star trek 1971 game download

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Star Trek 1971 Text Game

• Download source - 41.11 KB

A Bit of History

Two years after the original series was canceled in 1969, high school senior Mike Mayfield was busy keeping the Star Trek universe alive by feeding punched paper tape into a Sigma 7 in an effort to bring the crew of the Enterprise and the Klingon Empire to life on a 10 character-per-second teletype terminal. Soon after Mike ported his game to HP BASIC, it entered the public domain. From there, early computer enthusiasts enhanced and rewrote the game for every flavor of mini and microcomputer BASIC imaginable and beyond.

I remember encountering versions of the game back in the early 80s when I was a little kid trying to learn BASIC on my IBM PCjr. Back then, computer books and magazines distributed programs in printed form. Meaning, you had to type them in to play the games. It was a pain in the ass, but the process encouraged you to tinker. It motivated you to learn to code and to tweak or even improve the programs you were entering in.

Every BASIC game book that I picked up contained some version of the Star Trek game. I recall loading it up a few times, but each time I ended up staring at the screen in utter confusion. "How the heck is this Star Trek?" I remember thinking. I couldn’t figure out how to play it.

By the time I entered high school, I had graduated from BASIC and moved on to bigger and better things like C and C++. But, on occasion, I often wondered about the Star Trek text game. What made it so popular? After learning about the history that I touched upon above, I decided to dig it up and take a second look.

After a bit of web surfing, I came across Mike Mayfield’s original port to HP BASIC. Here’s a snippet of the code:

Ah, good old line-numbered BASIC. It’s all coming back to me now. Those line numbers were there to provide targets for GOTO and GOSUB statements. But, line numbers made editing a tad difficult. It was convention to enter in line numbers that were multiples of 10. That way, as you developed the program, you could go back and insert up to 9 additional statements in between existing lines without reworking all the GOTO/GOSUB references. If you needed to insert more than 9 lines, I remember a special feature in the BASIC editor on my PCjr. It would append a zero to all line numbers and all line number references throughout the program. Meaning, you could now insert up to 99 lines. Couldn’t they just renumber the program in multiples of 10? Nah. The PCjr wasn’t powerful enough for that.

If you’re wondering about “Centerline Engineering,” it was an imaginary company that Mike Mayfield coined to give his BASIC projects a level of prominence to those reading the remarks section.

With code in hand, I really wanted to play the game. I’m sure that there are HP BASIC interpreters out there for modern machines, but what fun would that be. Before I played it, I wanted do my own port. This game was born in the hobbyist era. It was made to be reinterpreted and enhanced as it traded handed. I wanted to bring back part of those long-lost magical days of type-in programs.

My first impression of the code was "what’s with all the single letter variable names?" First, I thought it was a limitation of HP BASIC, but then I noticed the occasional 2-letter names. I guess 2 is better than 1. Everything is also in caps. Take a look at this line:

That line increments T. But, due to the caps, I feel like the code is screaming at me. ASIGN THE SUM OF T AND 1 BACK TO T DAMN IT! Also, I’m so used to writing t++ or t += x that I forgot about the expanded notation. In fact, entering 7 th grade having mastered BASIC, I found myself really confused when my math teacher introduced us to solving simultaneous equations. For instance, find the value of X in this equation:

That was the first time I was introduced to the concept of operator overloading. The equals-sign can mean variable assignment or numerical equivalence depending on the context.

Here’s a cool block of code that I noticed:

These are not executable statements. They’re string s that can be referenced in PRINT commands. The unquoted symbols get substituted with values of variables. It’s conceptually similar to C-style printf() format placeholders. I didn’t realize that BASIC offered such a rich numerical formatting notation.

As I continued to examine the source, I found some statements that didn’t make sense. For instance, even though you don’t have to declare variables before you use them, you still need to specify the dimensions of arrays. I came across some arrays that were never allocated as such. Ultimately, I decided to seek out a better basis for my port.

After a bit of Googling, I found a cleaned up version that maintained the majority of Mike Mayfield’s code. Some of it was reworked, probably to enable it to run on modern versions of BASIC. For instance, those cool IMAGE statements were dropped and replaced with sets of simpler PRINT commands. The variable names appear virtually identical, but at least they are all accounted for in this version.

Porting the Game

Next, I had to decide what language to port it to. Staring at that BASIC code reminded me that C# brought goto back into the mainstream. Would it be possible to do an exact line-by-line port from BASIC to C#? Apparently so... and the result is some of the sickest code I’ve ever keyed into a computer. Want a comparison? Here’s a segment of BASIC code:

And the C# version:

To simulate line numbers, each line starts with a label consisting of an underscore followed by a number. That works fine for GOTO , but what about GOSUB ? Examine line 2992. Subroutines were replaced with methods. That almost worked. In BASIC, you’re not forced to RETURN from subroutines. You can leave them via GOTO . That was used only in the case that the player is destroyed to send them back to the beginning of the program to start over. I replaced that GOTO with a return statement that passes a flag back to the caller. The caller inspects the flag and jumps back to the program start if need be. I also discovered that at one point, there is a GOTO that jumps into a FOR loop. C# won’t let you jump to a label in a sub-block of code. I transformed the FOR loop into a GOTO loop to make C# happy.

All the variables in the BASIC program, including the arrays, are real number type. However, in BASIC, an array and a scalar can share the same name; the interpreter is able to sort it all out. But, C# is less kind. To solve the problem, I prefixed array names with underscores. Also, arrays in BASIC are indexed from 1 instead of 0 . To compensate, I increased the length of all arrays by 1 . Index 0 is never used.

When I started testing my port, I noticed some string formatting problems. Examine the following BASIC line:

That means: Print 41 spaces followed by left-parenthesis. That was easy to translate, but the intension was to push the left-parenthesis onto the next line by letting it wrap around the console. I cleaned some of this stuff up. There are also some tables that get printed in the game. I reformatted them a bit to make them easier to read.

