Elite, Apple II

The Apple II conversion of Elite is arguably the slowest and ugliest of all the versions available. And that – I think – is me being charitable to it…

Ian Bell himself programmed this conversion of Elite in 1986, so its authenticity cannot be called into question and I shouldn’t really mock it.

Although the Apple II version looks pretty rough, it does play like Elite – if you can get the controls to work properly (I struggled). For some reason the key inputs were unresponsive in the emulator I used. They worked some of the time, but not always. Still: I did manage to play the game properly in the end, but after playing every other version of Elite beforehand. So I was kind of saving the best ’til last…

I can’t really imagine playing this on a real Apple II although plenty of people probably did. And – not really knowing any better – they probably loved it. Which goes to show the power of Elite… It’s not about looks, but about depth.

It doesn’t matter what platform you play Elite on, it always gives a good immersive experience if you’re prepared to learn how to play it, and put the hours in. Even on the lowly Apple II. 🙂

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.