I tried this. I managed to launch myself, and even managed to fire the lasers and change direction (just mashing random keys), but I got blown out of space when the pirates attacked me. I promptly deleted the shortcut to the BBC Micro emulator. A little while later I noticed that there was a PDF copy of the original manual. I browsed through that, learned some interesting things, tried to remember a few of the keys, and gave it another go.
On my second try, I managed to fill my hold with food, program a jump from Lave to Leetsi, and launch. First I tried to see if I could dock. First attempt I got lined up (after about 10 minutes of trying), but was going to slow and the station moved and I was out of position. I turned away and tried again, but a little faster. Shockingly enough, I docked w/o crashing. I launched again and jumped to Leetsi, made it to the station, and successfully docked again! I sold the food for a nice profit and then thought I'd take on some pirates.
I launched, flew away from the station, and eventually got attacked. I could not line up a shot. Even if they were flying straight away from me, fat & dumb, I could not hit them with lasers. I was nearly destroyed several times, but ran away until my energy was restored. Then I tried missiles. I managed to fire 3 missiles at 3 pirates. Two pirates were down, and then the first missile finally hit its target. Lucky for me they kept backing off once they got me nearly destroyed. The NPCs in today's game wouldn't be nearly as nice. If there was a fourth, I never would have survived.
Anyway, w/o a joystick (playing on my laptop) it is a real pain to fly, as they don't have yaw - only pitch & roll. I suppose if I played for hours or weeks, I'd eventually get the feel for it. I quit after my victory, and don't plan to try it again, but it was interesting experiencing the old game.
