The Story of Elite: A Space Opera | Kim Justice

[@Kim_Justice]

If you liked this then think about having a gander through my social media, and get yourself on my Patreon: www.patreon.com/KimbleJustice

[@aw34565]

Great video! You can play Elite, as well as most other popular games for the BBC Micro, online in a browser here : bbcmicro.co.uk/game.php?id=366

[@warman]

What about the opera rock "I am ELITE"? kzbin.info/www/bejne/qHLOeXqYh7WBiJY

[@Realmasterorder]

Liked this a LOT so much stuff i did not know and such great narration, well Done Kim.

[@wesmatron]

Braben and Bell fit a universe into less memory space than it takes an iPhone to display one icon

[@joshmay2944]

What an incredibly revelatory analogy!

[@randlepatrickmcmurphy834]

What if our universe is just an atom in a giant's finger *tokes*

[@SoulPoetryandOtherWorks]

Yes but it didn't look as pretty. Technically a procedurally generated universe doesn't take up much memory at all. A few hundred bytes to interpret the values for the rest of the program. A bit like the pseudorandom number generator in most computers.

[@daddust]

You should see what the demo scene is capable of nowadays.

[@Zooumberg]

@@SoulPoetryandOtherWorks You're missing the point. It wasn't deemed possible at the time. These two showed them it was.

[@elfboy29]

I remember coming downstairs one night and asking my parents what narcotics were and should I buy them. I still remember their alarmed faces.

[@venares76]

lol that's brilliant.

[@realmwatters2977]

Love it! Oh that got be funniest thing I heard! All I got it 5 am you should be in bed! Mar! running cargo, to Diso.

[@Graytail]

Probbably a good thing it wasnt slaves on sale!

[@elfboy29]

@@Graytail Interestingly my parents activley encouraged that

[@Blacknight8850]

Similarly, as a kid I was into Warhammer 40k and while I was reading the the Tyranids rulebook in among all the Tyrants, Goliaths etc there was one word I didn't recognise. Cut to my mum awkwardly trying to explain to me what a "Dominatrix" is - in a feat of careful wording she said something like "certain men like to pay ladies to tell them off" or something.

[@GNeuman]

My Dad commandeered my Beeb to play this game, he was obsessed by it.....Happy days and RIP, Dad.

[@retrohistories]

"The pair haven't appeared together since the 1980s" It almost happened! They both appeared at the Elite 25th anniversary GameCity event in Nottingham in 2009. They went on stage separately and wouldn't stand together for photos, but they were both in the room.

[@StephenBlower]

Grow people acting like little children

[@StephenGutknecht]

This a real British thing? Roger Waters and David Gilmour?

[@medes5597]

​@@StephenBlowernah, they'd be children if they actually fought. I can at least understand "look we don't like each other, we'd rather not be together on stage or on camera" Sometimes you don't like each other.

[@joedent3323]

Cheers for this Kim. I tracked down the novela that came with this: "Dark Wheel" - and its a great little read. Im now going to play it for the first time, tomorrow, on my Amiga. Thanks as always, Kim. Your videos help me to relax and to train my mind on sonething that I love.

[@jonabbott7806]

44:27 I have to correct you on one point. The original Arc Elite authors didn't convert it to 32bit in 2014 and permission wasn't blocked by David Braben. I did the conversion as part of the JASPP project to get original Archimedes games running natively on the Raspberry Pi. It was done with permission and in conjunction with the rights holder of the Arc version -Chris Jordan. Once it was ready to release Chris withdrew permission, there was no demo version and no copies exist outside of JASPP and the copy I sent to Chris Jordan. The only proof it even exists is a video on the JASPP KZbin channel

[@jimmyporter8941]

What a horrible thing to do, withdrawing the rights after all the work was done.

