Archimedes Elite Information

Archimedes Elite was regarded as a huge leap from the original BBC version when it was released in 1991. Utilising the power of the Acorn Archimedes series of computers, it boasted solid-filled ships and objects, greatly enhanced AI and a greater range of ships. Also, for the first time, the player was no longer the centre of the galaxy. Other ships would frequently have their own battles, the police would deal with pirates and the player could watch it all unfold without getting involved, unless they so wished!

Archimedes Elite continued the tradition of packing lots of extras into the box. As well as the game disc, there was:
The Manual
Poster
Trading Record Pad
Ship Data Cards

Click on the image above to view the complete Acorn Archimedes Elite package.

This shows the Gold Edition of the game, which was offered as an upgrade to the standard edition. The extra items are the Trading Record Pad, Ship Data Cards, Control Key Strip and Colour Poster, plus an order form to purchase an Elite t-shirt or sweatshirt.

For those commanders who could prove their Elite ranking, there was also the option to purchase a personalised special edition sweatshirt.

Acorn User August 1995

Around four years after Archimedes Elite was released, Acorn User gave away the full game on the cover disc of their August 1995 edition. As Elite came boxed with so many extras, including a hefty manual, it was not sufficient for the magazine to offer the game with minimal instructions. The following two pages show that they decided to concentrate on the flying aspect of the game, as this is not given very much attention in the manual.

A follow-up article in the September 1995 edition of Acorn User magazine featureed an in-depth interview with Clive Gringras, one of the co-authors of Archimedes Elite. It's an interesting read, focussing on the various design and coding issues which remained, even though memory capacity and cpu speeds were considerably improved since the days of the BBC micro.

Playing Archimedes Elite on your PC

1. Download an Archimedes emulator such as Arculator
2. Download Archimedes Elite from Ian Bell's Elite page