Added: 4 years ago
From: AwesomeRickyC
Views: 42,946
Sort by time | Sort by thread (beta)

Link to this comment:

Share to:

All Comments (161)

Sign In or Sign Up now to post a comment!
  • dammit... I nostalgia'd!

  • cpu is a little too fast

  • What a classic! i will never forget sepnding hours saving up for my super ship, finally getting it ...then not having enough crew to leave the spaceport, fast forwarding time..bribing people the ,finally taking off only to be attacked by pirates, then in an attempt to spacejump to safety i misjumped to the middle of nowhere with no fuel. I think i cried that day :(

  • top game i played it on Amiga 1200 :P

  • wish they would remake this with"better" graphics (sharper lines, higher resolution, a bit more varied textures)

  • @rjc0234 Have you ever checked out FFED3D? If not, do it. The models are all new, the textures are all new, you can play it in arbitrarily high resolution and (with the right equipment) even in stereoscopy.

  • @DevilMaster

    oh wow. thanks for the pointer. would love to give that a go

  • the game has exactly 522kb on disk .i processed the same intro,at 2.2mb.... mpeg4 is the outgo format...

  • goddamnit this is the pc version. shit is weak.

  • I just found the boxset for this in a charity shop for 3.50. might be worth something in 100 years haha

  • I gave up my A-Levels for this game!! :-)

  • Ah, the memories! This coming up on my old A500 (may she rest in peace) was my very first nerdgasm. :)

  • This game is for me like "star trek TOS"! Best and forever!

  • be prepared for Infinity-The quest for earth... google it

  • Simply the best. Perfect mixture of strategy/exploration/combat. AND open ended to a fault. Modern games can't even think of touching it.

  • I dread to think how many hours I put into this game as a kid. Ahh, the memory of heading down to Riedquat and betting with my sister how many times I'd get attacked before I managed to land... kinda sucked that an Imperial Courier was the biggest ship you ever got attacked by though. I always fancied taking on a Panther in a Cobra Mk. III.

  • @Lemmingology OMG Do the Assassination missions! Go get WinUAE and play the bloody game properly!

  • @Lemmingology

    I pretty certain I squared off against an undershielded Panther Clipper at one point.

    IMP Courier was awsome - who needs to pay a crew 5 credits a week... each! What a rip off.

  • I had this for the Amiga. I played it almost religiously! Absolutely amazing game.

    I would pay just about anything to play an updated version of this. Imagine the gameplay of Frontier with the graphics of Eve Online!

  • If they made elite 4 , kept the gameplay to elite 2 standards, made it an online game it would be absolutely huge ,the world would be unlimited and in my opinion it would rival world of warcraft for subscriber numbers. I have no idea why they haven't made a space sim game that is a worthy successor. They all seem to be about building bases ,and not about flying these wonderful craft. I loved this game.

  • I used to love playing this on my A1200. Then, I upgraded the processor to a 68060 and the game no longer played. )0:}

  • True, it's greatest game ever created. All other "space sim" games sucks. I've searching for some time for any other  elite style space sim with no success :(

  • thats the real version!

  • still the greatest game ever created

  • I hope a new version of this gets made, or pioneer gets fully developed.

  • 16MHz RISC processor, 512kb RAM, 1 floppy..

  • @MarkoKraguljac You must be speaking of an Acorn Archimedes version yes?

  • @blade004

    Mea culpa :)

    I described Commodore Amiga 500 computer but with errors. Processor was working on ~7MHz and was CISC. I was very young when I had it and all this time I falsely thought it to be RISC processor. Frontier among other games had a spirit that we can hardly see today. Settlers 2 anyone? Those were pioneering days, we are currently in interregnum and new pioneering days are ahead, hopefully.

  • EPIC!

  • omg. horrible

  • @schieese This game was amazing when it was released in 1993. The open end gameplay and ludicrous size of the universe (with approx. 100,000,000,000 planets and moons) was never before seen.

