Frontier: Elite II

1001 Video Games

Frontier: Elite II appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Development

It took David Braben five years to develop Frontier: Elite II. He started programming it on Commodore 64 but eventually continued the development on Amiga computers instead, as the C64 was not only becoming out of fashion, but had way too many technical limitations for this type of game.

Extras

The PC version had a huge star map and a coupon for a Frontier: Elite II T-shirt.

References

• The docking sequence for spaceships in this game is a near perfect imitation of the one showed in the movie 2001 - A Space Odyssey. The "medium"-sized space station (that is: the "circle" or "ring") is nearly identical to the 2001-Station. You may also listen to the same music (Blue Danube waltz) while docking. In addition to the docking sequence at the space stations. Some of the planet bases are identical to the Moon base in 2001.
• The PC version of contains a reference to the then upcoming Transport Tycoon. Some of the advertising hoardings in space ports announced "Coming soon... Chris Sawyer's Transport Game" ! Why the connection? Well, Chris Sawyer did the PC conversion of Frontier: Elite II back in 1992/3.

Thargoids

Contrary to many peoples beliefs and circulating rumours, the Thargoids (the superior alien race from the first Elite game) and their ships do not exist in Frontier: Elite II, and it is not possible to get the Thargoid ship.

David Braben didn't exactly help killing this rumour when he claimed that there indeed was a Thargoid ship to be found somewhere in the galaxy. No-one has ever found the ship however, and it is believed that this was just a trick by Braben to keep people playing the game.

Frontier: Elite II has been both hacked and modified since it's release by players, programmers and hackers, and even the game program code lacks any trace of a Thargoid race or ship, so it's pretty safe to say that there simply doesn't exist one.

Version differences

• The CD-ROM version of this game was almost identical to the disk version. They just took the disk version (700 KB), decompressed it (to then 900 KB) and pressed it on a CD. Nothing else. No intro cinematics, simply no additional material whatsoever - just the 900 KB .exe file on a whole CD. They even "forgot" to add the contents of the second floppy which included five or so savegames which could help beginners a lot.
• The PC version featured added texture-mapping on some polygons for enhanced graphical details, something which did not exist in the original Amiga version.

Awards

• Amiga Joker
  • Issue 02/1995 – #2 Best Genre Mix in 1994 (Readers' Vote)
• PC Player (Germany)
  • Issue 01/1995 - Least Quantity of Data on a CD-ROM in 1994
• Power Play
  • Issue 02/1994 – Dumbest Copy Protection in 1993
• Retro Gamer
  • October 2004 (Issue #9) – #20 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote)

Information also contributed by Brolin Empey, Imajica, phlux, woods01 and xxxxxxxxxxx