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Review and Download (if available)

This is a great game! I still get it, (and the rest of the series) out and play them every so often. (I also still have a good pure dos computer available to do it on) I even have an origional disk with the commodore 64 version of elite 1, and the c64 to play it on. This game is also what got me to want to learn how to play the piano, that's how good the music is. And it has a large playlist.
There are available third party patches to fix most of the technical problems with the game. The only one I can remember that can't be patched is that the hardcoded missions only extend for about ten game years. (which would still take more than three and a half RL days non stop at the highest level of time compression, 1000:1, and which can't be held during combat if you want even the barest chance of surviving :tomato: ) But combine that much hardcoded mission time, a very good "random" mission generator, the ability to completely avoid missions, and about 2,000,000,000 yes, two billion, stars systems to explore, all of which are reasonably (to an astronomer) sized, and can take more than 10 minutes to cross if you take the time to check out the sights, three main interstellar governments plus at least one alien group, and you won't be able to see everything that is in the game in any reasonable amount of time. And places that you have visited before are not always the same when you go back to visit again, especially if you are following the hardcoded missions. Also the enemies have almost as good a chance of taking you out as you do of taking them out if you want to fight. (and yes, you do see more massive military action if you take the military path, including missions where you have to help pave the way for a major assault)
And for those who don't want to go to the effort of making this game work right, there is a free java version out there that will work directly from windows. (and it is even listed as valid by the makers of the origional) To find it, you might search for "j2ffe" I think there is a link to it from the jades.org elite site, but I would have to look it up again.
This game is well worth trying, even just to fly around checking out the scenery, though if I remember right, the java version leaves out the intro movie.

Awesome game, I voted for a 5.
I have very fond memories of this game, and the screenshots brought a lot of them back.
For me the game has the following two weaknesses:
-dying
-cheating (I tried this after dying)
both of these totally ruin the game's atmosphere. And that's why I don't play it anymore.

(what? you don't want to die? well maybe, but not End-of-Game deaths, how about just respawn with loss of cargo.)

Yes, I still play this quite a bit, but it can be extremely frustrating until you get a good ship up and running. You'll be dying a lot. One second you're speeding through to the nearest orbital station on time-compression, then next you've been jumped by 4-5 pirates. Even with only 5 MW beam lasers hitting an unshielded hull, you're dead in seconds. Although on the flip side, you really feel you've earned your imperial juggernaught of death when you can finally afford it, and with a few hundred tons worth of shielding not a lot can touch you.

There should be a manual attached (if it's not too big for the site), or maybe just link to HTML manual (see bottom of review).

Outstanding. This small program out-shines anything else in the genre. Even X3 with its photo realistic graphics and DVD full of content pales into insignificance in comparison to this series.

I still play Frontier on my modern PC. Nothing beats being 200 light years from home, skimming gas giants and stars for fuel to explore uncharted systems. Landing on an asteroid to watch the sunrise of a binary system.

This is what your computer was invented for. Download it now. :ok:

:ok: nice game

I think Elite 2 looks better :), is any one doing a review of it ? no, *goes to write a review*

there was a lot wrong with the elite after frontier i believe.

Frontier is just a lovely prg with a very nice intro and some good tunes and the ability to just explore around in a well made universe.

If you just spend some time finding out some safe systems you can make a lotta cash with trading.

It crashed out of Dosbox :x
Thats a first Ive seen a game do that