Frontier: Elite II

The 350th game on GamesNostalgia is our favourite game ever: Frontier: Elite II. You can download here the PC version, which had a more advanced graphics engine, featuring texture mapping, compared to the Amiga version.

Frontier is a space trading and combat simulation published by GameTek in 1993 and released on the Amiga, Atari ST and DOS.

The previous game of the series, Elite, was released in 1984 but Frontier is much more advanced and many don't consider it a real sequel. Its combination of space combat simulation with realistic physics, open-ended gameplay, space exploration and trade, was unique.

The developer, David Braben, wrote the game in Assembler and he was able to store in a single floppy disk an incredibly huge universe of more than 100 billion star systems, each one with its name and different characteristics. Besides, for the fist time, players could control a starship whose movement was based entirely on Newtonian physics.

Not only Frontier: Elite II was extremely advanced, it was also able to provide an incredibly engaging and realistic feeling. Exploring the universe, discovering new planets, landing on the ones that are inhabitable to buy goods, searching for the best prices, accepting jobs to make money (including bounty hunting), piloting, trying to escape or beat pirates, using the hyperdrive, buying new components, weapons or ships. Frontier was all of this. The space station docking sequence, with classical music playing (a homage to the film 2001: A Space Odyssey), was simply a gem.

Many other games have tried to replicate the mechanics, but very few of them have been able to create the same atmosphere and gameplay. If you haven't done it yet, try it!