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Comment by flohofwoe | Hacker News Reader

One of my fondest memories of Elite2 on the Amiga was to fly to our solar system, manually land on one of the Saturn moons and just sit there and watch Saturn rise over the horizon.

No other space game comes even close to the Elite series for this mix of reality and fiction, and I spent most of the 90's and 2000's to find a worthy Elite successor, but there simply was none.

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Some examples from Frontier: Elite 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fv0Tj-UGOtY&t=440

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fv0Tj-UGOtY&t=346

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc9o_ldmlVs&t=72

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srlJVE50mCI&list=SP9E1E1F7AA...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK-NMyDaPAg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynXwvSqsCek

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZe26yZhCoE

Here from Frontier: First Encounters (Elite 3)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0_WewBEGew

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0_WewBEGew&t=265

Here some Elite: Dangerous

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygTgA_Y-m2Q?t=2m19s

People say EVE is close to it. I have spent two months in EVE awhile ago... even though it's close it's really not on par with Elite, Frontier: Elite 2, hell even Frontier: First Encounters (Elite 3, even though buggy). I wish I could point my finger at what is different about it, but I can't.

edit: now that I think about it, I think visual style of the game has a lot to do with it as well.

EVE is 3rd person roll & dice, point & click RTS style controls, with empire building and almost fully player driven world. It's totally different from Elite.

http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Elite:_Dangerous_FAQ#W...

Mechanics, yes. On the other hand, you still get to trade, fight, take care of your standing with various alliances, explore. So, it's both the same and different. I just never got the same sense of exploration in EVE as I did with Elite(s).

Wormholes, man. Wormholes. It's still not the same, of course - a game where you don't really "fly" your ship, like EVE, is never going to be immersive in the same way an Elite game is - but it's damned addictive in its way.

For people interested in playing Elite 2 & 3, some impressively dedicated fans have disassembled the original executables, and re-engineered them to use DirectX, high resolution models, fix gameplay bugs, etc:

http://www.eliteforever.co.uk/games.html

http://www.frontierastro.co.uk/Hires/hiresffe.html

I recommend the originals as those enhanced versions are either buggy or unfinished.

http://www.eliteforever.co.uk/downloads.html

Also get this JJFFE patch if you're gonna try Frontier: First Encounters, also has a Mac version.

http://spacesimcentral.com/ssc/files/category/154-jjffe/

The BBS talking face videos from the CD-ROM version can be found here

http://ffeartpage.com/util/ffevid.zip

I recommend the originals as those enhanced versions are either buggy or unfinished.

Yes, but they're impressive technical achievements - disassembling a DOS game and completely rewriting its rasteriser and I/O subsystem.

Anyway, even if you don't use the D3D or OpenGL versions then JJFFE is well worth using over the originals; it fixes a lot of horrible physics (and texture) bugs, and adds some very useful things like keybindings for manual control of the lateral thrusters.

That's why I also included JJFFE in there.

There's an open source game inspired by Elite 2 that's coming along nicely: http://pioneerspacesim.net

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