Amstrad CPC Elite Information

Elite was released for the Amstrad CPC brand of machines, in both tape and disc format, by Firebird in 1985. It was a faithful and fairly standard version of the original game.

As with the Spectrum version, memory restrictions meant there were fewer types of ships compared to the BBC disc version, although the dangerous Fer-de-Lance did survive. There werre also some hidden missions for the commander to enjoy.

Click on the image to the left to view the complete Amstrad CPC Elite tape package.

A bug contained in the original release for Amstrad Elite meant that the machine would lock up after an hour or so of playing the game. Firebird rectified this by sending out a free replacement cassette to anyone who requested it.

The original, bugged version had a black label on the cassette (below left). The updated version could be identified by the word "METROPOLITAN" on a white label (below right).

Click on the image to the right to view the complete Amstrad CPC Elite disc package
There appear to be few - if any - differences between the tape and disc versions of Elite for the Amstrad. Due to the extra RAM available compared to the BBC Micro, both the tape and disc versions featured the system descriptions. These were absent from the BBC tape version, due to a lack of memory.

The Amstrad CPC was a popular computer around the world and when Elite was released it was available in a number of languages.
The pictures below show the French disk version with the box contents broadly similar to the English version.

Another popular market for the game was Germany, where the Amstrad CPC was known as the Schneider CPC.
The pictures below show the disk version contents.

To celebrate their 100th edtion, Amstrad Action magazine featured Elite on its cover tape in January 1994. Full instructions for playing the game were included in the magazine itself, for the benefit of the few players who had not encountered the game up to that point.

There was a step-by-step guide for the novice commander and a quick key control guide, plus some interesting suggestions should the game fail to load from the cassette tape. These included adjusting the head alignment of the tape player with a screwdriver or gently tapping the cassette on a hard surface to un-jam the tape spools.

Playing Amstrad Elite on your PC

1. Download an Amstrad emulator, such as WinAPE
2. Download the game from Ian Bell's Elite Page