Ian Bell had already had a game published before Elite. Freefall had come out from Acornsoft the year before, and he wanted to follow it with a 3D simulation game. “It seemed logical to set it in space,” he told Acorn Programs in December 1984. His friend David Braben added the trading, and the two Cambridge undergraduates spent the next year writing the game that Acornsoft launched in September 1984. Bell kept working on Elite for years afterwards, converting it to other machines, and has since made the original version, its manual and much of its source code available from his own website.
Fast facts
- Born: 1962, in England.
- Education: Jesus College, Cambridge: a first in mathematics (1985) and a Diploma in Computer Science (1986).
- Before Elite: a version of Reversi for the BBC Model A (Program Power) and Freefall (Acornsoft, 1983).
- Elite: written with Braben for the BBC Micro; published by Acornsoft, 1984.
- Conversions: the Commodore 64 version with Braben, and the Nintendo Entertainment System version with Braben.
Before Elite
Bell went to Jesus College, Cambridge, to read mathematics. He had owned a Tandy TRS-80 since his last year at school and, apart from one term of “computer lessons” in the lower fourth, taught himself. For machine code he recommended “poring over other people’s listings”. His first professional game was Reversi for the BBC Model A, sold by Program Power: “I do not think it was a great seller,” he said. Then came Freefall for Acornsoft, a game he describes on his website as the first beat-’em-up. “It was rather an effort to finish Freefall,” he said in 1984, “but Elite was sufficiently interesting to keep us hacking away happily.”
Writing Elite
Bell and Braben met at dinner in Hall at Jesus. They wrote Elite in their spare time, in 6502 assembly language, starting with the BBC BASIC assembler. When they disagreed, Bell said, “we would blame the assembler, not each other.” They shared the work and agreed to share the proceeds equally.
Bell has published a table of who wrote what. His side includes the sun and planet drawing, 3D movement and ship rotation, the star dust and explosions, the hyperspace and weapon effects, the graphics routines, the scanner code, enemy tactics, docking, missiles, the secret missions and the Trumbles. Braben’s side includes the ship drawing, the trading and equipment screens, the charts, the sound effects and the galaxy generation. Bell designed most of the ships, among them the Adder, Anaconda, Asp, Boa, Fer-de-Lance, Krait and Moray, and the dodecahedral space station.
Memory was the limit. “If the BBC had more memory, we would probably still be writing it,” Bell told Acorn Programs. “As it is, there is not a single free byte in the program.” Asked whether all the bugs were gone, he said: “We think we have got rid of all of them, but you can never be sure.” Bell said he would save his share of the money. He did not recommend writing games as an easy option: “games will become increasingly difficult to write, with the market becoming more competitive and machines becoming more sophisticated.”
The other versions
Bell and Braben kept the rights to machines other than the BBC Micro and sold them to Firebird. ZZAP!64 reported that they converted Elite to the Commodore 64 themselves while studying for their finals, adding the Trumbles. Braben told Amiga Power in 1995 that the pair also wrote a version for Nintendo. Bell regards that NES version, and the Archimedes one, as the best conversions. On his website he explains that the NES was “the most technically challenging port”. The BBC Micro version splits its screen with a hardware timer, and the NES had no timer that could do the same job. Busy-waiting for the right scanline would waste time the game could not spare, so Bell wrote “self-timing code” that did useful work, such as clearing character maps, while it counted down.
He also began Elite II for the BBC Micro, an attempt to improve the game on the 6502, and abandoned it as the market moved to 16-bit machines.
Frontier and the dispute with Braben
Braben wrote Frontier: Elite II (1993) largely alone. He told Amiga Power that he started it “on my own”; Bell’s account is that Braben developed it “with some assistance from me”, and that he had no part in the 1995 sequel, Frontier: First Encounters. Bell’s website asks readers not to email him about either game.
The two fell out publicly in 1999. Retro Gamer, looking back in 2005, traced the row to royalty disputes over Frontier: First Encounters. Bell wanted Elite to be freely available and offered it on his website; Braben objected, lawsuits were filed, both sides issued press releases, and Bell’s website was closed down following legal action. The site was later restored, and Braben said publicly that he had no problem with the game being made available.
Bell has given his own account of the dispute on his website; what follows is his version, in his words. In his Elite FAQ he wrote that he “stated my opinions on his conduct regarding these titles in an interview for gamesdomain [Aug 1995]”, and that he “subsequently received a letter from Braben’s solicitors objecting to three points in the interview”. The letter, he wrote, “demanded a ‘full apology’ and ‘your proposal for compensation and/or exemplary damages’”. Bell wrote that he “immediately requested Games Domain to add a clarification” to the interview, and that “Despite the clarification, Braben still attempted to sue me for libel (High Court of Justice Queens Bench, Writ 1995 -B No 2536, 24 Nov 1995).” Of 1999, the editorial page of his Elite site says: “On 9/9/99 this site was taken down by the hosting ISP after it was threatened with legal action by David Braben over an alleged breach of distribution rights in the Elite files on the site.”
Later work
Bell says Elite “sold well enough to finance many years of hobbyist programming and study of martial arts”. His own list of later work includes a voxel-based character animation system for Revolution Software, water, fire and smoke effects for the Sony PlayStation for Pterodactyl Software, and a political and economic adventure game for Oxfam about US policy in Central America, which collapsed. His website still offers emulator-ready copies of the published versions of Elite, the flight training manual, Robert Holdstock’s novella The Dark Wheel, and Text Elite, the game’s trading engine rewritten in C. On 20 September 2024, which he marked as the game’s 40th anniversary, he added the sources of the Apple II, Atari, Commodore 64, NES and unfinished SNES versions, and of his unfinished BBC Elite II.
Sources
- Nicole Segre, “Limitless horizons for the Elite team”, Acorn Programs, December 1984: Jesus College, the TRS-80, Reversi for Program Power, Freefall, the origin of Elite, blaming the assembler, the memory and bug quotes, equal shares, advice on programming.
- ZZAP!64 issue 1, May 1985, pp. 14–17: the Commodore 64 conversion by Bell and Braben during their finals, and the Firebird rights.
- Amiga Power issue 48, April 1995: Braben on the Nintendo version with Bell and on starting Frontier “on my own”.
- Retro Gamer issue 15, 2005, abandonware feature: the 1999 dispute over royalties and the free Elite, the closure and restoration of Bell’s website, Braben’s public statement.
- Ian Bell, Ian Bell’s website (web, secondary, one party’s account): “Potted Bio” (birth, education, later work); Elite FAQ, Autumn 1999 (who wrote what, ship designs, assembly language, Frontier and First Encounters); “Published Elites” page; games page (Freefall); “Elite 40th Anniversary”, 20 September 2024 (sources added, the NES port, BBC Elite II). http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/
- Ian Bell, Elite FAQ, Autumn 1999, question 13, “Why don’t you and David Braben settle your differences and write a proper sequel?” (web, secondary, Bell’s own account, quoted as his words): the 1995 Games Domain interview, the letter from Braben’s solicitors, the clarification, the libel writ. http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/faq.htm
- Ian Bell, “Elite Home Page Editorial”, “Legal Status” section (web, secondary, Bell’s own account, quoted as his words): the site taken down on 9 September 1999. http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/editor.htm