  • Wow now this takes me back

  • david braben deserves a prize for the sheer fact he seemed to fit an entire galaxy onto a single 1.44MB floppy, whereas most MS word documents come in at around 2 or 3MB. mental.

    this game was fuckin amazin

  • @gjw000 I think it was a mere 720KB floppy. And yes, words documents are full of shit.

  • @gjw000

    Amiga disks were 880 kb (837 kb formated). But the whole Elite II game was less than 500k. (Don't remember if that was after I had used power packer on it though.) O_o

  • Joy beyond measure

  • Seminal

  • I played this(or tried to) on an Atari ST

    The lag was bad on this intro, I seem to remember

    Great 3D graphics though

  • Very good game, but a bit boring since it was rather easy getting the biggest ship witht he biggest guns. Didn't feel like there were much reward in keep on playing after that.

  • i loved this intro music...this brings me back:-)

  • it was runs very cool on 060 turbocard..

  • @unrealfcy cool in a good gameplay speed, the cpu is not so cool ;)

  • Now this was what a good spacesim should be. Truly a classic. They don't make 'em like they used to :-)

    Never played the Amiga version by the way but it looks about the same as the PC version...

  • So many nights... Best and ever.

  • Those interested in this should take a look at Pioneer, currently in Alpha.

  • This music could be the hym of all sandbox like space simulator!

    With a well coordinated orchestration we could put this into the line of the others, like

    starcraft theme, star wars theme, starship troopers, etc.

  • @tvastar

    Loved the wing commander theme back then, maybe because of the awesome cinematics. And those asteroid fields were outright nasty in cockpit view. o_O

    watch?v=boeWQMHj-V4

  • Thats impressive for a 16-bit computer from the 80's.

  • Damn, I wish they'd get a new one out. I still remember one of my best battles, killing that imperial thing in the intro whilst in my trusty mk 3 cobra!

  • @GIBiochip if you loved playing this like i did(i managed to get the ranking of Dangerous)i strongly recommend getting ether X2 or X3 for pc

  • @mightywibble yeah, i have them both, but they just aren't Elite!

  • @GIBiochip i know its sad, i just jump on dos box and play Elite II every now and again

  • @mightywibble there are many games that have tried to emulate Elite over the years and fell short. Even the remake games, that try to emulated exactly the original titles with the exception of glFrontier... but that said really that is because it is basically an emulation port.

  • The file size of this video is 10 times bigger than the actual game.

  • Comment removed

  • God damn, that thruster effect still looks cool as shit.

  • That music is so great.

  • Timeless game, one of my all time favs.

  • All I ask of a modern ELITE style game is the freedom to land on a lump of rock.

  • I wish i could get this dang emulator running for this game!

  • 2 people are obviously too young to know the power of the amiga!

  • i remember actually using that equipment to harvest gases from gas giants and deploying mining probes. that was hard as shit, because on Amiga, landing on unhabited planet with autopilot equalled in 100% (and like 50% when landing on a space base) sure crash. so it had to be done manually with very little time acceleration. i think i never found any precious metals. but hell it was fun!

  • One thing I never understood: Why all the people were black in this game ?

  • i loved this intro so much... :O

  • @joe9songs I dare say this intro sequence and music is etched into the minds of many older gamers today and if not it damn well should be!

  • Imagine if Crysis looked like this :S

  • @Toasty667

    It would suck, the graphics are the main feature of a lot modern games. This game on the other hand, is still great and unsurpassed. I don't want to know how many time I wasted on this one.

  • i remember getting this the day it came out on the amiga 1200, reading a mag telling you the early games had a flaw & you could get all the money you wanted by trading ships. within 30 minutes i had enough money to last the entire game & started playing with the ship you see in the intro...superb

  • this game kicked ass! How about a new version?

  • @kalithma for the Amiga PPC?

  • I would often find myself staring at this intro, in a trance-like state. It still gets me, to this day. The only other game that has ever done that to me is Super Mario World, where the music in level selection is truly hypnotic. Software houses haven't had a clue how to make games for over a decade, it's a shame because when you are squeezing every bit out of limited resources it forces you to concentrate on playability which lead to innovation. Shaders, pixels blah blah blah.. GAMES dammit

  • My dream is to hear a a proper remix of this tune :D preferably orchestrated

  • @MetallSwede Make it happen :)

  • Oolite is quite intresting. With add-ons ven better.

