Information on the classic Blue Danube and Trumbles version of Elite
The Commodore 64 version of Elite came out in 1985, and it was a massive hit. The game runs a little slower than on the BBC Micro, but Bell and Braben added log-based multiplication tables to improve the speed of the 3D maths, and what the game lacks in speed, it more than makes up for with its colourful dashboard, sprite-based graphics and sophisticated music.
Indeed, the Commodore 64 version has one of the most iconic Elite features of all: when you engage your docking computer, the C64's fantastic SID sound chip plays a great rendition of The Blue Danube, echoing the famous docking scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's a brilliant homage, but it isn't the only one, as there's also the Trumbles mission, inspired by the Star Trek episode "The Trouble with Tribbles". These cuddly creatures - renamed to Trumbles in Elite for copyright reasons - crawl across the screen using the hardware sprite system built into the VIC-II chip, and the Commodore 64 version is the only one with the full Trumbles experience; the mission is also present in the NES version, but the Trumble sprites aren't.
Interestingly, Bell and Braben built the Commodore 64 version of Elite on a BBC Micro, and the source code is effectively a development of the 6502 Second Processor version. They transmitted the assembled game binaries to a Commodore 64 attached to the BBC Micro's user port, where the game could be played. The Commodore 64 source code is in the exact same format as the Acorn versions, using the assembler built into BBC BASIC. This is also true of the Apple II version, which itself was a development of the Commodore 64 source.
Here are some suggestions for exploring this version of Elite:
- Download a disk image of this version from the downloads page, which you can load into an emulator or real machine.
- Find out how this version works under the hood with over 100 deep dive articles covering every aspect of the game.
- Navigate the codebase using the map of the source code, A-Z index and source code cross-references.
- See the code statistics for this version.
- See comprehensive details of all the different variants of this version.
- Download the source disk from Ian Bell's site as a disk image.
- Build this version from the source code with the accompanying GitHub repository.