every day playing it, even playing all night and going to bed about 4 or 5 am before getting up for school at 7am; on a black-and-white 14" TV. Got to Elite status about a week after the competition that came with the game ended.

[@squeggee]

Back in the late 80's in my small town in Canada, the local Lions Club had a computer lab in the basement that the kids could use. It had Apple II's and for some reason an Acorn computer with Elite on it. I was in awe how cool it was.

[@Dragonblaster1]

Ian Bell was my best friend at St Albans School, and we both had BBC Model B’s. I wrote the code for the Thargoids.

[@djmips]

Well done!

[@Dragonblaster1]

@@djmips What amazed me the most was that Ian and David had managed to get two graphics modes on the screen at the same time: detailed monochrome Mode 0 for the view ahead and16-colour but chunkier Mode 2 for the controls. and the radar tracker was simple but brilliant. It has been copied many times. I'm just pleased that I played even a small part in the game,

[@tomriley5790]

Nice! I've forgotten what the shortcut was but you used to be able to force yourself into being interdicted into witchspace, after I "got good" I used to do it for fun and collect the thargons to sell as alien artefacts - the only risk was ending up in the middle of nowhere too far to jump to a system.

[@marcotine7119]

Dear Alexander, thanks for this insightful documentary. The part where you explained the backface culling technique was particularly interesting. Elite is and will remain a powerful testament to the art of punching way above the weight of the available resources.

[@KeplersDream]

I remember the computer room at my school around this time had one BBC micro (maybe two, I don't quite recall) and about ten TRS80s. Cutting edge stuff at the time, but it inspired me enough to pester my parents for a good old Speccy. And yes, I was all over Elite, amongst other things. What a time to be alive.