Acorn Electron Elite - Acornsoft

The Acorn Electron was one of the initial platforms that Elite was released on by Acornsoft in the autumn of 1984. It featured all the box contents of the BBC version, including the manual, novella and poster, but retailed in the UK at £12.95, which was less than the BBC cassette tape version (£14.95) and the BBC disc version (£17.65). This is presumed to be due to the lesser abilities of the game itself.

Due to memory restrictions and hardware limitations, several features of Elite were absent from this version. These included the rotating disc/lines on the planets, suns and the alien Thargoid ships.

Five types of ship were featured in total, one fewer than the BBC cassette version, which included the Thargoids, and considerably fewer than BBC disc Elite (18 ships).

It also failed to reproduce the split screen trick employed on the BBC version - allowing a four-colour control panel - which meant the entire display was in monochrome.

In its favour, it copes with the remaining elements of Elite quite well and its place in gaming history is assured as one of the first examples of the program that would set new standards in the gaming industry and start a whole new genre.

Loading the game was via cassette tape, as a disc version was never released for the Acorn Electron. This had its own problems due to software piracy, but also the inherent unreliability of loading from tape. As with the BBC cassette tape instructions, it was not pointed out that Commanders should be saved on a separate blank tape, and not on the game tape. If disaster did strike, the game was recorded on both sides of the cassette.

The arrival of Elite heralded a new concept in game presentation. Instead of just the game media and an instruction sheet, Elite came packaged with a hefty manual, a novella based on the game, a ship poster, function key legend and a control summary card.
Click on the image to the left to view the complete Acornsoft Electron Elite package.

Each copy of Acornsoft Elite came with a competition entry form, which was to be completed and posted to them by any Commander with a ranking of 'Competent' or higher.
For each of the six months from September 1984 (the game's release) to March 1985, the Commander judged to have shown the most skill could win £100 of Acornsoft software and an 'Elite' emblem. The six monthly winners would then be entered into the national Elite tournament, to be held in April 1985.
The entry form for the BBC cassette tape version was blue, whereas it was green for the Acorn Electron and brown for the BBC disc version. Along with the other box contents, this was part of Acornsoft's attempts to reduce software piracy, by making the entire package desirable, rather than just the game itself. The security code referred to on the card was displayed automatically by the game, each time the Commander saved their progress.

Superior Software Electron Elite

In 1986, Yorkshire-based Superior Software re-released Elite for the Acorn Electron. It featured revamped box artwork, as seen here, and the box itself was made of plastic, making it much more durable than the cardboard box which Acornsoft used.

However, the box used was a standard size and was not big enough to accommodate most of the items included in the Acornsoft version. Even the manual itself had to be reduced in size - from 150mm x 210mm to 130mm x 194mm - in order to fit in the box!

This smaller manual was labelled as the Second Edition. It was designed to cover not just the Electron version but the BBC cassette and disk versions as well. All the information from the First Edition was still present.

This edition included loading instructions for all three versions, and it also pointed out variations in features. The image to the left, for example, shows which ships are only present in the disc version of the game.

In truth it's a slightly confused publication, since having pointed out which ships only appear in the disc version, it then reproduces ship identification drawings elsewhere in the manual without marking those which don't appear in the cassette tape version.

The items included in the package were reduced to the cassette tape, the manual and a function key strip. There was no longer a copy of the Dark Wheel novella, a ships poster, or a separate ship identification card.
Click on the image to the right to view the complete Superior Software Electron Elite package.

Playing Electron Elite on your PC

1. Download an Electron emulator, such as Elkulator
2. Download the game from Ian Bell's Elite Page