One other thing: notice that in this type of BASIC, # indicates not-equal-to. It took me a while to realize why they chose that symbol. # resembles ≠ .

Entering the Star Trek Universe

Now, I was ready to play the game. As I mentioned above, I never understood the rules before. Luckily, when you run the program, it gives you the option of viewing instructions. I studied them carefully. But, the only way to really understand what to do is to play the game. Here’s a walkthrough:

The game makes itself known by printing out its title. Then, it asks you if you want to view instructions. Every prompt in the game demands a number. If you hit Enter, zero is assumed. In this case, I hit Enter to skip the instructions. Next, it asks for a seed number to initialize the randomizer. This is an artifact of BASIC. It doesn’t really have an effect in C#. In BASIC, just as in C#, the randomizer could have been initialized based off the system time. If that was not an option, they should have taken advantage of the instructions prompt. When the instructions prompt appears, it could have entered a loop that timed how long it took the user to enter a value. That duration could have been used to initialize the randomizer. Again, I simply pressed Enter to skip it.

Next, it prints out my mission. I have to destroy 17 Klingon (note the game misspells it here) ships in 30 units of time with 3 starbases. Then it runs the short range scanner. The short range scanner displays the current quadrant. The game takes place in an 8×8 quadrant grid. Each row and column is numbered 1 to 8. The text on the right indicates that I am in quadrant (5,2). Each quadrant is partitioned into an 8×8 sector grid. The Enterprise is located at sector (5,4). On the quadrant display, <*> is the Enterprise. The remaining * ’s are stars. Each = mark on the top and bottom horizontal-line dividers indicates a column. If you count, you’ll find that the Enterprise is in column 5. If you count the rows, you’ll find it’s in row 4. Hence, within this quadrant, the Enterprise is in sector (5,4) as specified.

The goal is seek out quadrants containing Klingon ships and destroy them. Let’s begin by doing a long range sensor scan (option 2):

This table summarizes 9 quadrants. The center quadrant is your current quadrant. The digits indicate the number of Klingon ships, the number of starbases and the number of stars. In our quadrant, there are no Klingon ships and no starbases, but there are 5 stars. Stars act as annoying obstacles as I’ll demonstrate later on. South of us, there is a quadrant containing 1 Klingon ship. Let’s head there. But, first we need to raise shields (option 5):

It asks me how much energy I want to devote to the shields. I entered 500. If I run out of energy, I lose the game. Starbases replenish energy. They also restock photon torpedoes and repair damage. To see how much energy I have left, I’ll run a short range scan again (option 1):

Now, let’s head south. Navigation requires 2 parameters: direction and distance. It’s a polar coordinate system, but an unconventional one. Direction is specified using this:

Angle goes from 1.0 (inclusive) to 9.0 (exclusive). Note that the y-axis points downwards. So, although it appears to be a counterclockwise angle system, it’s actually clockwise. You also need to consider the aspect ratio. Each column is 3 characters wide, but each row is only 1 character high. This means that it’s not a circular coordinate system. Rather, it’s a swashed oval.

Distance is measured in warp factor units. Such a unit is equal to the length/height of a quadrant. To move to an adjacent sector, you need to move a distance of 1/8 = 0.125. I’m going to move south (angle 7.0) a distance of 1 warp factor. Navigation is option 0:

Navigation automatically runs a short range scan. Note that I moved from quadrant (5,2) to quadrant (5,3). Also, notice that is says that my warp engines are damaged. Parts of the Enterprise fail spontaneously. As you navigate around, they slowly get repaired. Let’s get a damage report (option 6):

A value of 0 indicates normal operation. Less-than 0 is damage. Greater-than 0 indicates that the component is working above normal.

The short range scan above shows a Klingon ship (the triple-plus). I’m going to use the computer to help me target the ship (option 7 followed by option 2):

Photon torpedoes are fired using the same direction and distance coordinate system as is used for navigation. The computer gave me the coordinates. Then it asks if I want to use the navigation calculator. The navigation calculator asks you to enter the coordinates of 2 quadrants and it will output direction and distance between them. I’ll press Enter to indicate I am not interested in doing this. Now, let’s fire the torpedo (option 4):

The game outputs the track of the torpedo. In this case, it hit the target. If the computer gets damaged, you have to estimate the direction of the Klingon ship yourself. It may take a few tries. The torpedo track will help you refine the direction. Also, sometimes a torpedo randomly diverts a bit from the specified direction.

Let’s get a status report using the computer (option 7, option 1):

One Klingon ship down, but my warp engine is still damaged. Let’s do a long range scan:

I want to go east. The starbase there, indicated by the center 1, can repair my warp drive. I’ll try to navigate there:

As you can see, when the warp drive is damaged, I can only move 1 sector at a time.

I managed to get over there, but now my long range scanner is damaged. Note that each time you cross a quadrant boundary, the stardate advances. I have to destroy all the Klingons in the time restriction of my mission.

The >!< symbol indicates a starbase. If I navigate next to it, the Enterprise will automatically dock at which time I’ll get everything repaired. But, if I try to navigate there, the Klingon ship will fire at me. I can’t send out a photon torpedo because of the stars. The stars will obstruct the track. Let me check on those repairs:

Nice. The Enterprise is back to normal. I’ll try using my phasers to hit the Klingons (option 3):

The Enterprise was hit. My shields dropped a small amount. The Klingon ship was damaged as well. I’ll fire again:

I fired twice, which severely lowered my energy level. Phaser strength is a measure of the distance between the Enterprise the target. It probably would have been better to navigate north for a clear path for a photon torpedo. Luckily, I can dock with the starbase to replenish my energy:

The starbase takes away all my shield energy before giving me back 3000. If the game didn’t do this, the player could get infinite shield strength by repeatedly docking and transferring energy to the shields.

