The classic Elite originated on the BBC Micro. David Braben and Ian Bell‘s classic space combat/trading game was first released by Acornsoft in 1984.
Tag Archives: planets
Albion, PC
Blue Byte‘s 1996 PC release, Albion, is a classic science fiction role-playing game.
Star Raiders II, Atari 8-bit
Released by Atari in 1986, Star Raiders II was initially designed as a video game based on the film The Last Starfighter. When that idea was eventually dropped the game was re-modelled into Star Raiders II.
Rescue On Fractalus, Atari 8-bit
The Atari 800 version of Rescue On Fractalus was released in 1984 and was the first version available. It was a critical success and drew quite a lot of attention to Atari 8-bit home computers (jealous Commodore 64 owners had to wait almost a year before they got a conversion).
Codename MAT, ZX Spectrum
Derek Brewster‘s Codename MAT (Mission: Alien Termination) is what I would call a ‘Star Trek’ game, with a liberal ‘borrowing’ of elements from Star Raiders. It was published in 1984 by Micromega.
Braxx Bluff, ZX Spectrum
Braxx Bluff was released by Micromega for the ZX Spectrum in 1984. It was written by Tony Poulter.
It’s a weird game – of space exploration – well, the exploration of a planet and its surface.
Battlecruiser 3000AD, PC
A controversial release from Gametek in 1996, this complex space sim is notorious for having a long and troubled development history.
X-Wing, PC
Still considered to be one of the best Star Wars games of all time, X-Wing is a serious, high-tech, fantasy combat sim – in space obviously – with all the different ships from the famous films in there somewhere, modelled in low-res 3D.
Federation of Free Traders, Atari ST
A space exploration and trading game from 1989 that was meant to rival Elite. And it almost did. Except for a fundamental problem… The problem was: travelling around; jumping from planet to planet was… To put it mildly: sticky.
Starglider 2, Atari ST
Starglider 2 was met with pretty much universal acclaim when it was first released in 1988. And – as a 3D shooter – it broke new ground in a number of different areas.
The King of Grabs 