I had heard of Elite. It seemed to achieve legendary status even in the weeks and months after its September 1984 release. My BBC Micro owning friends had boasted to me at school about how brilliant it was and soon after there was the TV advert. But I didn’t have a BBC Micro. I had a ZX Spectrum. And I was very, very jealous. There was no way I would be getting a BBC Micro and, as far as I was aware, there was no way I would ever be able to play Elite.
I fondly remember Crash Magazine. A monthly release that provided previews, reviews, hints, cheats, maps, readers letters all exclusively dedicated to the Spectrum. I would pick it up from WHSmiths or the village newsagent if they had one left and devour it greedily. The following year in October the November issue (#22) appeared on the shelves and one of the reviews was for the ZX Spectrum version of Elite!
I must have read the review at least a couple of dozen times. It promised to contain everything I dreamed of having in a video game. It was in space! It was from the perspective of the pilot and that was important, but there were also options to trade, mine, bounty hunt, the whole thing seemed too good to be true. And not only that, the reviewer stated that it ran really, really well on the Spectrum with a really cool expanding ball of red gas every time a ship was shot down. Christmas was just around the corner, and when my Dad asked me to jot a few things down for my Christmas list, this game was right at the top!
Forward thirty nine years. The Ruby Anniversary of the original release of Elite is upon us. Celebrations are to be had in it’s ancestor, Elite Dangerous. Many pilots would each be taking their Cobra Mk III to Lave Station for fun and shenanigans. It was rumoured there was to be a Thargoid attack on Shinrarta Dezhra, and there was going to be a Buckyball Race!
The race was due to start on 20th September, the exact date of the anniversary. I was hurrying back from Colonia, leaving my Carrier, the Esmerelda Weatherwax there and desperately hoping to make it in time for the celebrations. I managed to get back to Oleskiw City in the Valtys system (where all the ships I left behind are kept) the evening before, swapped from the Waves of Hanajima (my Phantom) to Rabscuttle (my Cobra Mk III) and immediately made my way to the Jameson Crash Site, partly to pay my respects but mostly to gather encoded materials from the now expanded array of comms controls.
On the race start date itself I managed to “book” some time on the family TV (to which my modest gaming rig is connected) in order to fly my Cobra to Lave station around with all the other commanders in their Cobras. I was disappointed to have to leave before I managed to join the main instance but it was still fantastic to see so many other commanders celebrating this marvellous event.
That evening, I scouted out and placed the necessary bookmarks for the race itself. It was certainly going to be a strange one!
Christmas morning, December 25th, 1985.
I’m in the top bunk with my brother sleeping underneath. I half open my eyes and, sure enough, the pillow cases we’d left out on Christmas Eve are now stuffed with presents. I’m excited, but I wait until the sun comes up at least before asking my brother if we should delve in.
He doesn’t need asking twice.
I cannot for the life of me remember anything else I received from “Father Christmas” that year but I do remember, etched into my memory as if it was yesterday, sitting right at the bottom of the pillow case, the shiny new black cardboard casing of the latest smash computer game hit, Elite.
Ignoring everything else, I rushed over with it to my desk where the Spectrum lay in front of the small 14 inch black and white CRT television on which its gaming wonderfulness was displayed. I couldn’t fire it up just yet, though – there was a ritual to be observed!
Place the beautiful, shiny new black cardboard box before you. Carefully turn it over and pour over the underside text and illustrations. Flip it back over, place it back down and carefully ease off the top letting out a barely audible hiss as the air rushes between the sides. Carefully and deferentially lift out each piece of the contents, folded ship identification chart, Elite membership application, carboard keyboard overlay helping to identify the complex keyboard controls (so many keys, so many controls), instruction leaflet, a novella, the lenslock device (the less said about that notorious piece of excrement the better) and the very cool looking black cassette of the game nestled within a cassette shaped recess in the base of the box.
Now most games were packaged in just a basic, plastic cassette box with an instruction inlay, like music cassettes.
Elite was different.
It is entirely appropriate that the Elite Ruby anniversary Buckyball race was sponsored by Cmdr. Psykit. If there ever was a central pillar to the Elite Dangerous gaming community then it’s Psykit. She streams the game (amongst others) regularly on Twitch and is one of the crew of Lave Radio. She is funny, clever, insightful and hugely entertaining. Even though she loves the game dearly she is not one to hold back when Frontier (ED’s developers) get things wrong and regularly gets on her (ICE powered) soapbox. Always a joy to listen to she even helps write and perform some of the hilarious adverts that punctuate the shows (It’s a family of four!). Psykit was also one of the hosts of one of greatest podcasts of all time, Flight Assist, which asked a series of set questions to some of the more prolific commanders in the Elite Dangerous community. It ran for a few seasons and even though it’s a bit dated now (some of the episodes are pre Odyssey) is well worth ploughing through.
