PC Elite Information

PC Elite was written by Andy Onions for Real Time Software and released by Firebird in 1987. This was the first Elite game released for PC owners and it ran in a four-colour CGA graphics mode.
The major improvement was the introduction of solid-filled objects, replacing the wire-frame graphics of the 8-bit versions.

This version of Elite was restricted in its choice of display colours by the CGA palette, but it featured the full range of ships and a few secret missions. These included transporting some refugees from a system where the sun was about to go supernova, retrieving a masking device and destroying a Thargoid invasion base.
Provided the PC running the game was powerful enough, Elite ran very quicly and smoothly, highlighting the improvments in computing power in the 3 years since the game was released on the BBC Micro.

As well as the graphics, the in-game systems descriptions were changed in the PC game. The example above sees Zaonce described as being scourged by deadly tree grubs, whereas in the BBC (and other) versions it is simply dismissed as "a tedious place".

The Space Traders Flight Training Manual had to be amended as well. As the wire-frame graphics of other 8-bit editions had been replaced by solid filled shapes, the screenshots and captions in the manual had to be changed accordingly.

The keyboard layout was slightly different to the BBC game, although both machines featured full keyboards. The choice of "Q", "A", "O" & "P" for the directions was not the best, since the speed increase and decrease keys were "<" and ">", which was much more cumbersome than the BBC's layout, using "Space" and "/" for controlling speed.

The PC game was provided on a 5¼" floppy disc, which was standard for PC games in the mid to late 1980s. Perhaps uniquely amongst the Elite games, the disc was not copy-protected and players were encouraged to make back-ups of the game.

Click on the image to the right to view the complete IBM PC Elite retail package. Since the game was released for the PC several years after other versions, the entry card for the Elite competition was not included.

As with the Tatung Einstein and MSX releases, a bespoke box was not produced for the PC. Instead, stickers were placed in three locations on a Spectrum box, identifying it as the PC game. Blue stickers were placed at the top of the front of the box, as well as the left-hand side. On the back of the box, a screenshot of the PC version was stuck over the screenshot from the Spectrum version. A new barcode has also been added to the back of the box.

Since the game featured all 18 ships, a new Ship Identification Chart was included by Firebird, which depicted 16 of those ships, plus 6 other space objects. The Cobra Mk I and Worm were not shown.

Playing Elite on your PC

A complete guide to running the original Elite on your PC can be found here at FrontierAstro