Also note that I docked by crashing into the starbase. While you are within a quadrant, you can’t pass through stars, ships and starbases. However, after leaving the current quadrant, those are no longer obstacles. In fact, the positions of stars, starbases and Klingon ships within a quadrant is not determined at the start of the game. Rather, the positions are invented at the time you enter a quadrant. It creates the illusion that stars, starbases and Klingon ships can move around within a quadrant. Note that they can never move out of a quadrant.

The values you see in a long range scan are the only values tracked by the game. It doesn’t store the exact sectors of each entity within a quadrant until you enter it. On a related note, the computer can show you a table of all scanned quadrants (option 7, option 0):

Anyway, that’s the gist of the game.

So, what happens when you win?

And then it just starts over again with a new mission. The efficiency rating is a function of the time remaining. In Mike Mayfield’s original version, the time remaining was actually in minutes. As mentioned, in this version, it’s in turns.

Super Star Trek

In 1976, Creative Computing published a modified version of Mike Mayfield’s program titled Super Star Trek. It’s virtually identical to the original game. However, the menus accept 3 letter mnemonics instead of numbers. The computer offers a few more options. And, just for fun, each quadrant has a name. With those ideas in mind, I decided to code my own version of the game. I began by digging up some ancient ASCII art...

There are many subtle nuances in the original game. How often do different parts of the Enterprise malfunction? How and when do photon torpedoes randomly deviate from their specified targets? And so on. It doesn’t really matter. As I said above, this is the kind of game that deserves to be reinvented everytime it trades hands. The exact parameters of the Star Trek universe are up to the coder. For example, in my version, different parts of the Enterprise malfunction depending on how often you use them. If you rely on the computer for targeting Klingon ships too much, the computer will start to fail.

Rewriting the game brought up an interesting aspect of the BASIC version. Targeting is done using polar coordinates, but you won’t find any trigonometric functions in the BASIC code. I assume the functions were unavailable. Instead, the angle is converted into a direction vector using different ratios that approximate the trigonometric functions. That means even if you worked out perfect targeting using trigonometry, when you entered in the angle, the actual trajectory will be slightly off. Nonetheless, it’s a pretty clever math trick. As for me, I took advantage of Math.Sin() and Math.Cos() .

Finally, if you’re ready to enter the ASCII Star Trek universe and save the Federation from attacking Klingon plus-signs, download the attached source code.

• Star Trek Game History: http://www3.sympatico.ca/maury/games/space/star_trek.html
• Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_%28text_game%29
• Mike Mayfield’s Original Code: http://www.dunnington.u-net.com/public/startrek/STTR1
• Enhanced Version: http://newton.freehostia.com/hp/bas/TREKPT.txt
• Super Star Trek: http://www.atariarchives.org/bcc1/showpage.php?page=275

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPLv3)

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• Random Programming Competition, Summer 2008
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This is an ANSI C (plus Web Assembly) port of the original Star Trek game written in 1971 by Mike Mayfield, based on the 2008 C# port by Michael Birken . For more info, see the GitHub repo

Click here to open the instructions in a new tab.

• Tap into the terminal window, then scroll the page ( not the terminal itself) so that the bottom of the terminal is just visible above your phone's keyboard
• On Android, switch the keyboard to enter numbers and then tap the numpad button to the left of the space key. This will open a number input that will stay on numbers as you press enter
• On iOS, the default number row will stay open as you press enter

• The Inventory

Now You Can Play The First Star Trek Video Game Ever

Click to view Yesterday, we told you about the rebirth of the Star Trek Online game, but that's by no means that only time technology has enabled you - yes, you - to fight the Klingon menace. In fact, back in the 1970s, one Enterprising fan (Sorry) created his very own Star Trek computer game - and now you can do the same.

Created by proto-programmer and ubernerd Mike Mayfield in 1971 by feeding punch-card programs into the Sigma-7 computer, the original Star Trek game - later revised and retitled Super Star Trek , which really should be the name of JJ Abrams' reboot movie - may have been embarrassingly basic by today's standards, but was amazing back in the day; amazing enough to have stayed alive for decades in the public domain, with other programmers adding and editing as they saw fit.

Related Content

Michael Birkin of The Code Project website (An online community for developers and coders) wanted to relive the magic of those old days, and recreated the game, as well as making the source code available to anyone else who wanted to play along. The result is... well, not exactly The Force Unleashed :

I have to destroy 17 Klingon (note the game misspells it here) ships in 30 units of time with 3 starbases. Then it runs the short range scanner. The short range scanner displays the current quadrant. The game takes place in an 8×8 quadrant grid. Each row and column is numbered 1 to 8. The text on the right indicates that I am in quadrant (5,2). Each quadrant is partitioned into an 8×8 sector grid. The Enterprise is located at sector (5,4). On the quadrant display, <*> is the Enterprise. The remaining *'s are stars. Each = mark on the top and bottom horizontal-line dividers indicates a column. If you count, you'll find that the Enterprise is in column 5. If you count the rows, you'll find it's in row 4. Hence, within this quadrant, the Enterprise is in sector (5,4) as specified.

The goal is seek out quadrants containing Klingon ships and destroy them.

Okay, I admit it; I'm kind of lost already. It's like all those adventure games you had when you were a kid that I hated: "Do you want to say hello? Y/N" But nonetheless, there's something awesome about this mashup of Star Trek , gaming and general nerditry making a comeback for another generation.

Star Trek 1971 Text Game [The Code Project]

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Star trek's first game & how it kickstarted pc gaming.

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"Changing How Comic Fans View Star Trek": Eisner Nominated Trek Team is Only Getting Better (Exclusive)

Star trek’s redshirt has a real world meaning, star trek's new warp drive makes all others look pathetic (in any era).

Before the Star Trek Bridge Crew , before the Starfleet Command series, before even tabletop RPG adaptations like Star Trek: The Roleplaying Game , there was a text-based starship simulator adaptation of  Star Trek  created in 1971, and it was designed to be playable on any computer system capable of running BASIC. As personal computers started to become a fixture of professional households in the 1970s and 1980s, this easy-to-install game of Federation starships vs. Klingon warbirds wound up inspiring spin-off starship simulators, early Rogue-like RPGs, and other PC games based around the exploration of randomly generated environments.

