Comment by junto

I was nine in 1984 and had a BBC B for my 9th birthday earlier that year. Later I modded it with the speech ROM chip docked in the left hand panel open slot.

That boot up noise brings back a lot of memories, as did the 5-10 minutes waiting for the cassette tape to load the games.

I had to wait for my next birthday to get my hands on Elite, spending my time with Meteors and Kingdom and other games that I can no longer remember. Apart from dipping into games like Repton for my siblings, Elite became the game I played religiously, often late in the night without my parents knowledge, and giving up my TV rights to watch the A-Team and Knight Rider (but not Battlestar Galactica) — determined to reach Elite status.

I became extremely proficient at trading slaves, drugs and people, and dogfighting with the police vipers and bounty hunting pirates. I amazed my friends how quickly I could dock, since for newbies it was extremely hard to get the right roll and trajectory until it finally “clicked”. A proficiency in hand-eye coordination in 3D space.

I managed to complete it some three years later. It’s one of the few games I’ve actually ever “finished”, not that you could ever really finish Elite.

This machine was what started me on my path to where I am today. Later I added a Commodore 64 to my collection, and the poor old Beeb was relegated to the attic and finally given to someone else by my parents, but that mottled cream tin box shell with its mechanical keyboard will always have a place in my heart. I also remember it being very heavy, but I was a nine year old child.

I achieved Elite status and nobody can take that away from this nearly 50 year old geek. Sometimes I'm tempted to put that on my CV as a conversation starter.