So that's how he did it!

This month sees the 15th anniversary of Elite, the game that imprisoned the nation's youth in their bedrooms - we didn't have Lara back then, you see. To commemorate this momentous occasion, co-author Ian Bell has released the original source code.

"I've lost count over the years of how many people have asked me how it was possible to fit the game in the 20k of program memory available on the original BBC Microcomputer. What awed most seemed to be the eight galaxies with 2,000-odd star systems, each with unique name and description, etc," said Bell.

"I hope that releasing the program sources will satisfy those still curious to discover how we accomplished what we did on a computer with about a thousandth of the power of the modern PC."

And it still hasn't been bettered. You can download the source code from Ian Bell's homepage.