I was really looking forward to, and, let’s be honest, slightly dreading, whatever madness Psykit was going to unleash upon us.
I wasn’t disappointed.
Ruby’s Road was based on a certain British science fiction series. I’m not going to say which one, suffice to say it’s the one which holds the world record for the amount of episodes that stretch your suspension of disbelief beyond breaking point. The whole premise of the race is we have to get out of our ships at four of the stops and point at a letter to spell out the word, “RUBY” before it’s time to head back to the start.
I have to say it was one of the most brilliant and infuriating races I have ever taken part in. Very, very, Psykit,
I’m back in my room. The trauma of the Bethlehem Pentecostal Church Christmas Morning Worship is over. Dinner is done, none of the usual seasonal trimmings for me. My mother liked to boil her veg until it was all a uniform grey and the turkey was almost always undercooked. So I was happy with fish fingers and mash, The rest of the day is my own. I switch on the TV, plug in the Spectrum (no on or off switch, just plug in and go) put the Elite cassette in the player, enter the command LOAD “”, press play on the tape recorder,
And wait…
I watch the loading screen slowly draw itself, then dive into the instruction manual for the five minutes or so it takes to load the software, The review didn’t do this game justice! The ships! The extra equipment you can buy! The career paths.! All the different planets you can fly to! And eight galaxies of them! There’s info on some of the ships I will encounter, the types of government running each system and the degree of danger I can expect to find in each. The commodities I can trade in and how the kinds of profits I can expect to make are related to the kind of governments in those systems. There are even deadly aggressive aliens lying in wait to drag unsuspecting commanders out of hyperspace for target practice.
Elite isn’t just different, it’s ground breaking. As in mass hydrogen bomb strike ground breaking.
The game finishes loading. I have read that it’s a good idea to save regularly so I switch the game cassette out for a blank one to save my progress. I have also read that it’s a good idea to practice docking. I fit the keyboard template over the rubber keys and instantly know what to press to launch. Concentric circles rapidly growing larger one by one convince me I’m flying my ship along a tunnel and suddenly I’m out in space. I pull up and over to face the way I came and there is the station. I fly toward it as carefully as I can, trying to match my spin to that of the letterbox now looming worryingly large on my screen. A noise like an explosion erupts from the Spectrum’s beeper. My ship is destroyed.
They weren’t kidding about needing practice! No point buying any goods until I’ve mastered this basic skill.
I begin the game again, relaunch, fly out a bit further, flip around, take a deep breath, and take another slow run at Lave Station spinning slowly before me.
I gazed at Goeschke Horizons spinning gracefully before the Baldy. Why can I not get any of this right? Ok! Call at Ray Dock in the Graill Redd system (check), get out on foot, point at the “R” at the nearest “RAY DOCK” sign (check), get back in, launch. Call at Uhm Pharmacology on a body in the Ross 34 system, point at the “U” (check), Fly to Bailey Dock in LTT 12787, point at the “B” (check), fly to Yang’s Workshop in 35 Leonis, point at the “Y” (check). Fly to the giant hand whisk known as Hidden Field Hacienda, fly through both spinning circles and then as fast as possible through the tunnel, (che…oh, no, wait).
We’re supposed to fly though, nice and gracefully, as in the very helpfully provided diagram (thanks Psykit).
But it felt more like this, having got caught on the spinning blades of hell and spun around and around like I’m in a tumble dryer. I made it out, yes, but, on reviewing the footage for submission, I only passed through each ring once whereas I needed to pass through the first ring again and on to the tunnel.
Oh, and it looks like I had forgotten to buy eight tons of any cargo I wanted mid trip to sell back at the start.
Auuuuuugh!
Sigh! Ok, no time for another run, try again tomorrow morning.
Its been an incredible afternoon. Much of it has passed in a flash and I am well into the evening. I’ve managed to successfully dock about eighty percent of the time but actual combat is a bit more of a problem. So I’ve decided to start from scratch. I know I can buy food at Lave and then sell for a small profit at Leesti, about five light years away. My Cobra has a jump range of seven. I know I can buy a couple of tons of computers there and bring them back to Lave for a small profit.
That will do for a start.
By bedtime I’m exhausted with all this flying but I’ve managed to amass over 500 credits. Enough for a larger cargo bay. I grab the Novella, “The Dark Wheel” and begin to read. It blows my mind! All night long I dream of being Alex Ryder trading and dogfighting across the stars in my bid for revenge.
