Elite

Let's rewind to 1984. You've got yourself one of these this year:

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That majestic beast is a BBC Micro, first introduced into the public in 1981, and it was revolutionary. But what would you do on such a machine? Well, you would program. Or, you might buy a game for it. What sort of game? All kinds of games existed. You probably think I mean something like this, right?

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Nah. I don't mean that. I mean nothing other than "Elite"!

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Oh yeah, now that is graphics!
Elite was the pioneer of the Sci-Fi Space Exploration genre, and is widely recognised as such. Despite being on such an early and low-powered system, it was still capable of producing advanced polygon models, such as the one above, as well as pretty good sound effects for its time. It came on a cassette tape, and it's since been released by Acornsoft (Now known as "Frontier Developments") as a free download (It's a pain to get working though, so I can't recommend it.)

Since then, numerous remakes and other games have been made, but there's a lot, so I'll just get straight to the point.

Let's fast-forward to 2014. Take one more look at the previous picture of Elite. Now, let's add a dash of modern-day graphics, online connectivity, and two tablespoons of pure content. What do you end up with?

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That's more like it. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you, Elite: Dangerous.

Elite: Dangerous is a Sci-Fi space game, in which you are given a ship, and simply set on your way. You could become a trader, buying things cheap somewhere, and selling them for a premium price elsewhere. Or, you could become a Pirate. Why buy the cargo when you could just rob someone for free? Of course, you'd have to take care to avoid the authorities, though! (Unless you were in an uninhabited system, of course...). You could also be a Bounty Hunter, putting a stop to Piracy. It's your adventure - No two people will have the same story.

What's the universe like? Well... Go outside and look up to the night sky. See those stars?
...You can go to every single one. That's right, there's a complete 1:1 scale recreation of the Milky Way. You can fly to every single star in existence in real life, with real scientific data as far as we know. Seems far fetched? Well, it's true. There's approximately 400 Billion star systems. Now that is what I call open-world.

Oh, and it's also an MMO. You'll meet other people throughout the course of your adventure. Maybe they'll be nice? Or perhaps a Pirate that would like nothing more than the contents of your Cargo hold... If that's not for you, the game has a Solo mode, in which there are no human players, only AIs. Don't get the wrong idea though, the AIs can be pretty tough. There's also a Group mode, in which only people in your group will appear, if you want to play with friends without other humans getting in your way.

So, any of you played the original Elite? How about Elite: Dangerous? Leave comments below and discuss!