ELITE

Elite needs no introduction. It was the title that introduced the space-sim genre and cemented it in the minds of eager players worldwide. Like many other classics from the 80s, it was a college project that ran on pure imagination , limited only by the hardware limitations of the day.This space-faring , space-trading marvel that also introduced an open-world concept outside a text-adventure  was a bit too much for a 6-year old with a poor command of English trying to make sense of what he saw on the screen playing it on his C64. 14 years and two sequels later, I revisited the original Elite game  and realised how incredibly important it was. Ships travelling at sublight speeds, alien pirates, space trading, following or disregarding missions altogether, finding trade runs in various star systems and trading -just so many things that were introduced in a single pioneering game.Granted that the layouts do get repetitive, with just a tiny bit of imagination you can explore an open world that takes up less than 400kb. This is a feat in itself, and not even a poor plot or some clunkiness in controlling you spaceship can take away from what the game represents. Oh, did I mention it's really addictive?