In the year 1971, Star Trek The Original Series had been canceled for two years, and prototype desktop computers weren't quite refined enough to be household goods. Nascent computer programming subcultures generally congealed around computer science departments in colleges and universities, who published and shared their custom programs in professional journals and magazines. Much like today, some of these computer programmers also happened to be fans of science fiction narratives like Star Trek .

Related:  How The Captain Is Dead Adapted Its Star Trek Parody Board Game For PC

Programmer Mike Mayfield wrote the first version of the Star Trek computer game using the BASIC programming language, compiling and testing his game on a Sigma 7 mainframe. Inspired by the early  Spacewar!  arcade game, Mayfield wanted to create a  Star Trek -derived video game  capable of running on any computer system; for this reason, he devised a control system based around pressing buttons on a keyboard, as well as a text-based graphical interface that could be displayed on computer screens or printed out on paper. Mayfield shared his Star Trek game as public domain software other programmers could tinker with and run on their own computers, and variants of this game became very popular among programmers, Star Trek fans, and laypeople for three particular reasons.

Star Trek (1971) Pioneered Tactics, Management, & Exploration In Video Games

In the 1971 Star Trek  video game , players are the commanders of a Federation-style starship like the Enterprise, charged with the duty of searching for and destroying all the Klingon warships in their quadrant of space before a certain Stardate. In order to make his video game's premise (described in this Gizmodo article) interesting and challenging for players, programmer Mike Mayfield wound up creating early versions of exploration, resource management, and turn-based tactical gameplay.

More specifically, the core gameplay loop of Star Trek (1971) revolves around players roaming through and scanning different sectors of space (exploration), engaging and destroying Klingon warships with phasers and photon torpedos (turn-based tactical combat), and allocating reactor energy between shields, weapons, and warp engines while also docking at local Starbases to get repaired and re-charged (resource management).

Star Trek (1971) Was A Prototype of Text Adventures & Roguelikes

Nine years before   Rogue,  the first Roguelike RPG , represented the player character using an "@" symbol, and five years before Colossal Cave Adventure (the first text adventure game) asked players to move between different rooms by typing commands like "go north," Star Trek (1971) represented the player's starship with a "<*>," Starbases with a ">!<," and Klingon Warbirds with a "+++."

Related:  Point-and-Click Games' Biggest Problem Called Out In Hilarious Video

By using ASCII characters to create visual "Space Maps" for players to interpret, Mayfield created a game that could be displayed on nearly any kind of monitor or even printed out with a tele-printer. Additionally, the simple text-based graphics of Star Trek (1971) made it easy for Mayfield and other programmers to create randomly generated star maps for each new game cycle, pioneering the concept of "procedural generation" seen in video game genres like the RPG or RTS.

Star Trek (1971) Popularized The Idea Of Installable Video Games

As a text-based video game written in BASIC, Star Trek (1971) could - and still can be - run on nearly any computer system, whether through being digitally installed or manually typed in line by line. Nowadays, the idea of installing video games onto a computer is common-place, but back in the 1970s, when video games like Pong or Spacewar! were hard-coded into their arcade machines/early consoles , the concept of "game installation" was revolutionary. By encouraging other programmers to install, run, and modify his Star Trek game, Mayfield helped popularize the concept of PC gaming, demonstrating how Turing-complete computers could be used for both work and fun.

Next:  Star Trek-Style Tabletop RPGs For Fans Of Peaceful Space Exploration

Source: Gizmodo

• Game Features

• Screenshots

• 1971 ( Mainframe )
• 1975 ( Wang 2200 )
• 1976 ( Altair 8800 )
• 1978 ( Commodore PET/CBM )
• 1978 ( Sol-20 )
• Centerline Engineering
• People's Computer Company
• Creative Software, Inc.
• Star Trek (1972 on Arcade)
• Star Trek (1974 on Mainframe, 1983 on Sol-20)
• Star Trek (1976 on Altair 8800)
• Star Trek (1977 on Arcade)
• Star Trek (1978 on TRS-80)
• Star Trek (1978 on Mainframe, 1979 on Sol-20)

• Star Trek (1979 on TRS-80)
• Star Trek (1979 on TI Programmable Calculator)
• Star Trek (1979 on Poly-88)

• Star Trek (1982 on ZX Spectrum)

• Star Trek (1983 on Commodore 64)
• Star Trek (1992 on Dedicated handheld)

Description

Star Trek proved one of the more popular games on Mainframes in the early seventies. Originally written on a Sigma 7 it was a year later ported to HP BASIC and then copied and adapted into many different iterations. Initially played using a teletype printer, later versions would use a screen.

It's the player's objective to destroy 17 Klingon ships within a limited time. The playing field is divided into 8x8 quadrants, each again divided by 8x8 sectors. A sector is shown to the player as a 2D map with the Enterprise's location, stars, starbases, and Klingon ships. Using the long-range scanner the player can find out if surrounding quadrants have starbases or Klingon ships. The player must navigate the clusters to find Klingon ships and use his shields and photon torpedoes to destroy them. Torpedoes and phasers must be fired in a direction and a distance. The strength of phasers depends on the distance between the Enterprise and the target. A calculator can be used to determine the direction and distance between two sectors. Stars block a torpedo's path. The player's ship can take damage. Individual parts have their own hit points (warp engines, short-range sensors, etc.). This damage can be repaired at starbases.

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Credits (Mainframe version)

Average score: 3.2 out of 5 (based on 2 ratings with 1 reviews)

A historic game

The Good Very impressive for its time. The Bad Involves lots of calculations, easy to lose track of where you are. The Bottom Line A historical achievement.

Mainframe · by Cube1701 (41) · 2023

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Game added by vedder .

Game added June 23, 2017. Last modified March 14, 2024.

