Frontier: Elite 2
for PC (DOS)

frontier_box.jpg
PhotoTropic:Popular Vote:
6/6
Company: Gametek
Year: 1993
Genre: Simulation
Theme: Business / Flight / Pirates / Police & Gangsters / Science Fiction
Language: English
Licence: Shareware
Views: 149616
Review by PhotoTropic (2001-06-20)

Frontier is the sequel to The classic space trading game “Elite”. Elite offered one of the first truly open ended games. A game of freedom where you could go and do whatever you pleased with no set storyline or levels. However Elite was also pretty dated by 1993, especially the original polygon wire looking BBC version. So Elite II hit the shelves.

Frontier:Elite II offers that same open ended gameplay as Elite but it has more options and improved graphics. Frontier offers you reasonable (even by todays standards) graphical detail (VGA) and the gameplay far and away makes up for the sometimes dull looking planet surfaces.

The gameplay expands on the original Elite. In Frontier you can buy different ships. There are plenty of different and exciting ships available which helps the game gain longevity. It takes quite a while to get 2,000,000 credits for the biggest trading ship. Other developments include improvements in the star systems using a solar system model instead of a model of “Worlds”.

You start with a small, lightly armed fighter and only 100 credits. I started making money by trading back and forth between systems. Each system has needed imports and major exports so you simply reasearch what the exports where you are, so they are cheap to buy, then take them to a system where that product is a major import, and score your profit.

Other routes to money include undertaking military missions. At first you play courrier, taking requistion forms or superconducting cable to other systems, for a payment (as long as you do it in time) but as you complete more missions your military rank improves and better paid and more interesting missions arise for you to undertake. Bombing, spying etc. More routes to money? You can deliver parcels or people to systems, you can go bounty hunting, killing pirates in more dangerous systems, you can trade in more lucrative goods for example Nerve gas or battle weapons (be careful because you can get busted for smuggling.) You can even orbit Gas Giants collecting fuel to use and sell or go mining by breaking up asteroids or using an MB4 mining machine.

There is no real goal to Frontier but your own personal goals. You might decide you want a certain ship, or you want to climb the military ranks. Perhaps the ultimate goal is to gain the “Elite” rating from the pilots league. To do this you must kill a LOT of other ships. As you climb the ranks of the pilots league u can get involved in the very lucrative criminal world of assasinations.

Elite offers a massive galaxy consiting of thousands of systems. This offers endless exploration however unfortunately beyond the more “core” systems many of the others are uninhabited, having said that their are a few reported systems far, far out that are strangely inhabited. A must see for the persitant explorer. There is so much to discover in Frontier and so much to do. If you get tired of trading with you huge Puma Clipper then get a little Eagle fighter and go bounty hunting or assasinating. Frontier offers a great chance to see the galaxy and almost live an alternative life! For fans of the original Elite or any other open ended space game clones e.g X-Beyond the frontier, Hardwar or First Encounters then Frontier is an absolute must-have. I recommend this game. Feel that freedom.

Comments (11) [Post comment]

config.sys:
Originally posted by Andrew Edwards at 13:00 on June 20th, 2001:
This game was absolutely the Holy Grail for me.

True. Best Space Simulation ever. Period.

Moebius:
Oh yeah. I have no other words regarding this game, but.. IT ROCKS. They say a remake is being made, but i still dunno if it will have multiplayer implemented. I think this is what the world needs now, and has been needing for hell of a while: a multiplayer space war/management game!
gernot66:

ever thought about procedural generated and what's the meaning of?

and they aren't ALL the same, it would be unfair to tell so.

in advance i should warn you, i'm a complete addicted frontier-head, there is no game i invested so much time in playing and hacking it.

to the existing clones, orbiter ok, but it's meant as a pure space sim, of course there exist many mods for it.

there are many clones of Elite/Frontier but...

we've (me to) been working actually on a game similar to Frontier, besides it's not a clone, it's completely rewritten.

it's name is Pioneer Space Simulation
it's still alpha so don't expect to much...

responsible for the idea and coding of pioneer are the creators of

JJFFE, a Frontier First Encounters for windows from John Jordan
and
GL-Frontier, a Atari Frontier release for windows from Tom Morton

while i'm only mostly responsible for many of the models in Pioneer.

further one should know there exists a sequel to FE2 FFE (First Encounters) which is spiced up a bit compared to Frontier (released 1995), but in most parts the same, there are some leaks in the game compared to Frontier but it's a good one to try out.

