It was written and developed by David Braben and Ian Bell and was originally published by Acornsoft for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron computers in September 1984.

[5] Another novelty was the inclusion of The Dark Wheel, a novella by Robert Holdstock which gave players insight into the moral and legal codes to which they might aspire.

[9] Elite proved hugely influential, serving as a model for other games including Wing Commander: Privateer,[10] Grand Theft Auto,[11] EVE Online,[12][13][14] Freelancer,[10] the X series[15][16][17] and No Man's Sky.

The money generated by these enterprises allows the player to upgrade their ship with enhancements such as better weapons, increased cargo capacity, an automated docking system, an extra energy bank and more.

Travel between stars is accomplished by hyperspace jumps, and is constrained to those within range of the limited fuel capacity (a maximum of 7 light years) of the ship's hyperdrive.

The planetary layout of the galaxies is different, and many players have discovered trade routes between closely positioned planets with fortuitous economic combinations.

The developers refer to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the original Battlestar Galactica as influences.

Braben also cites the works of Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert L. Forward, Isaac Asimov and Orson Scott Card.

The two projects were sufficiently similar that Braben and Bell compared notes, and after seeing Star Raiders on the Atari 800 they decided to collaborate to produce what eventually became Elite.

They first approached Thorn EMI;[33] the company's rejection letter stated that the game was too complicated and needed to be finishable in 10 minutes with three lives.

This relied on specific OSWORD &7F DFS opcodes in the Intel 8271 floppy-disk controller to directly access the disk, and produce a non-standard sector/track-layout.

Acornsoft packaged Elite in a box larger than its usual releases, complete with a novella by Robert Holdstock called The Dark Wheel, a 64-page Space Trader's Flight Training Manual, reference card and a ship identification poster.

A second novella, Imprint by Andy Redman, was included with the IBM PC release of Elite Plus, but apart from being set in the same universe it is in no way connected to the original story.

[38][44] The story tells of a young starship pilot named Alex Ryder, whose father Jason is killed when their merchant ship is attacked by a notorious pirate.

In trying to understand and avenge his father's death and achieve an "iron ass" (a space-trader's term for a well-armed- and armoured spaceship), Alex encounters the basics of the Elite universe—including combat, hyperdrive and hyperspace and the deadly aliens called Thargoids.

https://elite.bbcelite.com/6502sp/ The great commercial success of the BBC Micro version prompted a bidding war for the rights to publish Elite in other formats,[48] which British Telecom's software arm, Telecomsoft, eventually won.

"[53] This version included the "supernova rescue" and "cloaking device" missions, and refinements to the launch tube and jump drive animations.

According to the lead programmer of the 16 bit Amiga/Atari ST and the MSX conversions Rob Nicholson, he did not have access to the source code because of contractual issues and had to write them "blind".

[28] The Acorn Archimedes version, ArcElite (1991), written by Warren Burch & Clive Gringras and regarded by Stuff magazine as the best conversion of the original game,[55] added intelligent opponents who engage in their own private battles and police who take an active interest in protecting the law.

The game world no longer seems to be centred around the player; freighter fleets with escorts go about their own business, pirate formations patrol lawless systems looking for cargo to loot and mining ships can often be found breaking up asteroids for their mineral content.

[81] Bell estimates that approximately 600,000 copies were eventually sold for all platforms combined,[80] while Frontier Developments' Elite page states that the numbers are around a million units.

[2] Elite's technical breakthroughs reportedly amazed the BBC Micro's developers, with Sophie Wilson calling it "the game that couldn't have been written".

However, many players found gameplay difficult and unfamiliar; the game was so controversial that The Micro User devoted its April 1985 letter column to readers debating it.

[69] John Cook wrote in the December 1984 issue of Micro Adventurer "A masterpiece such as this is difficult to describe within existing parameters" and "By any standards, Elite is an excellent game, certainly in the Top Three this year.

[40] Crash magazine said about the Spectrum version "Elite is one of the most imaginative ever to be designed to run on a home computer" and gave it a score of 92%,[24] while at the same time it was a best-seller in the Gallup charts.

From Pong to Oblivion: The 50 Greatest Video Games of All Time by authors Simon Byron, Ste Curran and David McCarthy.

The editors called it "a classic game that mixes solid 3D space combat with trading to create a universe in which you can spend many a happy half-hour bushwhacking the dastardly Thargoids.

[12][13][14] The developers of Jumpgate Evolution,[99] Battlecruiser 3000AD,[100] Infinity: The Quest for Earth,[101] Space Rangers, Hard Truck: Apocalyptic Wars[102] and Flatspace[103] have likewise all credited Elite as a source of inspiration.

[119] Contrasting with these conversions, around 1999 Christian Pinder developed Elite: The New Kind as a modern PC port of the original BBC Micro version.

[126][127] On 20 October 2013, the Internet Archive started to offer Elite in the ZX Spectrum version for online playing in the browser via MESS emulation.