[@Aevilbeast]

Did he give any reason for withdrawing the rights? Did he do just to **** with the people who did it? Sounds like just a horribly troll-ish thing to do, especially considering all the time and effort that went into the project and for all the people who were eagerly awaiting it. Sounds like as soon as he saw that were a decent amount of people interested it, he probably thought there was some money to be had so withdrew the rights. Happens all the time unfortunately and is honestly probably the biggest reason why so many people just go the "shady" route and don't even try to properly get the rights to certain properties. There are just so many beloved older games out there won't ever see the light of day ever again, simply because whoever owns the rights wants to squeeze every single penny out of it even if it hasn't sold or been used in 10-20 years! I'm all for protection of owners of intellectual properties, as we wouldn't have these games in the first place without them and the owners/creators deserve to be properly compensated for such work, but there really should better laws in place concerning trollish acts like this. Then again, I'm no expert in copyright laws or any laws for that matter, and honestly don't how it would feel to be on the otherside of the argument, so take what I say with a grain of salt!

[@1977evh]

Hey Kim, I just wanted to say hello from Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the USA!! I found your channel about a month ago and I wanted to tell you how fantastic the quality of your documentaries are. The information you are bringing to the masses about a time in gaming that was so wonderful and magical, a time before the internet ruined a lot of the surprise you would get from seeing a new game in the store. Unless it was an arcade port that you had played and knew about or maybe you happen to have seen a few sentences and a blurry screenshot about a new game coming out from an early video game magazine, those were the only ways we really knew anything about the games that we were playing or soon to be playing. I enjoyed learning about the English and European gaming scene in the 1980's and 1990's, as over here the NES "saved" gaming, as I am sure everyone knows, since they beat you over the head with that since it was released in 1985,after the "crash" of 1983. I personally had gotten a Sega Master System shortly after it was released in the stated and remember loving every minute of playing it. I had already had an NES, and of course I enjoyed that too but the SMS was just different in a very awesome way! Whether it was the fact that my Mom used to take me to the arcade and I loved and still love all Sega arcade classics and the SMS was chock full of those, especially since the NES didn't have many ports of the Sega games that I loved, at least not right away like the SMS did. To find out that the SMS was the system of choice across the pond and that the NES basically bombed was a very strange version of alternate history to find out lol But anyways, I just love what your doing on youtube Kim, I watched all your videos and then I joined your 4.99 a month membership and am now watching the perk vid list and am enjoying every minute of it!!! Thanks again so much for providing content that is just as good as what's on TV or Cable, if not better!!! And I almost forgot to mention that I am a huge Pro Wrestling fan too and when I saw you had a entire stream during last years Wrestle Kingdom 12, I think that's awesome and if I would have known of your channel back then you would have had one more in your chat room as I watch NJPW events live as well but over here they usually start between 1am-3am, which makes it difficult when working first shift lol Thanks again Kim and if you ever would like to chat about games, wrestling, or anything my email is [e-mail]. Have a fantastic day!!

[@davidkennedy1077]

Pat yourself on the back sir, you have literally found THE greatest 80s/90s gaming channel on KZbin!!! Kim's mini (often not so mini!) gaming documentaries are so well researched and made, and I've yet to find another channel that comes even close to the quality.

[@thomaseland3136]

It's rarely mentioned that not only the docking comes from the 2001 movie, but also the Harmless, mostly harmless, dangerous etc. references come from the Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy books by Douglas Adams.

[@drewardnamthor]

OK. This is not a bad video but it has a few flaws. First my credentials, I worked for Acornsoft during the time of the development and launch of Elite, indeed I was invited into the initial meeting with Bell and Braeburn. The first 3d game for the BBC micro was called Avaitor (launched in 1983). There was not a 16kb difference between the disk and tape versions of the BBC micro. (I think it was more like 16 bytes!). Acornsoft negotiated an exclusivity period (6 months as I recall) with the authors not that it made much difference because of the time required to port the software which was quite dependent on the architecture of the BBC micro especially its flexible graphics card. DJD was not young and inexperienced and Acornsoft was at the time by far the biggest publisher of BBC software (including the aforementioned Aviator, many video game clones as wqell as word processors and spreadsheets). We had several submissions a week of varying quality. The offices while small (as I recall we moved to larger offices shortly before the release of Elite) were not at any time a single room and Acorn had a small programming team as well as a testing team, marketing team and management.

