Once upon a time...The humble PC was seen as a business tool, rather than a games machine. Back in that dim and distant past, games such as Elite and Starglider were ported from their native platforms in an attempt to encourage the hardnosed wheeling and dealing business fraternity to spend yet more time in front of the CRT. Oh, the hours I lost in front of my Amstrad PC1512 with its mighty TWIN floppy disk drives and black & white monitor...
The publishers, being of moderate intelligence, realised that making the games difficult would harm their efforts to get people to play games on the PC, so they made the developers dumb the games right down, with Elite being a case in point.
From personal experience, not the 'I know a mate of a mate' kind, I know it's possible to get to Elite using nothing but Pulse Lasers in the PC version of the game. The PC version is ridiculously easy, compared to the original BBC version or some of the other ports.
That said, Elite (BBC Model B, Acorn, Spectrum, Amstrad CPC6128, Atari ST, and PC - I got about a bit as a lad) spawned a love affair with the 'buy shit low, sell shit high, kill shit on the way. In SPACE!' genre of game which persists to this day. I'm currently tooling around in X3 Reunion, having a whale of a time.
(The publishers, being of moderate intelligence, realised that making the games difficult would harm their efforts to get people to play games on the PC, so they made the developers dumb the games right down, with Elite being a case in point.
From personal experience, not the 'I know a mate of a mate' kind, I know it's possible to get to Elite using nothing but Pulse Lasers in the PC version of the game. The PC version is ridiculously easy, compared to the original BBC version or some of the other ports.
That said, Elite (BBC Model B, Acorn, Spectrum, Amstrad CPC6128, Atari ST, and PC - I got about a bit as a lad) spawned a love affair with the 'buy shit low, sell shit high, kill shit on the way. In SPACE!' genre of game which persists to this day. I'm currently tooling around in X3 Reunion, having a whale of a time.
flake has nothing against your right leg,
Thu 9 Apr 2009, 11:01,
archived)