"Complete brilliance."

Never played or heard of this game? I wouldn't be surprised, but you're missing out on a brilliant piece of gaming history.

Released way back in the 80's on numerous platforms, Elite is one of those perfect types of games that are easy to get into, but have a lot of complexity and can last for a long time. The premise is simple - you're a trader, docked at the home planet Lave, with a (very) basic ship, some basic armaments, some cash and a full tank of fuel. What you do then is really up to you, the game is completely open-ended.

One thing you can do is play the trading game - buy low, sell high, make a profit. There's a wide range of products that you can buy, ranging from food and textiles to more illicit items. What you trade is up to you, but trading in illegal goods is likely to draw suspicion from the police...

Once you've made some cash, you can then upgrade your ship, to make it more powerful, give it better defensive capabilities and so on. Weapons range from improved lasers, missiles, energy bombs, and you can also buy mining lasers in order to blow up asteroids and scoop up the remains to sell, docking computers to facilitate docking at space stations, escape capsules, missile jammers and so on.

But what's the need to upgrade the ship? It's quite simple really. You're not the only person in the universe. It's inhabited with other traders, pirates, police, aliens and so on. All of which you can kill. And it's obviously easier to kill enemies with better equipment. Each kill will improve your combat rating from initially harmless all the way through to Elite. Which will take a long time.

Flying your ship is simple and realistic. You've got a first person perspective view out of the front (but you can also look through other screens at the back and side) of your ship. Left and right roll the ship, up and down make you dive and climb. Combat is simple as well - you've got a crosshair on each screen (of four, front, back, left and right) which you have a laser equipped at. Line it up and fire. This also works to lock on missiles - when a missile is activated, it will lock on to the first thing you target and home in when you fire. Like so many areas of the game, you usually have a choice on what to fight. You can take a "don't shoot unless shot at first" approach, or take on anything that moves. This may be somewhat dangerous if your ship is underequipped and you're taking on pirates or aliens, and somewhat foolhardy if you're attacking innocent traders or police, and could quite quickly see you classified as a fugitive.

These aspects are all well and good, but that's not the end of it. You can easily clock through the first few combat ratings just flying around the few planets near your starting system. But to stay there would be silly - there's eight whole galaxies to explore, and each of them has over 200 different planets with different characteristics. You'll also come across the occasional secret mission as well.

I've only talked about the gameplay so far, such is the level of depth in the game. Presentation wise it's pretty smooth - all the various menus when docked are easy to use, and the flight screen is simple and uncluttered, with wire-frame 3D which was good for the NES and outstanding in the earlier home computer releases. Sounds are functional - there's the usual blasting effects and a bit of Blue Danube now and again.

There's endless replay value in this. There's thousands of planets to explore, loads of things to kill, the game never really ends. Reaching elite status will take a long time. I cannot think of one bad aspect about this game. It is a must play.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 05/31/05