[@jimmyporter8941]

For sure as a user, Acornsoft was THE games software publisher for Acorn computers, in addition to it's other applications. They had great arcade conversions, of Defender, Asteroids, Pacman, Galaxians, Space Panic and so on. All of them unlicensed presumably given the name changes, but VERY authentic. I never had Aviator or Revs so I can't speak to those, but I know they were highly praised. Their adventure games were not good though, being simple BASIC programs, they were very limited compared with Level 9 offerings.

[@Drew-Dastardly]

In RAM 16K is a huge difference and just not possible on a 32K BBC Micro. In actual fact the tape version would have been loaded into more RAM than the disk version as the DFS took out a lot of RAM. PAGE = &E00 on *TAPE and &1900 on *DFS. However, you could lower PAGE to &1100 if you where not using the *BASIC random access filing. So from this we can guess that the disk version of ELITE had *768 bytes LESS* for the CPU to work with. Of course the magic is page filing, and I can well believe that there was perhaps a total of an extra 16K in small pages stored on disk loaded in at certain events (ie. missions). This would also allow all the extra space ships not in the tape version.

[@Drew-Dastardly]

@@jimmyporter8941 I agree. At the time Acornsoft was *the* premiere games company for the BBC. Only followed by Superior Software and Micro Power. The Acornsoft clones you mention are Planetoids, Meteors, Snapper, Arcadians and Monsters.

[@sharazjek338]

@@Drew-Dastardly thanks for that :-)

[@Midwinter2]

Ha! I remember Aviator! At least I remember reading a detailed review of it in a magazine (which included an interview with its programmer, Geoff Crammond). I remember marvelling at the screenshots of the wireframe graphics, and reading the review over and over again. I was 12 at the time and never got to see the actual game in motion as BBC computers were unheard of where I lived. Haven't thought of Aviator in almost 40 years....!

[@mkhachfe]

First of all. Thank you for making this video. It was great and stuck a chord with this 45year old who has played Elite right from the get go, moved onto the NES version which I played for 6 hours at a time, then moved to the PC, through Elite 1,2 and 3. (2 and 3 being so enthralling when playing alone at 3am) And now, 4 years after buying the game, I still play Dangerous every weekend for hours. Just a simply wonderful game from day 1.

[@hanniffydinn6019]

The game still blows my mind. It’s a masterpiece of genius programming ! I’m still learning from the source code, how much they crammed into such a small memory. It’s an impressive feat!

[@randaldavis8976]

FORTH

[@Lupinicus1664]

@@randaldavis8976 Assembler

[@stevedocherty6240]

I played this on the Amstrad CPC 464 around 1985 - it is hard to describe what a quantum leap in depth and complexity it seemed in comparison with most games that came before it. Tau Ceti was another similar game from the same era - you flew around a planet surface. The closest analogy I can think of is how Bob Dylan changed pop music in the 60s. Prior to him lyrics were mostly about teenage love affairs, after him it seemed obvious that more poetic and political themes could be explored. Later on I was lucky enough to play the Acorn Archimedes version for a while, being one of the few people to own one of these machines. The multi-ship battles definitely added something to the experience, making the universe feel more lived in.

[@CMDR_Verm]

Thank you for a great video, it really took me back to the 80's when I played Elite on my little ZX Spectrum. I lived in a seedy bedsit with my (later) wife and the nights passed uncounted. Looking back it's hard to imagine she ever put up with me but 35 years later we are still married and I'm here playing Elite:Dangerous. I thank Elite in one way because for a long time (14 years) I played Eve-Online which was a (sort of) substitute and my wife joined me in playing. Two PCs, one couple = marital bliss lol. The modern version of Elite is such that I spend more time watching KZbin videos trying to ''git gud'' than I do than actually playing the game itself, but it's keeping me occupied mentally and that's what I look for. As an FYI, back in 80's when I was almost crying with frustration trying to match rotation to dock with a station, I found that if I just aligned with the ''letter box'' and flew in a straight line I docked with no problem. I'd be interested to know if anyone else agrees with my experience.

