Developed by Imagineer, the Nintendo Entertainment System version of Elite is pretty good – considering that the NES isn’t particularly suited to generating wireframe 3D graphics. Yes, the wireframe 3D is slow (like in all the 8-bit versions of Elite), but not to the point where it makes the game unplayable.
The moving starfield is chunky but effective, and the cockpit graphics are excellent.
The underlying Elite gameplay is all present and correct. Trading goods and fending off pirates being your main occupation – on your way up the reputation league, to that fabled ‘Elite‘ rank.
Elite on the NES received rave reviews in Europe when it was first published, but amazingly the game did not find a North American publisher – the NTSC version went unreleased and is currently available as a download from co-creator Ian Bell‘s personal website.
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.
See also: Elite Plus, and the sequel Frontier: Elite II.
More: Elite on Wikipedia
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