Here is a collection of comments from those, who like you, love playing Elite.
 

If you have a fond memory of, or comment about, Elite please let us and the world know by leaving a comment in our forums or on our Elite Facebook Page - we’ll feature as many as we can on this site! Tell us anything, whether it’s what you did in the game, the impact Elite had on you or even how you came to first start playing Elite - we want to hear it and share it!

----------
 

Me and my Dad used to sit down together taking turns to pilot before we got inevitably dragged away by Mum for our tea. I vaguely remember that peculiar prism device you got with the Spectrum version that was used as an anti piracy measure (or was that on the Atari ST, I dunno I’m getting old and can’t remember stuff so well these days).
Anthony Gliddon
 

I was introduced to Elite by a friend who had a ZX Spectrum. What really caught my imagination was the graphics - 3d! - and the sheer scope of the whole game. Right there at my fingertips in this very small computer was a universe.
Stefan Mars
  

We had Elite in our classroom in the last year of primary school. I remember using "view right" and seeing a parallax-effect starfield for the first time and being utterly mesmerised.
Will Doyle
  

When my beloved, science fiction loving uncle, kindly gave me one of his BBC computers, what seemed like nine hundred years ago, so that I could experience this fangled new space game, my jaw dropped. After waiting for the small dinner plate sized diskette to finish its noisy load, I remember seeing the wire-frame Cobra Mk lll zoom into view.

Load New Commander Y/N?

Elite was the game that made me want to be part of this industry. Countless hours were given to flying around the black space, flooring my ship like a madman for the almost kamikaze rush of docking into the letterbox doorway of the space stations and upgrading my ship into a death machine. As computers were upgraded and replaced, so too was my version of Elite, from BBC through ZX Spectrum right up to PC. From the original version to the comparative bells and whistles of Frontier.

Sure, by today's standards, Elite could be considered a dinosaur, but for some reason it was as absorbing, if not more so than many of the games I have played to date. Good times.
Richard Albon
 

When I was about 10, I remember sitting under a duvet (it was actually a Cobra Mk III cockpit), playing Elite on the BBC Micro with one of my brothers. He was older so he got to be 'pilot' and I was simply 'co-pilot', a mere Chewbacca to his Han Solo. I'm not sure what role I actually played - I probably made commentary on the cockpit displays (which was probably hushed), made navigational suggestions (which were probably ignored), and attempted joystick mutiny (which was probably punished with a dead-leg), but I still remember it as an exciting and realistic space flight experience. This would have been in about 1993 so the BBC Micro was already considered 'retro'.
Michael Jones
 

One of the best feelings was when you had successfully pulled off a risky run into a law-less system. It sometimes felt like one had just ran a gauntlet and that elated feeling of still being alive while being able to offload cargo at a profit. it is just a feeling that is hard to describe, but few games have recreated it for me.
Stefan Mars

As a teenager I spent many fun filled, angst ridden, exuberant, ecstatic , crushed and devastated hours in front of my trusty old SONY HIY BIT MSX which had 64 Kb of RAM compared to the BBC's 32 :P Ahh those were the days indeed. I used to have a log book (Woolworths A4 Pad) which I would fill in keeping track (or attempting to keep track) of prices which fluctuated as you flooded the market with illegal narcotics or food etc.
Paul Kennedy (Dangerous1)
 

I recall there was always that feeling of dread when you got dragged into witch space and you looked out your rear window at the slowly closing Thargoid and its swarm of smaller ships, your finger on the trigger waiting for them to get into weapons range. It wasn’t until you got your first rear mining laser, or later on the beloved military laser that you started to feel confident you would actually survive! Happy days :-)
Anthony Gliddon

I remember Elite being on the school computer (yes computer not computers) in the Computer room it was a BBC Micro, you would have one person playing the game with about 20 kids (and teachers sometimes) watching, giving advice and shouting. Especially when your were trying to dock.
T.j
 

I've got very fond memories playing Frontier with my brother as kids. It was one of the earliest games we played together, and it was the very first game I ever played end-to-end more than once back on our old Atari ST. Those classic dog-fights in space really set it apart from everything else around at the time. It's amazing just how many memories came back to me while I was building this anniversary website!
Tim I. Hughes
 

I remember waiting desperately for the tape version of Elite to load up, sitting patiently watching hex numbers climb, expecting at any moment for it to crash and I'd have to start it all over again.

Being on tape and not knowing how to save game to a floppy my brother and I would have to start the game from scratch every time and we'd play it till our BBC B+ would overheat. Slowly the screen would develop artifacts and then eventually freeze... Away we would go to wait for it to cool down, only to come back a couple of hours later to start the process all over again...
Steve O B Have
 

In time though it would suck you in and you'd be gone for hours. The Lave-Zaonce trade run. The first time you got a drive that allowed you to jump between *galaxies*. The frustration of witchspace. Smuggling slaves and narcotics. The first time you get a mission.
Will Doyle

When Frontier Elite II came out for the PC I was at college. It had been a much anticipated release, and when it finally arrived in the post I took the day off to have a damn good play. I can honestly say that is the only day I’ve ever deliberately skived off from school/college/university or work! I was still playing Frontier right through the remaining years of college and then university on a trusty old 386...
Anthony Gliddon

I played this as a very small child when it first came out. My big brother, the quintessential eighties yuppy-culture child, assumed you had to earn as many credits as possible to reach Elite status and never did. Donning my space/bicycle helmet, h...owever, I obliterated thousands of enemy ships and got there in the end :-) Here's hoping for a Cobra MkIV!
Dennis Low