"Have you played Elite: Dangerous before? No? Well why don't you come over and land this ship for us?" And then there I am, a flight stick in my sweaty right hand, throttle in my left, trying to land my tiny fighter craft inside an enormous, rotating space station while David Brabenthe David Braben, co-creator of the original 1984 classic, Eliteand about a half dozen other people stare intently over my shoulder.

No pressure.

Though it's only in alpha after a successful crowdfunding campaign, Elite: Dangerous is already under a bit of pressure itself. This year is shaping up to be the year that space cockpit games make a triumphant return after more than a decade of being all but put them to rest. I ask whether Braben is at all worried watching the genre he pioneered become so crowded again, what with Elite: Dangerous, Oculus Rift exclusive EVE: Valkyrie, and Star Citizen (from Chris Roberts of Wing Commander fame) all on the PC gaming horizon.

But Braben doesn't see it as a competition, not really. He sees it more like a wealth of options for wannabe spacers. Nobody would ever play Battlefield, Arma 3, and Call of Duty and then mistake them for the same game, after all. Space is, I'm told, infinite. There's certainly room for variation.

Space ships flying by in the Elite: Dangerous Alpha.

You've got EVE: Valkyrie, which as of now is a lightweight and arcade space combat game. Whether it progresses beyond that for the full release is anyone's guess, but it's an accessible and enjoyable shooter. Star Citizen falls on the other end of the spectrumit's for the people who want to have a second life in space. The people who think, "I'm going to work 9-5, then come home, pop in Star Citizen, take on a job as a munitions loader for a much larger space corporation and I'm going to enjoy it, damn it."

Then there's Elite: Dangerous.

Elite is the most traditional of the three games. More simulator than Valkyrie, less "life replacement" than Star Citizen, Elite falls in the same "lonesome space cowboy" category as its predecessors, as well as other classics like FreeSpace 2 and Wing Commander.

No, I don't mean "space cowboy" in the Firefly sense. No boots and holster for you! But Elite: Dangerous is, at its core, about exploration and trade and combat and ship upgrades and space stations and asteroids and pirates and all that. But first and foremost it's about exploration, a "Space: The Final Frontier" of video games.

This rendering of an Elite: Dangerous space station echoes the design of space stations in predecessors Frontier and Frontier: Elite 2.

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Elite: Dangerous impressions: Sequel to the classic Elite already amazes in early form