In September, 1984 Acornsoft published Elite for the BBC Micro, an open-ended space trading and combat game. Later on it was ported to almost every computer system from ZX Spectrum to PC (even on NES was published).
The game's universe contained 8 galaxies, each galaxy is containing 256 planets to explore. You could buy and sell goods, upgrade your ship's armament, become a space pirate or a quiet trader, participate in military missions against the obscure race of Thargoids etc.
Here is Frontier's announcement: http://elite.frontier.co.uk/
Happy Birthday, Elite!

Ahh one of the true classics, the first truly open world (or should I say open universe) game I ever played.
There should be cake in the shape of a Cobra Mk III

Ugh, it saddens me to hear that.
http://www.twinbee.org/hob/play.php?snap=elite
get some education

How can you not know elite? that's like not knowing Adam.
I kept dabling with frontier over the years... even now there's something about it that's appealing... but i never quite cracked it. it's one of those games i've started a dozen times, but never got close to finishing - or actually done much productive at all except potter around. (like daggerfall)
(edit: meant Frontier 2)
PS/ maybe next time I'll try it in a higher resolution: http://www.frontierastro.co.uk/Hires/hiresffe.html

The true beauty of Elite is you could play the game any way you wanted. I still remember the first time I blundered into a Thargoid saucer. I didn't last very long in my little Cobra Mk III

Nowadays I'm playing with Oolite: it's free, continually maintained and using OpenGL.
http://www.oolite.org/

Happy 25th birthday, ya grumpy old codger! And thank you for revolutionizing the genre!

whooba whubbsacalit?

Ooh, never saw that one.
I really regret the fact that I haven't played Elite yet, especially since it's now freeware. I should get on it, I love this genre, even enjoyed Universal Combat.

I used to play the sequel load on my amiga. Great game, great times :)

Used to love elite plus, even if I was crap at it!
Frontier and Frontier 2 were good, but the bugs and space combat used to annoy the hell outta me.
Never got to grips with the more realistic space flight...

I want Elite IV, and I want it to be a single-player game.

Yeah same here. I also want an xbox/ps3 downloadable conversion of elite plus

Oh come on. The 360/PS3 target audience has no stomach for something like Elite.
I mean, I'd like it, and I'm sure you would, but I wager the majority would not care for it. In-depth space sims are about as geek niche as you can get these days.