  • anyone thats played that game will luv it they understand how, only lil book came with a game looked tatty,wat i miss lol:) lets say i was praying my mouse was better equipped than the keyboard somedays,i used to put outta pilot and had craft turret view smile you son a bitch,make sure hes no were near a plant auto scotty i might hadda go down help ya, then i stop the engines in reverse see were wee faggot is now:).wonderful ,we any scoops to collect alloys mate lol

  • very nice, played loads of games but never got to play this. I must say there is something awesome about the old games prior to '94. My thinking is that the game was 50% what you were looking at and 50% your imagination ie imagining how the space craft really looked, how the world filled out from what you couldn't see etc. A game I loooved was SC2. All these old ones made you use your own imagination a bit which I think was the beauty of them :) Just my 2c.

  • only game ive ever had on Every computer format... spectrum, c64, amiga and pc...

  • The ONLY space game I have ever played (inc STO and Eve) that didnt treat you like a retard!!! Proper Speeds and distances relative to bodies in motion themselves! Come on Braben you twat STOP makin roler coaster games and make elite IV!

  • Eve Online is not perfect, but you can't really say it treats people like retards. It's much more complex than Elite was even ignoring the multiplayer element.

  • Elite 4 was rumered to be multiplayer... online. It'd have trading and all the other stuff you'd expect in Elite... but multiplayer.

    If you go back through the archives... The E's in EVE online look quite erm... familiar.

    No. EVE is not Elite 4. But it's everything Braben said would be in Elite 4 and more.

    Which, legal issues aside with Bell is probably why there is no E4, EVE got there first.

  • @hexim101 it was rock solid. Can't count the number of times I materialised from hyperspace and got blown into pieces on arrival without knowing what the hell was going on. Not to mention trying to land somewhere difficult because your automatic pilot broke, and completely messing it up taking weeks longer than I should've. That, and also accidentally firing the laser while landed and having to reload.

  • I've still got my Amiga 1200 under my bed.

    This was a great game. My sister & me made a good crew. She handled the business transactions, I did all the fighting.

    She used to tell me off for getting killed because I ignored her advice to stick to safe planets in order to build up the cash so we could buy some upgrades.

    I liked the way you could, if you REALLY wanted to, take 20 light years in real time to reach the next planet!

  • God yeah brings back the memories.

  • Eve Online sucks balls. Its point and click - you don't get to fly manually. Its like Excel in space!

  • @EvilMuppet1979 it wouldn't be very easy for EVE or any other MMORPG to have manually controlled turrets or proper physics - largely due to lag and the fact that the servers can barely keep up with all the "pointing and clicking" in the first place. I do however believe that Eve has evolved to be a better and more fun game to play than Elite, and it is continuing to evolve.

  • @EvilMuppet1979 It's quite sad how as graphics improve the game play is lessened until it accommodates the neuron bereft :(

    "Excel in space", well put for that piece of shit Eve :) Elite was a great time in gaming history which i don't think we will see again.

  • @blade004 Check out "Infinity: Quest for Earth". Its still in development and will be for quite some time... but its better than never :)

  • Looks familiar, where have i seen this.. Right, all of my teenage years :)

  • I played this for so long I think about 32 yrs game time that is.

  • I tried the game on some simulator but got pwned by the police that wanted me to quote stuff from the manual.

  • Try the sequel (First Encounters). More specifically, try the Direct3D version of it (FFED3D). It has better graphics, the police won't ask you stuff from the manual, it has an actual plot (which you're free to ignore if you want) and you will actually meet the Thargoids, the aliens that were rumored to exist (but did not) in Frontier!