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Home » Reviews » Star Trek (1971) – Boldly Going Where No Game Had Gone Before

Star Trek (1971) – Boldly Going Where No Game Had Gone Before

When I was four (in 1977), I was changing channels on my TV and came across the most beautiful thing I had ever seen up to that point…the U.S.S. Enterprise . That was the first time I had felt lust for a spaceship (or anything else, for that matter), and I became exceedingly hooked on Star Trek for the next decade or so, being pretty much a hard core Trekkie until my mid-teens. The movie version of the Enterprise supplanted my love for the original (it’s still my favorite version), but there was nothing like seeing that ship for the first time and know that, then and there, I’d always love spaceships, the Enterprise in particular.

Little did I know that six years before that (two years before I was born even, if you’re keeping up with the math), an enterprising (hah!) young programmer named Mike Mayfield was building a game based on the beloved TV show, nearly a decade after the first computerized space game, SpaceWar! What resulted was a game that, while simplistic in its presentation, had a surprising amount of depth and detail. Today we’ll be looking at the second game on my list, 1971’s Star Trek .

First off, let me just say what a pain in the ass this game was to run. For two weeks I tried BASIC emulators to run the code I found from here and here, finally finding a C# port from here that worked in Microsoft Visual C# Studio. As soon as I began to play the game, it felt familiar to me, because it seems like so much of 1985’s Star Fleet 1: The War Begins is based on this formula.

Basically, the game gives you a simple charge – kill a certain amount of Klingons in a certain amount of time with one or more starbases to provide support. I find it funny that, while the original show was fairly light on space combat, that’s all the first game it’s based upon focuses.

Anyway, once you enter your game seed (to generate the galaxy’s design), you’re plopped into the command chair, as it were. From here, you have control over navigation, scanners, shields, weapons and damage control. The controls are simplistic, but they’re far from simple.

For example, to set a course, you first enter the course number (direction) in which you want to move, which can be from one to eight in a circle around your ship. For example, 1 turns you east, 5, turns you west, 3 turns you north and 7 turns you south. The other numbers are diagonal directions in between. You can also use decimals such as 1.5, 2.3 and so on for finer control

Next, you enter the speed you wish to go to. Now, if you enter a whole number, you’ll move that many sectors in that direction using the warp drive. However, if you enter a decimal (i.e. .7, .2, .1, etc…), you’ll move a certain amount of spots within that sector using the impulse engines. While the instructions to explain some of this are included with the game, some of the finer points (like the impulse speed for using decimals) is left out, and had to be discovered. I was honestly fine with this, as it led to a fun bit of experimentation (and a lot of death), but some may balk at the lack of clear instruction.

To see where you’re going and what’s around you, you have access to short and long range scanners. Short range scanners tell you what’s in your current sector, such as Klingons, starbases and stars. Long range scan tell you what are in the sectors around you using a 3 number code. Therefore, on the long range scanner, 213 in a sector scan would mean there are two Klingons, one starbase and three stars in that sector. This gives you an idea how to proceed from your current location.

Deciding where to go is the first big decision in a game that’s ultimately about decision-making. Do you try to enter the sector with the three Klingons knowing you’re low on energy and torpedoes, and try to take them on? Or, instead, do you try and find a starbase, refuel, reload and repair, and then go back to take them on later? We’ll get into this a bit more in a little while, I wanna go back to describing the ships systems (because I love diving into details like this, and it’s my site ;).

The Enterprise has two weapons, phasers and photon torpedoes. Phasers lock onto enemies and use a specific amount of power that you input to fire at your enemies. Torpedoes, however, have to be told which direction to fly in, so sometimes winning a battle means maneuvering your ship into the right spot to fire a torpedo in the first place.

Shields also use a specific amount of power you input, but shields and phasers draw from the same power pool (you always start with 3,000 units of power, and can only replenish power at a starbase). You can start a battle with 300 units of power to your shields, for example, but you’ll have to monitor how the shields are doing and constantly supply them with more power, depending on how the fight is going.

Finally, you have two less-used panels, the damage control panel and the library panel. The damage control panel tells you how damaged your systems are, while the library computer can give you a quick rundown of enemies and torpedoes left, overall damage, an overall look at the explored galaxy and so on. I barely used these during my many hours of playing the game, but they’re useful when needed.

Going back to actually playing the game, it’s all about making the right choices based on managing the resources you have. You might see one adjacent sector has three Klingons in it, but you’re low on torpedoes or energy and have some damage, so you might move away from that sector for the time being (enemies can move between sectors, and aren’t static based on what I could tell). This takes up time, but it also prevents you from being killed. You might then spend time looking for a starbase to rearm and reload while your crew makes repairs as best it can.

On the other hand, you might be fully loaded for bear, and see three sectors around you with one Klingon each. Which one do you go to next? You have to take ‘em all out, but you can only be in one place at once time. Do you take one and go back for the rest later, hoping to continue on that course and find more Klingons on the way, or do you backtrack and take out the Klingons you’ve already detected?

I have to be honest in that this game provided and exciting amount of tension as I played it. Trying to make the right choice in how to proceed based on the resources I had on hand was an amazing way to generate excitement. This game, despite its age and graphical simplicity, still provides an exciting amount of tension and an amazing amount of replayability, since galaxies are generated based on number seeds, and each one is fairly different.

In all of the games I played, I honestly only won one of them, out of maybe thirty or forty. I didn’t feel this was because the game cheated or anything, however. I felt that this was because I made the wrong choices. Here are some examples of how encounters can go based on simple choices (or lack thereof):

I just reloaded and refueled at a starbase, and saw a sector two sectors away with three Klingons in it. I moved to that sector, raised shields, and pounded away with phasers. However, to maneuver into a good firing position for my torpedoes, I had to maneuver around some stars so I could have a clear shot. I actually became so focused on maneuvering into position and firing phasers that I forgot to check on my shield strength, and was killed after getting into the right position. If I had kept energy flowing to the shields, I might’ve survived the encounter, but after a bit of target fixation, I sadly didn’t.