[@faenethlorhalien]

Rest in peace, Sophia.

[@thavashgovender4345]

Kim Justice makes some of the best videos on KZbin. Keep telling us about then 80s

[@ModernVintageGamer]

Seriously amazing work Kim. Thank you for this

[@mjretrogamer4819]

Kim is a real treat to those who still appreciate and love vintage computers. I don't remember how I found her channel but so glad I did. Keep up the great work Kim!

[@AKsevenFOUR]

Another excellent doco. The research and detail within these videos is top notch, you could even say; Elite!

[@FatNorthernBigot]

I've only just subscribed to KJ. This is a great documentary.

[@adrianhula]

Kim, your documentaries are the best youtube has to offer on gaming. you don't just quote verbatim your sources, but put everything together with fresh takes, fresh material and it all becomes seamless with the tried and trusted. well done, love all of them.

[@necronom]

I'm watching this while playing Elite Dangerous :-) I became Elite on the Amiga version, then bought Frontier a few years later. The first time I played it was on an Electron at a friends house. I remember it being on the news at the time; it was that big a deal. I was at the Cambridge museum a few months ago and had a go on the Archimedes one.

[@999jay999]

Elite on the Amiga here as well, now I play it on my PC.... :)

[@martin.pokorny]

All the galaxy in 6 bytes and an algorithm?!? I have goosebumps (no exaggeration)! What a brilliancy!

[@paddycoleman1472]

It is a shame they still do not get on. At the end of the day, they created something special in the mid-80s and surely it is now time to acknowledge that and put all the heartache behind them.

[@MichaelWerle]

This is a great documentary. Thanks for putting it together. Still playing Elite now, and I started a long time ago on my C64. Certainly the most influential game I ever played.

[@RossardJames]

Yet another incredible documentary Kim. Impeccable research and information perfectly balanced with telling an entertaining story.

[@Ndlanding]

Top-class history of one of the most influential (and enjoyable) games ever. My experience of it is from the original BBC version, and my mate Pete who used to lend me his BBC and ANALOGUE joystick. Thanks, Pete!

[@marvthereddevil5418]

Thanks for the fantastic nostalgia trip Kim! Elite was a huge part of my childhood on both the Electron, then A3010 & I thought you told the story extremely well :)

[@TheTobiasVaughn]

Zips along so fast, I couldn't believe an hour had passed watching this!Great work!

[@greedygreggor]

ive been sooo looking forward to this; many hours spent on the speccy version. Awesome vid Thanks Kim!

[@steveetienne]

Me too. I remember the circular cardboard codebreaker very well! Loved the Amiga version too - blew me away the first time i played with full colour graphics and music

[@jamesweiner]

Always enjoy your documentaries - glad to see another - and as enjoyable and intriguing as ever. Thank you!

[@Bangkokian1967]

I remember how amazed I was with this game on my Beeb back in the mid-80’s Such an absolute classic game!

[@cardcounter21]

I got an Atari 600XL in 1983 and remember a year later being blown away by the intro rotating ship of Elite on the BBC! Alas at that time I could never have afforded that computer!

[@Bangkokian1967]

@@cardcounter21 I managed to convince my parents that having a BBC Micro was essential for schoolwork 😊

[@cardcounter21]

@@g_geezer3277 Now we have Elite Dangerous with Oculus Rift. It would be great to be able to play emulations of Elite, Frontier Elite II and Encounters directly within our cockpits during those long trips to Hutton Orbital (;

[@SEGAClownboss]

Awesome video, Kim. I'm not that keen on Elite because I like more goal-oriented games, but I'll never forget the time I went close to a star and opened the scoop from the ship, to harvest gas for fuel. It was such a dangerous situation I was trembling, being so close to the star and seeing the screen ripple and feeling your ship tremble, but I felt like I was a complete badass and that I was accomplishing something grand when I was doing it. Thanks for making this.

