go here to get Frontier(elite 2):
http://sharoma.com/frontierverse/
First there was Elite
Then there was Frontier(Elite II)
Then there was First Encounters(Elite III) - this game was full of bugs and was taken off market soon after it was released.
In the Elite series you start with a spaceship & 100credits. There is no storyline or objective, you just do what you like.
You can buy vegetables on a farming type world then travel to a industrial world and make a profit. Or better still you can buy narcotics/guns/slaves/WMD and sell them for a huge profit - but you might attract interest of police. Oh and you can't get such items without travelling to a planet with no government - a planet full of trigger happy pirates. You could even become a pirate - blow up an innocent ship and pilage the cargo that survives the explotion. Or you could become a bounty hunter, but you gotta get a good combat rating before anyone takes you serious. Your combat rating starts at Harmless, kill some people (innocent, baddies, police it don't matter just blow 'em up) and your rating will go to mostly harmless. Then, if I remember right, you go to poor, then average(i think), etc etc, all the way to ELITE.
Elite is not a game - it's a way of life.
I heard that Elite IV is in development. When it comes out it's bound to have an on-line game, and me and my mate are looking to create a gang of pirates - we gonna loot, pillage and kill