  • @DevilMaster

    I've tried FFED3D, for some reason I just can't figure out the controls. XD

  • @EatBoxSocks

    They are pretty much the same as Frontier. Click on the telephone icon to ask for takeoff authorization or launch from a space station; if you're taking off from the surface of a planet click on one of the rocket flames on the bottom left of the HUD, then press return to accelerate, right shift to decelerate, and move the mouse around while holding the RMB down to turn around.

  • I must've watched this intro a thousand times on the CD32! That, and wasted countless months of my life trading back and forth between the systems. Good times :)

  • Comment removed

  • I'm more of a pilot than a trader. Always have been. Neither X or Eve feed my soul like Elite II&III, no matter how beautiful the graphics or sounds.

  • Well, i think the spiritaul successor is Infinity online where u have the full control of the spaceship (FPS) and u can land on plantes in any point u want.

  • I don't agree. Last time I checked EVE you had very limited flight control. It was just point&click, where in Frontier you can pilot the whole dang ship yourself, manually use your thrusters, slingshot planets and land on them.

  • best game ewer, true sandbox, ewen before sandbox was a term used for games.

    spent so many hours playing this :D

    would love a modern version,

    MS freelancer is similar, but not ewen close.

  • Is there anything similar to this for the PC? just with updated graphics? intergalactic trading using spacships etc?

  • wtf u DO use space ships for trading, and yes updated graphics, glfrontier, though the opengl graphics is simple

  • yeah yeah I know this.. what I'm saying is.. i want something similar to this.. except modern..

  • so do i unfortunately there are no devs working on that, except Frontier working on elite 4, been on and off since year 2000

  • so there's not 1 space related trading game? with pirates and shit? that's just depressing

  • eve online?

  • google the infinity project, thats what your looking for

  • You can actually get this for pc. You just need to use a DOS emulator such as DosBOX and it'll run fine. Had an attack of nostalgia a few months ago and got it running again. Also the pc version has... wait for it... textures!!!

  • Try the X series (X-Beyond The Frontier) or get the GLFrontier for the PC version of this game.

  • The X series don't have newtonian flight.

  • - the X series

    - Freelancer

    - Darkstar One

    - FFED3D (this is a Direct3D version of First Encounters, the sequel to Frontier)

  • gee this is THE game that transormed me from normal teen to an hopeless geek.

    it's the sound of wind on the lost frozen planet you start the game on that got me hooked, and my first "flight" (read crash).

    doesn't make us any younger X'D

  • I haven't seen this in years, I can't even remember the last year in which I played it but it was definitely before 1997. It was a great game for its time but I think its main claim to fame was the music score.

  • My favorite no1 game EVER :) First Encounters was not that good and have many bugs. So Elite Frontier was one and only :) ahhh that music :] I just love this game

  • Frontier on DOS was much better, it had texture mapping :) the Amiga version is still a classic

  • It always made me chuckle the way everything levitated above the surface of the planet by about 20 metres

  • I became interested in astronomy because of this game. That's just how awesome the depth and scale of the mapped galaxy was.

  • I love the Amiga music compared to the PC version. Amiga all the way!

    I remember many happy hours trading narcotics and slaves in the Imperial systems. The only game I know that never encouraged crime, but never tried to be moralistic about it. Truely open ended :)

  • I still have my Amiga CD32 and Frontier :)

    In fact ,I bought the CD32 in 1994 to play Frontier ^^

    This game was fantastic .. aaah my Vipere Defense Craft with Military 3 engine !

  • Talk about immoral... Just bought a bunch of slaves without cargo bay life support? That's okay, the good people of Earth buy animal meat.

  • Didn't they turn into fertilizer?

  • I remember.. to get this frame rate only with 68030 expansion card on A1200.

    Old sweet times guys,

  • Wow! One of my all-time favourite games! Still love it and I have kept my Amiga500.

    However, I've lost the manual so I can't play it due to the frequent "security checks" :(

    Anybody got any idea on where to find another original FE2? It's not like they sell them in the stores anymore *sigh*

  • If you own a PSP with a Custom Firmware there is a port of Frontier Elite II called "Frontier 1337". It runs perfectly if you turn the graphics to low and you don´t need the Manual. You could also download a cracked version of the game with removed copy protection and play it using an Emulator such as WinUAE without much trouble. Same goes for the dos version using Dosbox. If you don´t want to donwload the file there is also a remake or you can simply download the manual as pdf.

