Elite, Amstrad CPC

The Amstrad CPC version of Elite (released in 1986) is a fine program – even though the play window is smaller than those seen in other versions.

I don’t know why developer Torus decided to reduce the size of the play window (more likely to save CPU cycles than for any other reason), although it doesn’t really mar the game itself which is a faithful recreation of the classic BBC Micro original.

Elite on the CPC runs at a reasonable frame rate and the extra colours make a big difference too. The way the screen colour changes depending on the system you’re in is excellent. Dogfights are also better because enemy ships are easier to pick out because they’re often brightly coloured.

It’s also easier to save a custom commander in this version – if you’re loading from disk. In other versions of Elite I found that the ‘save’ feature either didn’t work or crashed the game, which is a bit of a problem.

The Amstrad and ZX Spectrum versions of Elite share quite a few similarities because they were both coded by the same developer. The Amstrad version is slightly better in my opinion, because of the extra colour.

In fact, the Amstrad version of Elite is arguably the best out of all the 8-bit conversions.

Different versions of Elite on The King of Grabs:
BBC Micro (original version), Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, MSX, Apple II, Amiga, Atari ST, PC MS-DOS, NES, and Archimedes.