The Acorn Archimedes conversion of Bell and Braben‘s classic Elite was written by Warren Burch and Clive Gringras and published by Hybrid Technology in 1991.
It is considered by many to be the definitive version of Elite available, although that is both a matter of taste, and also a matter of actually getting the game to run in a RISC OS environment.
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.
Developed by Mr. Micro and published by Firebird in 1988 the Atari ST version of Elite is pretty much identical to the Amiga version – in terms of graphics and gameplay.
The 16-bit versions of Bell and Braben‘s classic space trading game, Elite, are a nice step up from their 8-bit counterparts.
The Amiga and Atari ST versions are faster and more colourful versions of Elite. Both were developed by Mr. Micro and published by Firebird in 1988.
The MSX version of the classic space trading game, Elite, was programmed by Mr. Micro and published by Firebird in 1987.
This is the original MS-DOS CGA version of Elite, written by Andrew Onions of Realtime Games and published by Firebird in 1987.
Not to be confused with the even better Elite Plus, which came later and is a different game entirely.
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.
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.
The ZX Spectrum version of Elite was developed by Torus and published by Firebird in 1985. There were 48K and 128K versions made available and both are excellent.
Elite on the Commodore 64 is slow and flickery (just like the BBC original in fact) but at its core is a fantastic game that refuses to be ruined by the C64‘s limitations.
