Elite Plus
The last upgrade to Elite, Elite
Plus is the best PC version of the original games. It provides excellent sounds,
smooth animation, intensive combat, and all the special missions. Inputs for keyboard,
joystick, or mouse are all supported, and can be customized by the player. Elite
Plus is the only game in the series which provides a VGA display mode, although the
255 colors in the MCGA mode is really the only way to play it. The graphics below depict
the main title screen, and docking with a Coriolis station.
The Status Screen provides the player with all the
important information, as well as graphically displaying all the equipment additions
to the ship. The Worldata Link also provides valuable information for navigation,
trading, and combat potential in a system.
The function keys provide all the game controls by
using three display panels. New keys are added as the player installs equipment items in
the game. In the Station Panel, typing the Maps key [F4] would toggle between the
current the F8 - F11 icons with the new set below.
The heart of the flight controls is the 3-D Flight
Grid Scanner. It is a circular horizontal plane with your ship in the middle. The grid is
'fixed' to your ship, so as your ship turns, the objects surrounding your ship will appear
to move around the grid. The green shaded area is what you see in the front viewscreen of
your ship. Objects above you appear as a verticle line above the grid. Objects below will
be a line below the grid. The colors in Elite Plus are different objects, while in
FE2 and FFE they represent the size of a ship in tons.
In Frontier First Encounters the grid was
updated so it would spin left or right. This provides a greater sensation of turning in
the game.
Obtaining the rank of ELITE is a goal that many try
for, but few succeed. Those who make it are rewarded with the following graphic. Note that
there is something missing in this graphic, which will appear when you play the game, and
become ELITE! Note that since the appearance of this website in 1997, no one has ever
e-mailed me with the missing information. Will you be the first?
Best of all, the game has been released by Ian
Bell on his web site. Click
Here to download the game. Elite Plus was designed for 286/386 systems, and
might be too fast on today's computers. Not to worry, just click
Here to download SpeedBrake from Kelpie's Homepage. It is a freeware program
designed to slow the game down to normal speed.