[@natsume-hime2473]

Thanks for finally covering Elite Kim. I just started the video, one thing you said still stands out: You cannot deny Elite's legacy. It arguably spawned the entire realistic space simulator genre. Not only that but 35 years later, Elite: Dangerous is out and already nearly 5 years old, yet still one of the best looking games on the market still and one of the most compelling open ended games around.

[@imaner76]

What a wonderful journey, you have taken time and effort to produce this, thank you. I enjoyed my memories of Elite [insert version here] as I watched. The "back stabbing" does not take away my pleasure in playing the games, but I still have a sense of sadness for them not finding common ground. Time and tide is against us all, I do hope they can find some of what is left to reconcile.

[@technickuk]

Great documentary Kim, as always. An hour long but doesn't seem like it, as the pace was just right.

[@davedogge2280]

Ian Bell an David Braben you created an absolute classic on the C64. When I strayed into "Witch-Space" with the Thargoids they blew me to kingdom come in this warp space void where time speeded up. Also the Trimbles clogged up my engines and obscured my viewing ports as they bred out of control. If you could do a piece on Mercenary it would be great, the game in many ways surpassed Elite on the 8-bit platforms and Paul Woakes who was arguably a genius with 8-bit machines and 3d vector programming sadly passed away in 2017, he was a very private man but I know that people such as Jeff Minter and Archer McClean crossed paths with him from back in the day (there's a photo of them around the internet). Also staff from Novagen are still around and Paul Woakes was a director at a company in Birmingham which he set up with some ex-Novagen staff (named Lighting Reality Ltd which you can find on companies house website for the UK. Also on the C64 I remember purchasing the docking computer for my Cobra MK II and once in a blue moon it messed up and it crashed into the station and blew up my space ship.

[@slartythecyclops4643]

OMG that brought back memories of hours of fun on my old acorn electron playing that game (tho bugged so I was perm stuck in the 1st galaxy) to this day is still my fav game ever! Thanks for the nostagic mind trip :-)

[@jamesroberts8971]

Great documentary of one of my favourite 8/16bit games :) Very detailed and very interesting.

[@craigberry5713]

You are the best gaming historian/researcher on KZbin.

[@jamiecampbell8855]

Remember playing this as a 13 year old on my c64. Mind blowing at the time.

[@Ketma73]

Without a doubt one the greatest titles ever to play out on the gaming stage....I remember picking this up and playing it on my Spectrum, crazy how I still use the same keys, N, M, S, X, A to play Elite Dangerous today - and i never needed a docking computer ;)

[@henrygerard2315]

Only an hour long?? You slacker!

[@zachreddy]

Awesome video. Wish I’d found Elite back when I was a kid with access to a C64, but even years later it’s very impressive.

[@OliverHarper]

Superb work Kim! A really interesting retrospective that has a great pace to it. Hardly feels like an hour long video.

[@davidelliott8016]

One of my favourite youtubers commenting on another of my favourite youtubers about one of my favourite games! It doesn't get much better!

[@kommissar.murphy]

What is this,a crossover episode?

[@WhatHoSnorkers]

Great video as per usual! I have an Elite clone on my iPad called "Unknown" which is no longer available. Docking is a bit easier at least, as I could never manage it on the Spectrum, and whenever I went to hyperspace I'd end up in Witchspace!

[@ZimMan2]

"Fabled for its exciting sitcoms and its inhabitants' ancient loathing of sitcoms." That... that's one of the best sentences I've ever heard.

[@davidkennedy1077]

So glad you've covered this Kim, you're a legend!!! No one covers gaming development anywhere near the depth you do!!!

