So I’ve been hauling. And hauling. And hauling. And in between that I’ve been ratting. So the PS5 hauling away in the Subdivisions, flying from station to station, looking for the best profits I can find from her huge cargo racks, whilst also keeping my PC account on the galaxy map ready for a client to call for help. It’s been a really, really relaxing experience (interspersed with bouts of excitement when an emergency call comes in to the Fuel Rats’ IRC and I call jumps). It reminded me strongly of playing the original game back in 1984/’85.
I was a young commander back then. Obsessed with space games. There was nothing out there that would give me the escape, the immersion, the belief that I really was flying a spacecraft. Then along came Elite! First released on the BBC Micro it was quickly reprogrammed for other small personal computers. I saw the review in Crash magazine for the spectrum and it received the “Crash Smash” award. It was immediately in my wish list for Xmas!
By today’s standards of course it looks awful. But back then it was the very best a humble 48k ZX Spectrum could push out. On Xmas day I excitedly looked in my pillow case (we had pillow cases rather than stockings) and there it was! It took around five minutes to load up from cassette. It came with a card keyboard overlay that showed you which keys did what, which was amazing because no game had used quite that many controls before. It also came with a novella – The Dark Wheel, and you played the commander featured in the story – a certain Commander John Jameson. A legend in the Elite canon. More about him in a later article. I was hooked immediately of course. It took me a long time to learn how to dock with the spinning Coriolis stations, but once I’d mastered that the whole universe was my oyster. The process of having a massive sandbox type game where you could trade, fight or mine your way to riches to afford more powerful upgrades to your ship as you gradually worked your way to the rank of Elite had never been done before. I was hooked. I was no longer a schoolboy. I was an intergalactic commander, trying to make his own way in a dangerous universe, Of course I spent the vast bulk of the time flying between the systems, looking for the biggest profits.
Long before Elite Dangerous was even a concept I used to dream of what Elite could be as personal computers became more and more advanced. The first I heard of it was on the BBC News programme “Click” where it was showed off to Spencer Kelly by David Braben (one of the programmers of the original Elite) I thought to myself “I MUST have that game.” but my financial circumstances at the time prevented me from investing in a powerful enough PC to run it. A few years ago though that changed. I bought it. Downloaded it. Installed it. Played it.
It was heaven!
It’s taking me a while though, this hauling. But it should only be a couple more weeks of hauling, and mining, and some more material gathering, before I’m ready to buy the next two ships to accompany the next album in Rush’s career. Until then, please enjoy the beginning of a new page featuring my PC ships and a piece on the vocalist and bassist and keyboardist AND bass pedalist (gasp) – the awesome Geddy Lee! The Fuel Rat diaries should be ready next week.
Elite Dangerous RUSH FLEET 