Elite is a space trading video game, written and developed by David Braben and Ian Bell and originally published by Acornsoft for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron computers in 1984. Elite’s open-ended game model, advanced game engine and revolutionary 3D graphics led to it being ported to virtually every contemporary home computer system, and earned it a place as a classic and a genre maker in gaming history. The game’s title derives from one of the player’s goals of raising their combat rating to the exalted heights of “Elite”.
Elite was one of the first home computer games to use wire-frame 3D graphics with hidden line removal. Another novelty was the inclusion of The Dark Wheel, a novella by Robert Holdstock which gave players insight into the moral and legal codes to which they might aspire. The game was followed by the sequels Frontier: Elite II in 1993 and Frontier: First Encounters in 1995, which allowed seamless freeform planetary landings. A third sequel, Elite: Dangerous, began crowdfunding in 2012 and was launched as a pre-beta in 2014.
At Ian Belle site you can freely download and play emulated versions of this game.
I remember playing Elite for hours upon hours on the C64 and latterly the Amiga when I was a child.
Its still in my all time favourite of top 10 games after all these years and I still play it on my Amiga emulator.
The freeware PC remake Oolite is superb as well.
Ian Bell is a genius !!