Hmmm, never heard of Elite. I wonder why.
I did enjoy playing a quirky little game called "Mule." It was one of only two computer games my wife was ever interested in playing with me. The other one was a murder mystery...all text. I can't remember the name of it, though. A few years later I'll bet another game she would have been fascinated with was "Myst." But by then she had come to hate my computers.
Elite was a space trading game thought up by Ian Bell and David Braben.............
I was friends with a guy at school only because he had a BBC micro with Elite installed. Loved it. There is a new series of games called X that are basically updated expanded versions of Elite. I'm on X3 at the moment. I love open-ended sandpit games like that.