Dr. Neil Hair

21 years old. I could cry. It's not often I find myself harking back to a time when computer games were black and white, involved vector graphics - not just vector graphics but desktop saver space graphics !!! and - it must be acknowledged - OUTSTANDING music to dock to. 21 years ago, I was given a game, not just any game but a game of life changing proportions. Elite. Nothing came close before it, and nothing has come close to it since. Just the thought of opening up it's black box with difficulty, I played it non stop for ten hours on my first day over the summer holidays, moving from novice to competent, quickly to deadly. I loaded up on 'NEW!' cherry flavoured coke back in the UK, and destroyed joystick after joystick (with the odd well deserved SLAP for having incorrectly dumped me into the side of a planet without warning). I played religiously each day for months, knowing I would be ultimately rewarded, moving from galaxy 1 to galaxy 6 with no change in 'deadly' stature, and gradually realising, in between showing of Kilroy Silk and Neighbours, that perhaps I just wasn’t good enough. And so, after about a year of playing this wonderful game, I retired - sadly - and with regret. In my time I'd leant every fighter craft model, studied the history of celestial being as we know it in the Elite world, and could fight my way out of intergalactic hyperspace space mishaps with as many anarchists as you could shake a stick at (including the collection of their precious cargo of antiquities). I was in modern terms, 'da bomb'. Yet still this status of Elite eluded me. And so, with this passing of time, the machine I much loved was dumped, and I purchased an Amstrad. A precursor to the modern machine of the early 90's which ran a windows like OS.

I remember, being in the same bedroom at my mothers. Seven years on. An A level student with self induced 'shakes' at the sight of an IBM compatible (those were the terms back then) brand spanking copy, of an updated 'Elite Plus+'. I remember preparing the room, removing my younger brother with some completely unjustifiable form of gratuitous violence, unwrapping a new joystick, and pre-testing my right index and middle finger for action (critical for evasive maneuvers as I recall, such as the deployment of mega bombs or standard missiles) on my new keyboard. I'd gone cold turkey, successfully for several years. But the sight of the sign (the one you see here) was too much for me. I had no idea I was to become a teacher, I had no idea that my time was better spent preparing for research, studying for a Phd, helping national clients excel in their designs of cutlery. No… all I cared about, was intergalactic world domination. And sod your food and water. I was going to become ELITE if it meant staying in my room for ENTIRE MONTHS AT AN END WITH NOTHING!!!!!! And so I progressed. Door closed. Through the ranks on that machine, becoming increasingly happy with my achievements, my accomplishments, from average.. to competent.. to quite handy in awkward situations.. to deadly.. and then.. after a mere 7 hours of non stop gaming… where I began as a notice… the ultimate prize "Elite" status !!!!!!!. You'd probably think that I would be happy at this life changing event. Something I'd long wished for? Well, had I not spend an entire summer playing this bloody game on a different system you would be right. My reality was far different from yours. I felt cheated. I felt regret. And then amazingly I felt a charleton, a Judas, a cheat, someone undeserving of such an accolade… I had surely earned it too quickly, it couldn't be right, a glitch in the programme, someone somewhere was looking favourably on me surely. Surely? Right? And then I realised… There was a very good reason why I upgraded my commodore 64 to a modern IBM compatible system. The glitches in it’s operational software… And then the realization. That way back when, after only a few hours, I had probably been 'Elite' all the while…

Tell me how to live with this… 21 years onwards… please. I was THE best fighter pilot of my generation, I was THE best docker of my time, I was THE best, and I deserve to this day, to be realised for THIS expertise. PhD's? You can keep them. Just give me what I'm worth, that bloody status - couldawouldashoulda?? if only I'd reinstalled that game, if only I'd asked others how long it had taken them, if only I hadn’t wasted so much time earning 4.2 billion credits in the process of intergallactic trade, oh if only. And forgive me for such a public admittance. It is all coming back, in a flood, at the announcement that this game is finally of age. I'm not sure about the game, but I deserve a drink. Champagne none the less… a bottle of vintage 1985. Consumed to the waltz of the Blue Danube playing in the background…

The angle in all of this you ask? Have you ever wondered why such addictive games don’t have advertising built into them? We’re obsessed with realism right? Why not sell space in these games which add to levels of realism whilst earning additional monies for their creators? It’s not rocket science. I was a captive audience for months (some might say years). A second angle, and no doubt the ultimate demise of your professors career ambitions, would be to take advantage of a fleet of pilots who hark back to the times when there really was only space simulation / trading game. Release the latest version people!