Masters of their universe: "Most video games stipulated the experience the player was going to have. They said: you stand here and we'll throw aliens/dragons/humorous frogs at you. Bell and Braben's sequence of inventions amounted to a gradual refusal to do anything of the kind. They were arriving at a game that left what to do and where to go entirely up to the player."

I remember playing Elite for weeks and weeks, for hours at a time. Brilliant. Rarely equalled as a gaming experience, and never surpassed.

(One thing missing from the article - Elite's trading system was clearly heavily influenced by that of the Traveller RPG (1977), which I also played around that time.)

There are a few modern Elitealikes floating around at the moment. X-Tension is one good one, which I played for a good while. Independence War II - Edge of Chaos, which I'm playing at the moment, is even better, if a bit less open ended. I hear good things about Freelancer, too, but I've not tried it. This month's spare cash is going on Christmas presents, so I won't get the chance for a while.

Via little things.