I reckon I'm a dab hand at Dangerous, but Elite is quite stubbornly of its time. Blast pirates! Explore the galaxy! Slam into a small moon! The complete Elite experience, with a fraction of the polygons. You can download the old game for free on the Frontier Store. Sure, it might be missing 35 years of refinements and an entire spectrum of colour, but Elite's 1980s roots still run through its modern counterpart. I hope you've done your homework, pilot, because this ain't the space sim you're used to.Īrguably the first proper open-world game, Elite was setting players loose in a sandbox long before Ubisoft put stabby blokes in white hoodies. To celebrate Elite's 35th birthday, Frontier are giving away David Braben's original 1984 space adventure for free.

These kids don't know how tough those early astronauts had it. As simulationist as Elite Dangerous is, it's still all too simple to hop in a ship, point in a direction, and see some awfully pretty space guff.

If you didn't buy the add-on before October 26, it's now locked off forever, but at least you'll get everything else without having to spend £20/$30.Spacers these days, man. This rather pretty cosmetic reward will be the only feature from Horizons that remains exclusive to players who owned the expansion before it was incorporated into the base game. As a 'huge thank you' to long-time Horizons players, they will receive an exclusive azure ship paint colour, compatible with all ships currently in the game.

If you're one of upwards of a million players who parted with their cash for Horizons, Frontier is keen to ensure that you don't end up feeling aggrieved at the change.

New purchases will include the expansion as part of the base game download. Horizons is no longer available to download separately (at the time of writing, its has disappeared from Steam, though you can still catch a glimpse of its ghost on Google), but Elite Dangerous players who don't own Horizons will receive it automatically as a free update.

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