RVG Interviews Elite

Started by zapiy, April 21, 2012, 17:43:23 PM

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zapiy

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Huge thanks to Steve and Elite for agreeing to do this interview. Enjoy.

Carl
How many copies of Space Invasion were actually sold/ made?

Steve / Elite
We'd have to recover the data from some ancient back-up tapes to be able to say but from memory, "several thousand; almost exclusively for the C64 and the German-speaking markets"

AmigaJay
How different is the gaming industry now to how it was when Elite first started in the 80's?

Steve / Elite
How long have we got to answer that one. It's perhaps easier to say what's similar. It's a little glib to say it but great product is still vitally important; as is being first or early to market (whether it's on a new platform or by creating a new product category) and being able to get your message out there. Also, with the advent of mobile the wireless devices the barriers to entering the market have fallen in recent years, back to levels not seen since the mid-80s. The differences are in many cases more obvious; both the size and the geographical and demographic spread of the market for games is much, much greater. Consequently, the number of people engaged in the games business is much larger than when Elite entered it in 1984. At that time, even though this is obviously not true, it felt like we knew or knew of everyone in the business, not just in the UK or even in Europe but also in North America and in Japan. These days I'm not sure we know or know of everyone in the business in Staffordshire!

AmigaJay
What system was the most fun and challenging to work on and why?

Steve / Elite
In the late 1990s we worked with Kumyang Co Ltd to develop and commercialise the racing game Ford Racing for the Korean company 's 2nd-generation coin-operated, motion-base video game simulator. As a closet petrol-head, from a personal point of view, I found that was a real pleasure - even though the products we produced fell somewhat short of meeting our hopes and others' expectations.

AmigaJay
If you could turn back the clock and cancel one of your released games, which one would it be and why?

Steve / Elite
There are few too many of them to name one!

The Laird
Elite were working on several games for the Atari Jaguar including Virtuoso and Powerslide. Virtuoso was known to be finished and has been in the hands of the publishers Telegames for many years now but they claimed they couldn't release it because Elite wanted too much in royalties, is there any truth to this?

Steve / Elite
I'm sure any terms that may have been discussed would have been "commercially reasonably".

The Laird
A prototype of Powerslide for the 3DO turned up recently, do you know what happened to the Jaguar version?

Steve / Elite
It may well be residing on a disc in Elite's office.

DreamcastRIP
In terms of playability your games often were at their best on the Spectrum. Why was this?

Steve / Elite
Unlike some of the contemporary and later systems for which Elite developed and published games, EVERYONE - including our then Managing Director - understood what could and could not be achieved from / on the Spectrum. That made it much easier for management to press the developers to squeeze every last drop of performance out of the device and ensured that, most, games were not released until that had been done. Another factor of course was that many of those games were based on very successful arcade games, for which Elite held exclusive licences.   

zapiy
Will Elite ever release any next gen games?

Steve / Elite
We're working on XBLA! games as I write. Does that count?

zapiy
Do you have any sneak peaks for us of any future releases?

Steve / Elite
For the next few months we'll be refocusing our effort from 'retro' to sports. Can you guess why?

Own: Jaguar, Lynx, Dreamcast, Saturn, MegaDrive, MegaCD, 32X, GameGear, PS3, PS, PSP, Wii, GameCube, N64, DS, GBA, GBC, GBP, GB,  Xbox, 3DO, CDi,  WonderSwan, WonderSwan Colour NGPC

TL

What a great interview!

Very interesting news regarding their "lost" Jaguar games  :o

zapiy

Yeah i may have to dig a little there lol... ;)

Own: Jaguar, Lynx, Dreamcast, Saturn, MegaDrive, MegaCD, 32X, GameGear, PS3, PS, PSP, Wii, GameCube, N64, DS, GBA, GBC, GBP, GB,  Xbox, 3DO, CDi,  WonderSwan, WonderSwan Colour NGPC

TL

Quote from: "zapiy"Yeah i may have to dig a little there lol... ;)

Yes! I would love to speak to them a bit more about this . . . . .

If we could get any of their lost Jag games it would be bloody amazing!!!!

DreamcastRIP

Quote from: "zapiy"The Laird
A prototype of Powerslide for the 3DO turned up recently, do you know what happened to the Jaguar version?

Steve / Elite
It may well be residing on a disc in Elite's office.
Wow! :) :)

Overall a great interview. Particularly enjoyed the reply to the question I asked even if I say so myself! Great work, guys.
Owned: Spectrum Jaguar JaguarCD Lynx ST 7800 Dreamcast Saturn MegaDrive Mega-CD 32X Nomad GameGear PS3 PS PSP WiiU Wii GameCube N64 DS, GBm GBA GBC GBP GB VirtualBoy Xbox Vectrex PCE Duo-R 3DO CDi CD32 GX4000 WonderSwan NGPC Gizmondo ColecoVision iPhone PC Mac

Fin

Great to hear the guys are working on XBLA but shame there are no major games coming up.

Funnily enough i recent repurchased Barbarian & Monty on the Run on tape for the C64. Both are classics

(Although i used to think Monty deserved better artwork in places)

Elite always seemed to be a really focused team, i got the feeling they were slightly rushed to get games out. But with time and the right creative people in place, they would kick arse today.