Elite

Elite is a space trading video game written and developed by David Braben and Ian Bell, and originally released by Acornsoft in September 1984 for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron computers. Elite's open game model and revolutionary 3D graphics led it to be ported to virtually every contemporary home computer system, earning it a place as a classic and genre-maker in gaming history. The game's title derives from one of the player's objectives, which is to increase his combat value to the exalted status of "Elite". Elite was one of the first home computer games to use wireframe 3D graphics with hidden line removal. It added graphical and gameplay aspects to the genre that had been established by the 1974 game Star Trader. Another novelty was the inclusion of The Dark Wheel, a novella by Robert Holdstock, which gave players an insight into the moral and legal rules they could aspire to.