What is Frontier First Encounters?

To put it simply, First Encounters is a 3D space adventure game that has a worldwide leigon of fans.  This game contains an "astronomically correct" universe, in which a player can trade goods, fight merciless pirates, run illegal cargo, or just spend a quiet afternoon mining.  The history of the game is as follows:  There were two predecessors to FFE.  The first was "Elite", which was a huge hit on machines such as the Commodore 64 and the Amiga.  Then came Frontier Elite 2, which was a legend in its own time, but still mostly 2D.  Both were programmed by David Braben, a lesser known computer idol.  Then, back in 1995, Braben got the idea for a third "Elite" game.  First Encounters.  There was only one problem.  The publisher of the game, GameTek, gave Braben a harsh deadline, and he wasn't able to finish it in time.  The game was chock full of bugs; visitor permits didn't work, there was only one military mission available, and when you tried to take it, the game crashed, if you blew up a base on a planet, the entire planet blew up with it, and most noticeable, most of the hand-coded missions didn't work.  Well, to fix all of these bugs, Braben completed a patch that would correct most of them.  Now, FFE is virtually bug-free, and the patch can be downloaded right here at this website.  The game itself is pure genius.  There is an almost infinite number of star systems, great 3D graphics, many package and military missisons, the AI (which is rather mediocre, but still challenging), and a whole lot of ships and equipment, all within about two and a half megabytes of programming.