In real life it was proving to be an eventful week. A close shave with the horse stabled next to mine resulted in me narrowly avoiding getting trampled by the idiot beast. It played on my mind constantly while I raced and I found it really hard to get “in the zone”. So I did what I usually do and flew in a far less Buckyball manner so at least I could get a time on the board,
Ships got in my way, I carefully flew around them, I approached the surface settlements carefully because every time I tried a braking approach I was still too fast for orbital cruise.
I still attempted to gravity break for the stations and Hacienda and this was about fifty percent successful. And even when I made a bit of a mess of it it was still quicker than a conventional approach.
I would usually visit the death whisk of Hacienda first but, because the jump to Ray Dock (for the “R”) was obscured I decided to visit it last. Might save a bit of time. I remembered to buy eight tons of something from Bailey dock and my approach to Yang’s Workshop went without a hitch. But, because of the cargo, and because I had completely forgotten to add a frame shift booster, there was an extra jump back to Hacienda. So much for saving time!
I managed to survive the Death Whisk, although not without a doink or two, and flew through the tunnel at a rather conservative 536m/s or so. I didn’t even try to work out my time, it was way too slow. But I would be on the board. That is, by far, the most important thing with Buckyball.
I consoled myself that evening by listening to Cmdr Beetlejude reading the “The Dark Wheel” by Robert Holdstock on YouTube. The novella included with Original Elite back in 1984. Jude does a fabulous job, there is a sped up movie of her painting a fabulous picture with each of the four instalments and it is all set to some amazing music by Cmdr ToCoSo. It is a marvellous way to end an evening and I heartily recommend it!
I’ve been trading for the rest of the Christmas holidays. Mainly buying food in one station and buying computers or mechanical equipment for the trip back. The first thing I’ve bought is a Cargo Bay Extension and that is just beginning to pay off. I’ve managed to rank up to competent with the few battles I’ve had so far. Whenever I’ve been destroyed or failed at docking I just load up from the cassette where I’ve saved at the last station I launched from. Slowly, I’m figuring out how to manoeuvre my ship to get a decent amount of on target time with my pulse laser. Although it takes quite a long dogfight to bring some vessels down. I’m hoping to be able to afford a beam laser soon. I’ve learned to keep away from feudal or anarchy systems, I always get killed there long before I can get to the safety of the station. But I’ve been quite happily exploring around the local area, sticking to safe systems and making modest profits.
I am becoming totally seduced by this new way of life.
The life of a space trader!
For the next few days I was unable to get in any game time at all. There were lots of things going on, nice things, family things and I was too tired to get up early enough to play. I managed to squeak out a few attempts on the Saturday, a lovely soar through Hacienda and a near 600m/s speed through the tunnel. If I could just get a clear run, this time without shields, and get the extra bonus for having either an almost undamaged hull or an almost destroyed one (doesn’t matter which) plus I’ve installed the FSD booster so there’s one less jump, that should be at least three minutes improvement. Yet try as I might, I just could not get many of my approaches right. Bear in mind that this time I was going full Buckyball on the attempts. I’ve managed to nail each of the approaches in previous runs, just not all in the same run. So I know I can do it!
For the rest of that Saturday I was treated to a day visit to Sovereign Quarter Horses near March in North Cambridgeshire. I’ve never witnessed western horse riding in the flesh and have always been fascinated by it and its totally different approach to English horse riding. I watched some demonstrations, attended an utterly fascinating lecture by one of their vets on horse sex and reproduction, The vet delivered much of it holding a small ultrasound scanner with his arm plunged shoulder deep in a mare’s rectum in order to get pictures of her developing foal. Then it was time for lunch (yep, after that), followed by a talk by the yard owner whilst all the mares with young foals paraded them for us to see around the central arena.
It was overwhelmingly beautiful,
The next morning I’m up early to go for a final bunch of attempts. But, my head is still back with the mares and their foals and a squelchy, poo encrusted veterinarian’s arm. Five attempts, all having to be abandoned at the first stop, apart from the last, where I nail the approach and proceed to totally forget to get out and point at the “R”.
I call it a day before I rage quit. My race is over.
Still, even with just the one successful submission, it’s not all that bad. Rather clever of Psykit to disrupt the age old habit of landing at a station, immediately pressing launch and plotting the next destination while the landing pad is turned around. Just trying to resist the urge to relaunch instead of disembark turned out to be a major challenge.
Next race! Surely next race!
Many thanks to Psykit for fielding a brilliantly tricky race, I wish I had a lot more time to engage with all these wonderful races, and congratulations to all who took part and managed to complete a run. Big congratulations to the top five in each category and a bigley biggedy biggy big congratualtions to Shaye with his incredible time for unlimited and to Alec Turner for winning the Regulation race.
See y’all in the next race! o7
Elite Dangerous RUSH FLEET 
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