# Elite (BBC Micro)

11 Hacker News commenters recommended Elite (BBC Micro) and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended as a classic space trading game with procedurally generated galaxies that fit in tiny memory, and whose code people still study.

## Why people recommend it

- Eight procedurally generated galaxies (3 comments): "used procedural generation to create EIGHT entire galaxies, each with 256 star systems, on a floppy disk that was less than 48 kilobytes!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47954278)) "Elite is a canonical example here, with its galaxies being procedurally generated" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47260651)) "managed to have eight galaxies with 256 distinct planets each" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46586269))
- Fits in tiny memory (2 comments): "used procedural generation to create EIGHT entire galaxies, each with 256 star systems, on a floppy disk that was less than 48 kilobytes!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47954278)) "Elite was built to fit into 56 kb of RAM" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47715947))
- Code worth studying (2 comments): "the excellent code archaeology of it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47658734)) "Notably: BBC Basic, Elite" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50292072))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Endless Sky](https://hackerapproved.com/p/endless-sky.md): 6 recommend
- [Escape Velocity](https://hackerapproved.com/p/escape-velocity.md): 6 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Elite (BBC Micro)", https://hackerapproved.com/p/elite/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).