[@MrStephen182]

Another ace doc. How your channel is not much bigger than it is I'll never know because the best video game docs on youtube are found on your channel.

[@fakegeek5462]

Its because she is transgender.

[@Jayce_Alexander]

I'm seriously excited by this. Elite is one of my favorite game franchises of all time, and no one could do justice to a game series this ambitious like you could, Kim!

[@thecatsonholiday5932]

I used to play traveller. And my mates for elite on BBC micro. Such innocent times. Thanx for igniting my memories. Excellent job Mr kim!

[@Podgemaster]

Excellent doc Kim. Really enjoyed this one mate.

[@davidkennedy1077]

I used to play the original Elite at my mates house on his BBC B and loved it. I later moved on to consoles myself, so was amazed to see Elite Dangerous was a game available on Xbox. It was great playing another Elite game over 30 years later!!!

[@anthonyspecf]

Probably due to being from the USA, I played the game rather late. The version I had was Elite Plus (VGA version) I had purchased for our 386 PC. It was one of my favorite old games. I loved writing down trade routes and reading the small novella included in the packaging. It really immersed me into the world. Eventually I moved on to Wing Commander: Privateer for my Space trading/bounty goodness, but I will always have fond memories of Elite.

[@ryanyoder7573]

Privateer was so awesome. Also try Starflight 2.

[@leytonjay]

Really well researched and put together. I've only ever played Frontier Elite II, I got it back in the 90s on my Amiga 500 and I've gone back to it so many times. I'm a Mac guy now, but I keep an old laptop PC so I can play Frontier Elite every now and again.

[@Monkey_SK]

Well done Kim, another amazing documentary on a video game classic.

[@bearmatic]

Excellent as always, Kim!

[@impaler_7425]

Thanks for another amazing documentation! Cheers!

[@GoldmineVideoLoot]

Nice , well researched, lengthy doc, thanks Kimbo .

[@valley_robot]

To this day I play “ no mans sky “ in VR , it’s how I remembered “elite” back in the day , imagination fills in the blanks

[@AndrewNorrisMusicTech]

Been really looking forward to this one, Kim. Thank you so much! Love your work. :)

[@aw34565]

Superb video. I spent Christmas 1984 playing Elite on my Acorn Electron. Any chance of more videos on gaming on Acorn machines? Geoff Crammond, for example, wrote Aviator and Revs for the BBC Micro before moving onto Stunt Car Racer for the Amiga and the Micropose Grand Prix series for the PC.

[@divinuminfernum]

awesome! I love all the Elite games, i just wish i could stop careening out of control into planets in the older versions , but i love it and it got me interested in Traveller!

[@DougHolmes]

Only just found this. A long (long) time ago, I was working on an unofficial Gameboy port of Elite (with the intention of finding a publisher). Unfortunately, that last bit didn't happen. We had the whole thing running at 10 FPS and the whole of the HUD worked as expected, but hey, it's a Gameboy doing 3D, with an entire universe in a cartridge. We even had a toggle to invert the screen colours to extend battery life.

[@cascad]

And another great video from you. Thank you very much for this !

[@mrtiff99]

Great video Kim. Much appreciated. Work and research you put in really show.

[@mrpositronia]

Amazing stuff, thanks Kim! :)

[@Sorrowablaze]

Oh yes,this is great! I love Elite, and Kim's wonderful presentation

[@dungeonseeker3087]

I still maintain that you have a talent for documentary making that exceeds the talents of most people who do it professionally Kim. I just watched an hour long documentary and at the end wished you had continued on with more detail on Elites sequels. One of the most interesting films I've watched in quite a while. Is this the same Ian Bell that owns Slightly Mad Studios and is behind Project Cars?

[@areyouserious3092]

I would say better than most TV narrators.

[@Yesterzine]

It's not, but like you I made that mistake for years.

