Oh, Elite you revolutionized the space-trading game genre and brought upon computer gamers 3D gaming of a sort. Then you had two sequels, at which point your creators got in a fight and broke up. Then one of your creators, David Braben, went ahead and said there would be an Elite IV and your fans were happy, but that was in 1998 and the game has thus become vaporware to most. However, you wouldn’t be vaporware if you didn’t rekindle people’s hopes every once in a while.
Braben, while taking a break from whining about used game sales, spoke about Elite 4 at this week’s BAFTA event, A Life in Videogames, and said, “”it would be mad for us not to work on it.” He was referring to Elite 4 there, in case you got confused. However, don’t get your hopes up too high as he followed this up with the fact that it won’t come out until he’s “happy that it’s going to be that different thing.” Ouch, classic vaporware tactic. The old “It’s gotta be perfect and a revolution to gaming” routine. It’s kind of sad to see it used so blatantly.
Still, if an Elite 4 is actually in the works this would be the year to hear about it as the original Elite is celebrating its 25th Anniversary. Braben has been ramping the game up recently, claiming it will be on all platforms and will begin production after The Outsider is completed. Anyway, we can’t be too angry with Frontier as they brought us LostWinds in the meantime.
