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[cantfindit]

Hi all, basically one day in the year 1997 i think (i was around 13/14yo) in the UK, my dad comes home from his start-up biz. He says the newly hired french programmer at the office has installed a game on his sony vaio laptop for us to play. so we check it out. this game was soooo amazing. obviously im trying to identify this game so i can play it again. below are all the clues to help track it down.

1. upon loading the game had the words FRONTIER and maybe ELITE.

2. most of the screen during game play was black and you were navigating a little spaceship.

3. the view was in 2D (not first person shooter). i.e you would be floating around in space as a light greyish coloured rectangular shaped ship maybe 1.5cm in length and 7mm in width approx.

4. the key words i remember were DOCKING and LOOTING.

5. you would float in quite a physically realistic motion towards a large block
of grey something maybe a space centre and you would attach yourself to it maybe and DOCK and maybe LOOT i cant remember exactly.

6. you would encounter some hostile ships similar or bigger maybe and have to fight with them i think but cant remember the weapons, maybe firing red coloured lasers or missiles not sure.

7. there were portals i think which you would find randomly after some time playing and i think u would rush to catch it before it dissapears. you would then be transported to another location, with new places to dock and things to loot. i think i remember some things being coloured a bright ruby red whether it was around the portals or maybe the weapons laser beams etc.

now i know you're all thinking, well if the words FRONTIER and/or ELITE FRONTIER showed up as the game was loading then it must be those games.

believe me ive searched google endlessly looking for screenshots of anything with those words in them and they dont look anything like the game im trying to find.

what is confusing is that they have the same words as their titles and also even have similar gameplay and plot descriptions i.e floating around in space trading and docking and looting etc! so its so confusing and frustrating when u look at every game in every series and nothing looks anything like it.

so either i was playing this game in one of many possible views i.e i played it in the long distance view so i can see the big picture and the space ship exterior from far away, and didnt ever "zoom in" to go into first person shooter like the views im seeing in screenshots of the frontier series.

so anyway the reason why i cant just turn on that old laptop is because within a year that sony vaio laptop back in late 90's just suddenly died. we sent it to sony and they wanted over a thousand to repair it so we said forget it and thus never saw that game again. its in that sony vaio hard drive but i cant get to it! i try and motivate myself to find it online but then give up and forget about it for a couple of years when i dont find anything and then i get all nostalgic and want to find it again when i see anything to do with space in the news or new space games which dont compare to it in my opinion.

hope u can help

[Eagle of Fire]

My main problem with your description is that you are stating around 1996 and 1997, but your graphic description match a game made for the late '80's or early '90s.

Frontier: Elite 2 would of course be my first guess... It was made in 1993 and it used graphics similar to what you described. You specifically said it wasn't though, so...

There is a whole serie of game very similar to Elite which was named X. I think the first game of this serie was X: Beyond the Frontier. But judging by your graphical description and the date it shipped (2000), it cannot be this game either.

Could you describe a little more the gameplay of the game? More details is going to help a lot here.

Edit: I looked around on this site and realized that even very early '90s games had staggering graphics in comparison to what you are describing. Either you played a very old game back then or something is wrong with your description.

[cantfindit]

Originally Posted by Eagle of Fire

My main problem with your description is that you are stating around 1996 and 1997, but your graphic description match a game made for the late '80's or early '90s.

Frontier: Elite 2 would of course be my first guess... It was made in 1993 and it used graphics similar to what you described. You specifically said it wasn't though, so...

There is a whole serie of game very similar to Elite which was named X. I think the first game of this serie was X: Beyond the Frontier. But judging by your graphical description and the date it shipped (2000), it cannot be this game either.

Could you describe a little more the gameplay of the game? More details is going to help a lot here.

Edit: I looked around on this site and realized that even very early '90s games had staggering graphics in comparison to what you are describing. Either you played a very old game back then or something is wrong with your description.

here is an "artists impression" haha of what i remember. its mainly to show the size/proportions and kinds of colours to help jog anyones memory. ofcourse i drew this in less than 2 minutes in ms paint and its got much much more detail on the space station and player spaceship. also im not sure whether it was the portal that had those ruby red colours or it was even on the player ship itself (possibly weapon laser beams maybe not sure)

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...oryversiu.jpg/

[Wicky]

David Braben wrote the first Frontier Elite alone all by himself, because it isn't that complex. So, if your game looked much worse than the original and it also was made much later, then I would guess this "newly hired french programming guy" you mentioned has programmed it.

FYI: you could easily open the laptop with a screwdriver, extract the harddrive and connect it to PC. Or ask a friend who seems to know everything about computers. Or ask Sony to send you only the harddrive back. Well fu(k Sony, it's a 1-minute work and they'll probably ask for 100 dollars, please noooooo - don't sue me arrghHHHH !!!!!!!

[marko river]

Just in case, check Solar Winds series. Even if that's not what you looking for, considering the description, you should definitely try Solar Winds. You will most likely love it

[hunvagy]

http://www.jpproduction.fi/games/sf1sf2/ One of these maybe?

[cantfindit]

Originally Posted by Wicky

David Braben wrote the first Frontier Elite alone all by himself, because it isn't that complex. So, if your game looked much worse than the original and it also was made much later, then I would guess this "newly hired french programming guy" you mentioned has programmed it.

FYI: you could easily open the laptop with a screwdriver, extract the harddrive and connect it to PC. Or ask a friend who seems to know everything about computers. Or ask Sony to send you only the harddrive back. Well fu(k Sony, it's a 1-minute work and they'll probably ask for 100 dollars, please noooooo - don't sue me arrghHHHH !!!!!!!

Hi Wicky, thanks for your post. basically my "artists impression" is very similar in terms of perspective its played in and also the colours and proportions of objects etc. however the game did not look simple at all, it was actually very detailed graphically and had very impressive physics. i asked my dad about those days and he could just about remember also as they were bad memories. he said it could have been later than 97 so now the date range is between 1997-2000. so im going to look again now on old game database sites and see if i find it. unfortunately all game suggestions so far have not matched the game im looking for. it just has to be somewhere because its hard to believe such a good game has just disappeared off the face of the planet with no fan websites or anything. there was one poster on this forum who seems to be in the same situation tracking down a similar game maybe http://www.abandonia.com/vbullet/showthread.php?t=25579 which gives me some hope that im getting closer.

also i had the same idea about unscrewing that old sony vaio actually the same day you suggested it, cant beleive i didnt think of that before. so now i have to find the right hardware in order to connect an old laptop hard drive to a new desktop pc or laptop. i actually had to do this about a year ago for my old laptop which suddenly died so i bought one of these IOMAX USB 2.0 External Caddy/Enclosure For 2.5" Laptop SATA Hard Drive USB Bus Powered. any idea whether there will be something similar but for the old sony vaio laptop hd's? cheers all and thanks for all suggestions and help so far. i hope we can find this damn game and all appreciate the brilliance of it soon.

[The Fifth Horseman]

any idea whether there will be something similar but for the old sony vaio laptop hd's?

Yeah, there are such enclosures. If you can't get one for a 2,5" drive then try getting one for a 3,5" drive and an adapter from 2,5" IDE drives to 3,5" IDE cable... will work the same.