In another game, I was low on energy and slightly damaged, but had a full complement of torpedoes and saw that two Klingons were in an adjacent sector, so I decided to take them on. After putting some more power to the shields, I kept maneuvering around the sector, trying to get a clear shot with my torpedoes. I kept pouring energy to the shields a bit at a time, but they were draining. Thankfully, I maneuvered into position and killed one Klingon with a torpedo. I moved into the other position – keeping phasers firing low and shunting power to shields – and then killed the other Klingon with the torpedo. I lost short range sensors in the final attack as well as the computer, but it was worth it. This was from the game I actually ended up winning.

While the game is quite a bit of fun, it’s not without some frustrations. Once you do encounter enemies in a sector, they don’t seem to move much, if at all, making them sitting ducks for torpedoes once you get into the right position. Also, maneuvering with impulse engines was a bit weird. For example, if I put in that I wanted to move .2 impulse, to move 2 spots in a sector, I’d end up only moving 1, and I still have no idea why that is.

Overall, though, Star Trek is an excellent game that fires the imagination and provides an exciting and tense bit of gameplay despite crude graphics and controls that take a bit of getting used to. While SpaceWar! might’ve been the first space game, I’d say this one is the one with the longer and better legacy, as Star Trek showed that you could not only have excitement and playability in a space game, but depth and detail as well. SpaceWar! might’ve paved the way for games like Asteroids   and other arcade games of its ilk, but Star Trek paved the way for games like Star Fleet , Starfleet Command , Starpoint Gemeni and many others, games which I feel offer much more to the space game genre, as a whole.

I could easily recommend that people today give Star Trek a try, just to see how even forty years ago, computer games could be deep and enthralling despite the primitive technology available at the time (I mean, look at those “graphics”!). I had a blast playing Star Trek , and I can’t wait to fire up its various sequels and successors as I proceed down my list.

Wikipedia and The Code Project were major sources of information for this article.

Related Articles

6 thoughts on “ Star Trek (1971) – Boldly Going Where No Game Had Gone Before ”

This is the one I typed in as a kid. It took some creative work to make it fit in a C64, which only gave you roughly 38K for BASIC. https://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/showpage ….

HAhaha, that is so awesome. I typed in stuff like that when I was a kid into my TRS-80 my own self. :)

Nice to see another game crossed off your list. It's interesting to read about these old games, although I haven't played any of them, so far.

It's interesting to see how many Star Trek games are among the early space games. I guess that just goes to show the influence of that franchise.

Right? It shows that people really wanted more Trek, even if they had to make it themselves. It's really impressive how well this game holds up, you should try it. :)

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Star Trek 1971

• Original Release: 2020
• Developer: Making Games Per Year
• Publisher: Making Games Per Year
• Platform: Browser

This is a browser remake of the 1971 Star Trek game by Mike Mayfield , offering both touch and typing interfaces. The experience is streamlined massively, especially in terms of navigating and firing weapons.

It’s a very nice version to play, and a very simple way to experience the game without needing to use emulators. It does lose a little bit of its charm due to how automated everything is, moving is as simple as clicking your destination and firing torpedoes just has you selecting from a menu, which means you can’t miss, but it’s still a nice way to see what the original game was aiming for.

You can also play a Mirror Universe variant, which changes a few things. The objective of destroying all Klingons makes a bit more sense.

Where to get Star Trek 1971

How to play Star Trek 1971 on Windows 11

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Star trek (1971 video game), page actions.

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Star Trek was a text-based simulation game.

It was originally created by Mike Mayfield in BASIC on a SDS Sigma 7 mainframe computer in 1971 as Star Trek. He re-wrote it for an HP 2000C minicomputer in 1972.

David H. Ahl and Mary Cole converted it to BASIC-PLUS so it could be published by Digital Equipment Corporation in the "101 BASIC Computer Games" book in 1973.

Super Star Trek

Bob Leedom expanded the game as Super Star Trek and Creative Computing published it in the updated book, "BASIC Computer Games", with permission from the Star Trek rights holders, in 1974. This gave the game massive popularity, as "BASIC Computer Games" was the first computer book to sell over 1 million copies.

Chris Nystrom converted it to C in 1996 as Super Star Trek Classic .

John Menichelli converted it to Z-code , based on Chris Nystrom's C conversion, in 2000 as Super Z Trek .

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Six Classic Star Trek Video Games Now Available for Download

Journey back to the late-90s and early-2000s with these classic Star Trek games.

Just in time for Star Trek Day , online video game retailer GOG.com has revealed that six classic Star Trek computer games are now available to download. This marks the first time these games are available on a modern video game storefront.

Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force (2000) and its sequel (2003), Star Trek: Bridge Commander (2002), Star Trek: Starfleet Command III (2002), Star Trek: Hidden Evil (1999), and Star Trek: Away Team (2001) are now available for $10 each. These games are promised to play on modern computers.

Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force –a first-person shooter set onboard the USS Voyager where you must take on some of the most dangerous special missions. Star Trek: Elite Force II – a stunning sequel set on Enterprise-E where you get your orders from Captain Jean-Luc Picard himself! Star Trek: Hidden Evil – a third-person adventure game with both Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner reprising their roles as Captain Picard and Lt. Cmdr. Data. Star Trek: Away Team – an isometric turn-based tactical game influenced by titles like Commandos and the X-Com series. Star Trek: Starfleet Command III – a simulation game with RPG elements where you can customize your starship and lead it into space battles. Star Trek: Bridge Commander – a space combat simulation game that sits you in an actual captain’s chair with a crew waiting for your orders.

Star Trek: Armada and its sequel are slated as “TBA.”

A few years ago, we looked back at Elite Force (often considered the best Star Trek game of all time) with the game’s director, Brian Pelletier, and found it holds up well after all these years.

To purchase the games, visit gog.com/partner/startrek .

Stay tuned to TrekNews.net for all the latest news on Star Trek media releases, Star Trek: Lower Decks , Star Trek: Prodigy , Star Trek: Discovery , Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , Star Trek: Picard , and more.

