David Braben and Ian Bell‘s seminal 80’s classic game Elite is probably my favourite game of all time. There’s been numerous versions of it on computers and consoles such as the C64, Amiga, BBC Spectrum, PC and Acorn Archimedes. There’s even some ports to OpenGL and Gameboy Advance ports of it and a recreation of it called oolite for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux.
Recently a NES version of it popped up on eBay and I was lucky enough to nab it (for $42…). Definitely a nice piece to have in my small NES cart collection, as its apparently quite rare having only been released in PAL territories. According to the UK NES Rarity list, it rates an A-; “These Will Require A Lot Of Looking“.
Would have been nice if it came with a box though, although that would no doubt have jacked up the price even more.
The Fujitsu FM Towns was one of those funky Japanese game systems from the late 80’s/early 90’s which I used to drool over in PC Mags like the NEC PC Engine. Unlike the PC Engine which atleast made it to the States and the UK, the Fujitsu FM Towns never seems to have made it outside of Japan. It was pretty ahead of its time, having alot the things that the MPC1 and MPC2 standards aspired to at the time, like a CD-ROM, game controllers, high color video card (which had a color palette of 16.7 million colours) and sound cards. This were all pretty awesome stuff to be having in a 386 at the time!