  • Great! Didn't know that. I'll look into which will work best for me. Thank's alot mate!

  • You can also download the sequel "First Encounters" for DOS, it's available legally and will run in a DOS emulator like DOSBox, or in a virtual machine like VirtualBox running MS-DOS.

    It's pretty much the same game but with a timeline and a bit of a story in the form of newspapers that update as the game plays out.

  • Interesting. Thanks for the advice :)

  • I use to love this game. I remember once trying to see how far out I could travel (fuel scoop etc). I think I got to 500LightYears before my drives gave in.

  • lol, yep i did the same, I kept hoping I would wonder into an oasis of life or alien plannets

  • How did they manage to fit this onto a single floppy? It's huge!

  • It is not "they", it's he !!!

  • Procedural generation. There's a whole site dedicated to disassemble Frontier: while the technique is complex, it all comes down to pseudo-random number generation. If the "seed" to the pseudo-random number generating function is never changed, the function will always generate the same sequence of numbers, which can be used to describe the number of bodies of a system, their mass, volume, distance from the star... all can be generated in real time without having to store gigabytes of data.

  • Those guys were lightyears ahead of everyone, amazing game now it's just junk eye candy.

    Thanks for making my eyes mist over!

  • Ahh i remember watching this intro every time i played the game

    And when i finally got a panther clipper with large particle accelerator, i was laughing! a gun that took out settlements from space Mwhahaha!

    How I long for a new one

  • Still have my old amiga 1200 at my grans, and I always play on this whenever i can :)

  • Good old stuff. There is something about this that reminds me of Star trek - it´s the same type of "classic" intro music and style.

  • God i remember havin this on a demo disk and i was desperate to get the real game.

  • Awesome.

  • The X-series from Egosoft comes close to the magic of Frontier Elite.

    Try X2 - The Threat

  • kick ass intro

  • Still have an old 1200 in infinitiv tower with a blizzard 060 board. Looking at these videos makes me wanna fire it back up and load the game :-) Ah the good old days :-)

  • back in the days it was the best intro i could even imagine .......

  • IMO, it still is Mate:)

  • Maybe EEVEE Online have the same concept ... but ... isn't the same... this one was over 9 thousand better for me

  • So true. I play EVE at the moment and while it is a great game it does not come close to Frontier when it comes to sense of scale.

  • I still love this game even after 15 years... :'(

  • Awesome game in it's time :)

  • The star map is hanging right behind me :-)) And I've still got my Amiga 1200 here, ready to shove in the diskette and lift off :-)) My alltime favorite!!

  • Oh man I loved this game, I played it almost every day for a year. The game came with a huge star map, I have to see if I've still got it. Thanks for putting this up!

  • To this day I still ask myself,, what's an Imperial Courier doing with a 1MW Beam Laser on it? Surely it'd be going for 20MW version :P

    Still, quite nostalgic :)

  • They wanted to illude you that was the ship you were going to get at the beginning of the game :-D

  • I never remember it running that fast on my Amiga back then.

  • An 68040 Processor and 8MB FastRam and it runs like that. Or WinUAE... :D

  • In my opinion still the greatest space game ever made. Yes its a sequel. And basically the same game. But the extra graphics really made a difference back then. and Elite does things that space games now days only wish they could do

  • I agree

  • THANK YOU!!!

    After ALL THESE YEARS!

    I have missed this song!

  • That could just have been me, writing that. I remember having this Intro on a floppy that i would listen to. Never played the game tho.

  • Awsome!!!

Loading...
Alert icon
0 / 00Unsaved Playlist Return to active list
    1. Your queue is empty. Add videos to your queue using this button:
      or sign in to load a different list.
    Loading...Loading...Saving...
    • Clear all videos from this list
    • Learn more