You can follow us on Twitter , Facebook , and Instagram .

Kyle Hadyniak has been a lifelong Star Trek fan, and isn't ashamed to admit that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Star Trek: Nemesis are his favorite Star Trek movies. You can follow Kyle on Twitter @khady93 .

Erik Szpyra

November 1, 2021 at 5:27 pm

I loved Elite Force, I remember in that game one of the first things I did was fire on the bridge crew, very satisfying.

David Wilburn

December 11, 2021 at 12:08 am

I would be willing to pay up to $40 if they would use more advanced game engine with high polygon and texture models on the games. I would pay as much as $60 for a single updated game including all missions and add expansions of Voyager Elite Force 1 & 2

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A Python port of the classic Star Trek BASIC game from 1971

cosmicr/startrek1971

Folders and files, repository files navigation, star trek 1971.

I recently discovered the classic old BASIC game Star Trek from 1971, through a post seen on Reddit .

The post contained a version of the game rewritten in C-Sharp which I thought was quite good. I wondered if anyone had ported it to Python.

After a little bit of research, I didn't find a definitive version for Python.

This is by no means a definitive version itself; I just took the C# version and converted it to Python.

Improvements

There's heaps that can be done with this program. A lot of implementations used global variables. I tried to fix this by encapsulating them in a global object, but this can definitely be improved further.

Here is a list of possible improvements:

• Encapsulate everything in classes
• Include help/instructions
• new ships, celestial objects, etc
• new weapon types
• crew functions
• Easier navigation (using cartesian system maybe)
• Make some parts more 'Pythonic'
• ...Plenty more!
• Python 100.0%

Game information

Play dos game online.

You can play EGATrek on this website so you don't need to download and install the game on your computer. We recommend to use Google Chrome when playing DOS games online.

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What do you think of EGATrek ? Please rate the game below on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is the lowest and 10 is the highest score.

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Game description

EGATrek is a PC variant of the popular, originally mainframe game called Star Trek , which dates back to 1971. As the title suggests, it is a fan game set in the Star Trek universe, where the player must fight battles for the Federation as Captain Kirk in the Enterprise . However, the latest releases of EGATrek have removed all Star Trek references to avoid copyright infringement. The game board represents the map of the known galaxy, divided into 64 sectors, and each sector into 64 quadrants. The player's ship moves around these and tries to save friendly bases from enemy ships of the Mongol Empire. You can fire lasers and torpedoes, the latter can also explode stars, with the resulting nova destroying or damaging everything around it. Combat and movement are turn-based and only via keyboard input, so to move around you need to input coordinates on the galaxy map. EGATrek is sold as shareware.

Description by MrFlibble

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Description of Star Trek

Here is the video game “Star Trek”! Released in 1981 on DOS, it's still available and playable with some tinkering. It's a strategy and simulation game, set in a sci-fi / futuristic, turn-based, space flight, tv series and fangame themes.

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Comments and reviews

Dan Vitor 2024-03-02 0 point

I played something similar, do you know others games like these one ?

JBolfer 2022-01-07 0 point

Wow - screenshots look exactly like a game we had on the PLATO network at Uof I Urbana in the 1970's! Although minimalist graphics, game play was very fun ... popping the Enterprise ('E") in and out of quadrants to see how many K (Klingon) ships were there, setting photon angle and power, blowing them up, saving enough energy to get to a B (base) for fuel/ repairs. Great game. A lot of games since are more about the graphics with less interesting play.

Alaeifr 2020-12-30 1 point

Is this the version written by Don and R Michael Grant? If so, those are my brothers. They wrote this for my 11th birthday.

thef00t 2020-01-23 0 point

This was also my first... wrote it from copy on an Apple II c in basic. I was also my first "all-nighter" but so worth it for an 11 year old.

Geezer 2017-01-17 2 points

Great find! This was the first computer game I played waaaaayyyyy back. On an Altair 8800 with 8" floppies for OS and programs.

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Share your gamer memories, help others to run the game or comment anything you'd like. If you have trouble to run Star Trek, read the abandonware guide first!

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Rediscovering the 1978 text-only Super Star Trek Game

The proof that you don't need fancy 3d graphics to feel like captain kirk.

Before home computers were even invented, there were people programming games. They didn't have graphics and were programmed and played on mainframes. Only lucky people had the chance to enjoy them. This is the story of one of the most famous titles, a game that made history.

Super Star Trek is an old text-only game, an early example of a turn-based space strategy sim, written in BASIC. In this game, you are the captain of the starship Enterprise, and your mission is to scout the federation space and eliminate all the invading Klingon ships. You will have to manage the ship energy carefully, use phasers and torpedoes to destroy the Klingons, and find starbases to repair damages and replenish your energy. All of this, rendered with a few characters on screen and a lot of imagination.

Super Star Trek is probably the most famous early text-only game ever created - or at least as famous as The Oregon Trail or Zork - and it inspired many other videogames. Since the code was public domain, during the years, it was changed and improved many times. There are literally thousands of versions out there. All of them are nice, but my preference goes to the classic 1978 version. It's simple but addictive like all good games should be. In fact, as you will see later, I played it a lot. But first, a bit of history.

The story of the game

According to Games of Fame , Mike Mayfield wrote the initial Star Trek game in 1971 for the Sigma 7 mainframe. The program didn't even require a screen. You could play it with a teleprinter machine: you enter the command after the prompt, and the game was printing some lines in return. How cool is that?

It's important to note that all of this happened before the first home computers were even invented. Nobody had a computer at home before the Commodore PET, the Apple II, and the TRS-80 were released in 1977.

David Ahl knew about the new version of Star Trek written by Leedom and asked permission to publish it in his new book, BASIC COMPUTER GAMES — Microcomputer edition , released in 1978. It would be the first computer book to sell 1 million copies. Some people say it's because the name Star Trek was in it. True or not, the game became hugely popular, mainly because, in the meantime, home computers had arrived. Suddenly there were thousands of machines capable of running BASIC and, consequently, BASIC computer games.