[@davidkennedy1077]

This is truly incredible, I'd say this is one of your best documentaries yet (although, as a fan of the series, I may be a little biased!) I loved every minute, and it's great that you even detailed the Braben/Bell spat and continued legal issues (that I knew absolutely nothing about!)

[@ThePerradox]

(Inter)stellar video Kim. Much thanks. :)

[@realmwatters2977]

I Played this game for 5 years straight, and ranked Dangerous good times been!

[@peterobinson3678]

Awesome video about totally my favourite game ever... had the original Elk version, and it blew me away. The BBC versions were definately the best, inho, but I am probably rather biased! TBH, i was rather shocked at the main screen size on the 16 bit versions - like looking thru a letterbox! My only disappointment was the only tangential reference to Oolite, which is virtually the same game with a 00's graphical update and a few bells and whistles, and which I still play for hours at a time today - SOOO much better than Frontier was! Might be worth a short vid of it's own...?

[@ItsCrapContent]

Another great video...will need to see about supporting you cos I've really enjoyed quite a few of your vids recently x

[@alienaudaxer9827]

Comprehensive! I had this on my 48k Spectrum. Amazing how they managed to program this with such limitations. An incredible game.

[@1989ArcadeBar]

I was wondering how this would play on the NES... now I am going to grab a copy! Fantastic video, as always.

[@cmdrablearry3815]

Great work, saved to favorites for a re-watch later. Thank you very much Sir 👍

[@CRG]

Fantastic look into the world of Elite. Frontier Elite 2 was the game I spent by far the most time with back in the day on my A1200 but the first 1 I have to admit I've never really played but I'll have to give it another go. Hopefully you'll be doing a follow up on this looking at Frontier??? Your videos are fantastic Kim, helps me get through the work listening to one of your documentaries. Keep up the good work.

[@rhaeven]

"I never mastered docking and it's as difficult here as anywhere else" lewd

[@SuneSalminen]

"...such as a galactic map and a wanking system", "Bell-end Braben"...

[@Chr0n3]

Remember the old one. Got PS4 and NES versions. Love to escape through them. Thank you!!!

[@DavidAinsworth37]

At last, i have really been looking forward the Elite story, good work Kim, thank you.

[@flash_bowski]

Fantastic stuff. Well done Kim.

[@jasontaylor8658]

Excellent documentary. Thanks!

[@never9rown]

Thanks to Elite Week for heads up on this vid. Thanks Kim for the story, was great to find it all out! :)

[@Loren344]

this is wonderful, thank you. this goes into many fascinating aspects of the game's creation which i have not seen covered elsewhere, like the political context.

[@rpgduck]

As always very detailed and will presented. Well done :)

[@Rorschach.]

After 39 years, having enjoyed Elite on my Electron, CPC and PC (particularly MP's "TheNewKind") I am once again bouncing around the galaxies in Oolite and having a blast! I am an Elite:Dangerous founder and keep my version updated but for me, the relative simplicity of the original Elite, together with Oolite's expansions, mean I truly believe I'm flying around in Rob Holdstock's elegantly painted universe. Right On.

[@ukaszp.3667]

Another awesome doc :) Brough a nostalgia tear :)

[@willeysingleton3057]

Wow awesome job kim. Loved the help you got from sophia too. Good to hear you two working together. And fuck now i have to find a copy of Elite on nes. Iv never heard of it but it sounds like wing commander but better so im sold.

[@JimBCameron]

Probably the highlight of my youth (longer tbh) was becoming 'Elite'!

[@kevinstrade2752]

As an American, I never heard of this game unfortunately. Not until about 10 years ago. I have since purchased it for my Commodore 64. I havnt gotten far in it but I could see the potential. Simply an amazing achievement! !! Of course I bought dangerous elite and have been playing that for years and still enjoy the hell out of it!!! Very glad that elite has finally getting the recognition it deserves! !!!

[@dylanarcher827]

A 3d open world game in 1984!!! Sooo far ahead of its time. Spent many hours playing this on my Beeb, never reached elite.

