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. It was originally written for the BBC Micro, and later released on most other machines of the age. C64 etc. You start with a ship and 100 credits you can choose how you approach the game. You can trade and build up your prestige and money honestly. You can deal in illegal goods like slaves, narcotics etc but you have the police of half the galaxy after you. Or you can become an all out privateer, destroying other ships and plundering their cargo.
There are a couple of aims to the game, most genre's had 5 or more missions for you to complete which are picked up at various stages of the game.
Plus the other point of the game was to become Elite. You start at Harmless and grow through Mostly Harmless, poor, average, above average, competent and finally Elite. This is done by combat, either legal combat or shooting all on sight. It boasted the first real use of 3D vector graphics and a large universe, fully contained in the game, a massive feat for those early machines.
The new game coming out now boasts the full visible night sky, with stars in there correct positions of the Galaxy and the rest of the non visible galaxy. In theory you can travel to anyone of the stars in the Milky Way, literally billions of trips. I don't think I have the mind set or the equipment to do the new game justice.
One of the few games that held my interest for more than 5 minutes in its day though.
There is a free Public Domain game called oolite which gives you a taste of the original game, but with slightly better graphics.
