Star Trek

UNLICENSED GAME

This game represents an unlicensed use of elements of the Star Trek franchise.

User Summary

Star Trek (more commonly known as Super Star Trek) is a text-based game developed in 1971 by Mike Mayfield (although some later versions incorporated graphics). The game was originally written on an SDS Sigma 7, but was ported to an HP2000C and was part of an HP program library. It was ported to a variety of systems, with various modifications. However, the most well-known version of the game is Super Star Trek, written in BASIC and published in David Ahl's BASIC Computer Games. After the release of BASIC Computer Games, the game was widely copied to home computers in the late '70s. The game has been moderately influential, inspiring amongst others Star Raiders and Star Fleet I: The War Begins.

The game consists of the player, in control of the starship Enterprise, hunting down Klingon ships randomly scattered throughout the galaxy. All the Klingon ships must be eliminated by a certain stardate. The Enterprise has Phasors and Photon Torpedos as weapons, as well as a number of other thematically appropriate capabilities to help achieve this end. The galaxy is composed of an 8x8 grid of quadrants and in addition to Klingon ships contains stars and also friendly starbases, where the Enterprise can be repaired and refueled. Each quadrant is composed of an 8x8 (in most but not all games) set of sectors, in which the Enterprise, Klingon ships, stars, and starbases are represented spatially in relation to each other.