Retro Remakes: 25 years of Elite
Elite's a name that for most Americans hangs around the murky outskirt periphery of game history, having grown up and around platforms that didn't dominate the States in the same way they did Europe (something its ill-fated NES release may have changed) -- but it's a game that most know was foundational for the industry, even if it wasn't an essential part of their own youth.
Developer Frontier (now behind WiiWare classic LostWinds and upcoming console thriller The Outsider) is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the game's release this week with a blowout series of videos and fan-interviews over the next few days, including the one above, with creator David Braben stepping you its history through the past two+ decades, giving you a better sense of what made it special.
And, of course, of special relevance to this week's theme: there probably hasn't been a single interview Braben's given in the past decade that hasn't asked for a status update on the possibility of a new Elite (I even slipped one in myself a few years back), the latest being over at gi.biz, where he admits, quite rightly, that "it would be mad for us not to work on it".
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echolocate chocolate
#1 – 1:20 PM September 21, 2009
"Creator David Braben"?? It was co-created by Ian Bell, who deserves at least as much credit for the game. It's sad to see him being gradually written out of Elite's history.
Rob Beschizza
#2 – 5:35 PM September 21, 2009
Mr. Bell's lost in witch space, perhaps?
muteboy
#3 – 11:30 AM September 22, 2009
Big old legal battle back in the day. Ian Bell's site has loads of great info, including the text of the novella that came with it, and links to remakes.
http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/index.htm
Ultan
#4 – 12:05 PM September 23, 2009
Ian Bell's site is awesome. The "Maths for (Games) Programmers" part of the site is one of the best resources for learning to work with Geometric Algebra,(GA) that is real-valued Clifford Algebra which allows a common mathematical "dialect" for for all areas of physics. GA is particularly good for working with rotations in any dimension.
Unfortunately modern browsers tend to munge the math fonts he used, so some effort may be required to view his work. It is worth the effort for anyone interested in games programming, applied mathematics or physics.
Ian Bell's "Maths for (Games) Programmers":
http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/maths/index.htm