The first game...

... that comes to mind is Frontier: Elite II. If you haven't played it, or even worse, never heard of it, you probably stopped wearing diapers rather recently. This is the space sim that every game producer has tried to surpass since 1993. So far, imho, no one has succeded.

It all started in 1982, when David Braben and Ian Bell started writing a game called Elite. Released in 1984 it became a huge success on as many as 21 platforms! In 1988 David Braben disappeared for five years, writing the sequel.

And what a sequel! When it was released in 1993, I just couldn't wait to get my hands on it. I had been playing Elite and it was cool but when I finally got hold of Frontier: Elite II (Amiga version), it totally blew me away. By that time the game was already two years old.

Unfortunately my Amiga died in the hands of my oldest son. It wasn't his fault, it was the bloody cat that somehow managed to tip it over the edge of his desk. Anyway, that was the end of playing FE2. Or so I thought.

Recently I stumbled upon a website with links to the Elite Homepage. Full of joy I downloaded the shareware version of FE2, installed it and immediately ran into trouble. Playing an old DOS-game on Windows XP isn't all that easy. Enter DOS-Box to save the day.

And I played FE2 almost a whole night. And the next. And the following night.

To be honest, the graphics suck, by today's standards. The music sucks too. But no game has captured so many people for such a long time. I've played many other games in this genre but this game can definitely hold it's own without fancy graphics and 5.1 sound. I don't know what it is about it that makes it so special, but I think the joy of discovering new things all the time has a lot to do with it.

I'm really looking forward to Elite IV, because after the disasterous Frontier: First Encounters, it can only get better.

If you find this game, in original box, hold on to it. In the world of PC-games, Frontier: Elite II, is a true classic. In this world where everything just goes bigger, this game proves that small can be better.