With Earthworm Jim previously and Planetfall up next, you could say we're on a bit of a space-themed streak here. But while those games have lots of other things going on, the Elite series puts the vastness of outer space absolutely front and centre.

When the original Elite came out in 1984 the sheer scale of the game blew everyone away. A whole universe on a floppy disk, who would have thought it possible! It was going to take a lot to amaze the audience again when the sequel was released, a whopping 9 years later. But Frontier: Elite II had kept up with current events. Gone were the wireframe graphics, a new colourful galaxy was there for you to explore. Just request take off permission and fly off, commander!

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") on this episode we have two guests to discuss the game. First of all returning DGC member Brian ("SpaceGameJunkie") who as you can tell by the username is all about space games. See the links below to find his YouTube and Twitch channels as well as the two (!) retro gaming podcasts he hosts. Also joining for the very first time is Tane, for who Frontier is one his favourite games. He also made a cool space visualiser inspired by Frontier that's linked below.

We received no voice messages this time (boo!), but if you want to be part of a future episode you can send one to [email protected]

[ download mp3 ] (144 mins, 164 MB)

Thanks to our producer Pix, who also recorded the audio clips from his retro hardware which you hear in the episode's intro. And thanks to DGC member Console for editing the episode, you're a lifesaver!

Thanks to all who make this show possible, we couldn't do this without you.

* Check out Brian's stuff at spacegamejunkie.com and retrodogfight.com

* teskooano.space is Tane's procedural space viewer

* Ian Bell's website

* Frontier Fundamentals is a fantastic beginner-friendly tutorial series on YouTube by JimPlaysGames

* Great Frontier fan sites: Frontierverse and FrontierAstro

* Some games mentioned on the podcast are: Frontier First Encounters D3D, Oolite and Pioneer

* We mention Starflight, which was discussed on DGC episode 17 and Nomad, which was discussed on DGC episode 40