There's a bit of an Elite love-fest going on in the competition comments, as people recall the games they miss the most.
It brought to mind this article by Francis Spufford (an excerpt from this book which ran in the Guardian's weekend magazine about 18 months ago). It covers the background of Elite, its creators David Braben and Ian Bell, and is a bit of a treat for anyone who's interested.
When they began writing their game, eventually to be called Elite, eventually to be a landmark in the history of computer games, what they were thinking of conformed pretty much to the standard video-game formulas of the time, albeit with extra graphical whizz.
They wanted exciting space combat in three dimensions against enemy craft that exhibited some degree of tactical guile. Except that, come to think of it, programming the tactics for an organised, military enemy was probably out of reach. They needed disorganised villains. Who fit the bill in the science-fiction universe? Pirates. OK then: 3D combat against space pirates.
And they also wanted there to be a bit of the game where you had to dock your spaceship with a space station, à la 2001. They thought Stanley Kubrick's docking sequence was deeply cool, and they wanted one of their own.