[@simonoleary9264]

I bought the speccy version when it came out. From what I remember, it wasn't the first wire-frame game, but was the first to have hidden line removal. Even now it still amazes me that they managed to get all that onto a 48k speccy. I played it for ages and it took me about 2 years to reach Elite (I was doing 4 A-Levels at the time). I can recommend oolite if you want to play it again, but with greatly improved graphics. Fantastic video, look forward to more of them ☺

[@TheKermit2110]

Right up there with Drew Wager’s Elite documentary, and better than any mainstream media has to offer. Great job, Kim

[@Alex-sx8uz]

Another great piece, thank you.

[@markb8734]

What a wonderful documentary, thank you so much for this.

[@chrisatkins2026]

Very enjoyable documentary. When I played the Spectrum version of Elite it was tough to say which was the toughest task: docking manually in game or getting the ridiculous Lenslok anti piracy system to work and unlock the game to play. Have played most versions but surprised to see a version for NES in there. My first memory (encounter) with Elite was someone at school bragging about their rating as they owned an Electron and a copy of the game. Must have been 1984 or 85. So long ago now but happy days.

[@markhooper279]

This is amazing. The comment about how you can't imagine playing this in 1984.... It literally took you away. Many parents thought that you needed a mental health asylum. You lived it. It was the most important thing, period. No text can sum up the impact.

[@kuntosjedebil]

48:56 I am pretty sure that the galaxy present in Elite II is randomly generated. Only few regions around the Federation, Empire and the Lave were created manually.

[@TheRetroArchive]

Frontier Elite 2 has a pretty accurate (for the time) model of the Milky Way. Google "Frontier jongware milky way" and there's a great disassembly of the code, it's certainly pretty impressive that Braben managed to fit that on a single low density floppy and works by splitting the spiral galaxy into quadrants of procedurally generated systems however there are still thousands of stars loaded from a star catalogue of astronomical data and it's really not so far off how any other model of the milky way works since most of it would be theoretical beyond what telescopes can see from Earth. Elite Dangerous has a much larger database cross referenced from several star catalogues. www.jongware.com/galaxy1.html

[@TheRetroArchive]

@Lassi Kinnunen sure but "procedural" and "random" don't make it any less of a model especially when the procedural elements are seeded from scientific equations, in theoretical physics that's still all we have. There are no "maps" of the Milky Way and even if there had been in 1994 they wouldn't have fit on any storage system of the time. Procedural just means "generated through rules" hence procedure, that's what scientific models are. Even the best scientific models built for research are built the same way. The website I linked to above has a complete breakdown of the rules.

[@RobNicholson1234]

Note sure about Elite II, but in Elite, everything was generated by a random number generator seeded with the same number. So if you wanted the details for planet 145, you seeded the random number generator (with the same value) and ran it 145 times, then generate the numbers that created the name, type etc. Hence the comment that actually you could have billions (technically unlimited) of galaxies but they'd get very samey. The code to generate the names was random as well but had some rules to generate pronounceable names. The seeds were fixed and I suspect that they ran a few sequences until they found a seed that generated some good names for the launch spot

[@goodfodder]

In my opinion the original on the beeb is the best example of games programming genius ever; pushing the host machine to its limits whilst creating an entirely new gaming genre

[@StRoRo]

Great video about one of my all time fav games. So many childhood memories with this. I remember the Table Top game of Elite getting cancelled. Apparently it was due to the rights of certain ships, such as the Anaconda, not being held by Frontier or Braben. Thanks for sharing.

[@YouHaventSeenMeRight]

@StuRoRo It didn't get cancelled, the Kickstarter campaign was suspended for a while. After the suspension the Kickstarter team tried to contact the copyright claimant, who didn't respond to their requests for clarification of the claim and as such they decided to let the campaign continue. It managed to successfully finish the campaign and is for sale at www.edrpg.co.uk

[@Dragonblaster1]

Ian Bell was my best friend at school; St. Albans School in Hertfordshire.