Frontier ‘Elite II’

A selection of screenshots from David Braben’s classic 16bit Space trading adventure game elite Frontier ‘Elite II'” which made it’s debut back in 1992.

Frontier’s core gaming may not have been as playable or fun as it’s illustrious, highly successful 8bit predecessor, but it was, in my opinion, a much more immersive experience.

Armed with either a Commodore Amiga, Atari ST or IBM PC Frontier offered you the chance to explore an almost limitless galaxy of Millions of Star Systems. Ok so perhaps only 100 of them were of actual interest but that was still plenty of traveling.

Probably the games most fascinating aspect was it’s Galactic and Local star chart’s, the prior offering a 3d rotatable Grid enabling the player too see not only Star positions, but jump distances and shipping lanes. The map also showed how far above or below the galactic plane a potential destination might be. Cooler still, real star’s were featured up to a 20 light year radius from our own, making it possible for a player to visit Sirius, Ross 154, Alpha Centauri etc.

This attention to realism carried through into gameplay with a focus on actual spacial dynamics. This lead to ship-on-ship ship space battles becoming inertia driven slingshots, which while true to physics wasn’t particularly frantic in the X-Wing / Tie-fighter mould.

Opinion has always been divided over whether Frontier was as good as it’s more famous forerunner. I always think of the original as a 3d space combat sim with the Space exploration bolted on. Elite 2 kinda works in reverse, personally, I’ve always prefered it

Read more about Frontier ‘Elite II’at Wikipedia or visit this excellent Fan site http://www.sharoma.com/frontierverse/