JJFFE has been wrapped by a russian to a more modern 3D game with better gfx, it's called
FFED3D you will find it on elite-games.ru

for info about all the above named space sims check Space Sim Central.

and please support Pioneer with your interest in it!

any questions? call me up i'm willing to help you gernot66@bluewin.ch

---

schon mal an "prozess generiert" gedacht?

zu sagen alle planeten sind gleich wäre unfair und nicht wahr.

vorab sollte ich euch warnen ich bin ein Frontier süchtiger und habe in kein spiel soviel zeit investiert wie für Frontier.

Orbiter ist ok, aber als reine raumflug simulation gedacht, natürlich gibt es zahllose mods die ein ähnliches spielerlebnis wie Frontier bieten.

Elite/Frontier clones gibt es zahllose...

aber nur ein Pioneer Space Sim
welches KEIN clone ist, sondern komplett neu geschrieben wurde.
es ist immer noch im alpha stadium, erwartet nicht zuviel davon...
wir (ich auch) sind stark mit der entwicklung beschäftigt.

verantwortlich für die entwicklung und idee sind

John Jordan - codierte JJFFE, ein windows release von Frontier First Encounters
Tom Morton - verantwortlich für GL-Frontier, ein windows release von Frontier für Atari.

wobei meine wenigkeit "nur" für viele der modelle in Pioneer verantwortlich ist.

zu bemerken wäre noch...

FFE ist eine fortführung von Frontier mit einigen extras aber auch einigen fehlern mehr.

es gibt eine modernisierte version von JJFFE eines russischen entwicklers, der name ist
FFED3D und ist auf elite-games.ru beheimatet.

für infos über alle hier genannten spiele geht auf
Space Sim Central (forum in englisch).

bitte unterstützt uns bei Pioneer, sei es auch nur mit eurem interesse daran.

irgendwelche fragen? schick ein mail an gernot66@bluewin.ch

---

links

Frontier.dev and Frontier Forums (home of Frontier)
Pioneer Space Sim (Tom Morton's latest creation)
JJFFE (John Jordan's Frontier First Encounters for windows)
GLFFE (a open GL wrapping for JJFFE)
GL-Frontier (Tom Morton's Frontier wrapping for windows, open-GL to)
FFED3D (a russian wrapper for JJFFE with more recent 3D GFX)

recommended
FrontierAstro (Steve's Elite/Frontier site, all you liked to know ever about frontier)
Space Sim Central (forum for all kinds of space related games)

---

perhaps you like to know how to get a galaxy on a DD Floppy?

http://www.jongware.com/index.html

---

a few screen shots

JJFFE (GLFFE)
Image

FFED3D
Image

Pioneer Space Sim
Image

like to watch it all on youtube?
http://www.youtube.com/user/bonglee66?feature=mhsn

---

apropos Frontier

Frontier und Frontier First Encounters gibt es auch in deutsch
die beste adresse hierfür ist
http://www.sharoma.com/frontierverse/

in eigener sache,
beide website & blog sind noch im aufbau, zeit bleibt mir wenig dazu, trotzdem

http://pioneer-space-ships.blogspot.com/
und
http://pioneer-universum.web.officelive.com/default.aspx

Mr Creosote:
Then maybe you can explain the point of having millions of planets if they're all the same? ;)
Elwood:
Waaaah! The greatest game of all time rated 5/6?! This cannot be! This is probably the game with the most freedom. If you're just a bit into science fiction this is the thing - command your own space ship. Yeeha!
A MUST!:

This game is a must. It all started here and has never really been surpassed gameplay wise.

Use DosBox to play on modern machines....google is your friend.

Jon:

Well david these older PC games were designed for the DOS operating system.Frontier Elite 2 works great on a 486 with DOS 6.2.
Orbiter is a awesome newer FREE space simulator which can be found at http://www.orbitersim.com

david:
why does it not work on a pc?
dave:
hey dude you can slow down your pc with a program called moslo it TEMPORERILY slows your cumputer down while the game is playing , this has helped me play loads of golden oldies
Andrew Edwards:
This game was absolutely the Holy Grail for me.Other space sims just pretend to be like it. Alot of them aspire to it.I have it in my collection but can't play it because my computer is too fast.Now I am resigned to just looking at the box and dreaming of what once was.Bring on Elite 4 and don't let use down.
[Reply]

Quiz