But now, let's play the game. We will see the first turns in detail.

Let's play the 1978 Super Star Trek

When the game starts, it generates the galaxy, and then it tells you the 3 main things you have to know: how many Klingons you have to destroy, how many days you have, how many starbases are present.

In this case, we have been quite lucky: 3 starbases will be useful. One of them is here, but we don't need it now.

So, let's start! You control the Enterprise using the nine commands at your disposal. They are shown below:

There are no Klingons in this quadrant, so let's use the long-range sensor scan to see if they are around. Long-range sensors show the number of ships, starbases, and stars in the 8 quadrants around you.

The number "014" for the current quadrant means there are 1 starbase and 4 stars. The number "205" for the quadrant south-east from our position means there are 2 enemy ships (and 5 stars). Let's go there.

To move, you have to enter the command NAV and then specify the course and the warp speed. The screenshot below shows a description of the directions; this feature is not in the original game - this is the only small change that I consider acceptable on the 1978 code because it improves the playability a lot.

You specify the course with a number between 1 and 9. You can also use non-integer numbers if necessary, but we want to go south-east, so we enter "8". A warp speed of 1 will allow you to go to the next quadrant.

On the new quadrant, we can see the 2 Klingon ships. As the text says, our shields are dangerously low. Better to raise them. Deflectors can be activated with the SHE command. We don't want to risk, so let's move 500 units of energy to the shields.

Now we are ready to fight. We have plenty of energy, so we will use the phasers entering PHA. Like in the TV episodes, you have to decide how much energy will be used by the phasers. Since there are 2 ships, the Enterprise will fire twice, so the power will be split, better to use a reasonable amount.

Luckily, we destroyed them, so they won't fire back. That's good.

Continuing the exploration, we end up in another quadrant with 2 enemy ships. This time we'll try to use the torpedoes.

Torpedoes don't hit automatically. We need to specify the direction. We will ask the computer to calculate the course. Enter COM to activate the ship computer. Then "2" and the computer will calculate the distance and directions of the enemies. The closest one is at distance 2.82 and direction 6.

We will try to hit the ship with a torpedo. By entering TOR and then direction 6, we will try to hit the nearest Klingon ship.

Success! The Klingon has been destroyed, but the other one hit the Enterprise. Not a big deal. With the phasers, we will beat the remaining one.

Things were going well, but they can deteriorate quite quickly. A few turns later, we enter a quadrant with 2 enemy ships. Photon torpedos have been damaged in a previous fight, and energy is scarce. A first attempt with the phasers was not enough to destroy the 2 ships. Their counterattack damages the warp engines and the computer. Without warp speed, we cannot escape, so the only chance is to destroy them with the phasers.

The next round of phasers destroys the enemies, but now energy is very low, and we need to reach the nearest starbase as soon as possible. Unfortunately, with the warp engines damaged, the maximum speed is 0.2. If the Enterprise consumes all energy, the game is over, so better to move back some power from shields to engines. We will need to avoid enemy encounters, or it's over. Once docked to the starbase, the energy goes back to the maximum level, and we can repair the damaged systems.

At this point, you should have an idea of the gameplay. As you realize, time is critical. Without a time limit, you would be able to go back to the starbases as much as you want and fight only when the Enterprise has full energy. But you can't. If you do this, time will expire. In fact, you must be very careful during exploration, trying to cover all the quadrants with the minimum amounts of movements, because time passes fast when you travel at warp speed. You cannot imagine how many times I lost a game with just 1 Klingon left, just because I needed one more turn to destroy it.

Of course, on the other side, if you risk too much, the Enterprise can be destroyed, as you can see below.

To make things complicated, there are random events. Sensors may be offline, so you are blind, and you encounter an enemy ship while you were trying to reach the starbase. If a hit damages your phasers, you only have torpedoes, but you can't see the enemy, so the only way is to ask the computer. But what if the computer goes down?

Despite its simplicity, there are really many different mechanics in this game, that combined with random factors, create surprisingly addictive gameplay.

Of course, it's possible to win, as you can see above. Once you won, you get a score based on your performance and the difficulty of the scenario. Next time, you can try to improve your score.

Ok, how can I play it?

If this article convinced you to try the game, there are plenty of options. The original Star Trek has been rewritten, changed, and improved many times. On the Internet, you will find thousands of different ports for different computers. On this website, you can download a Commodore 64 version based on the 1978 BASIC code. This is the most faithful to the classic version that I found so far.

If you are curious about the version shown in the screenshots, it's my conversion to Perl of the original BASIC code. It plays exactly like the original one, but includes some bug fixes. You can download it from my personal website .

But if you want, you can also run the 1978 BASIC code on your Mac or PC installing a BASIC interpreter. If you go to Vintage Basic you will find both the interpreter and the original program listing of Star Trek.

EDIT: Terry Newton recently wrote me to tell me that the game in the first screenshot is not the original Star Trek by Mayfield, but it's a conversion Terry made for the HP minicomputers. Thanks a lot, Terry! If you want, you can download the HP TSB BASIC code from his personal website .

That's all folks. Live long and prosper!

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Latest comments.

A Gre - 10 October 2020, 11:36 pm Thanks a lot! What I great read!! I'm off to play Super Star Trek now!!!

Joe Pazos - 20 January 2022, 5:46 pm My father worked as a mainframe computer supervisor at AT&T in NYC from 1973-1993. I used to go with him to work on Saturdays and play this EXACT game on a IBM mainframe that took up an entire city block. Even had him buy me a circular protractor so I could easily figure out the degrees for movement, shooting etc. Fond memories! Loved this game.

Greg Siddons - 17 April 2023, 11:49 am Great article. Such a historic game. I've spent the last 14+ months converting the original 80 column printer terminal version to the Commodore PET and C64. I've also started work on a BBC Micro (MODE 7) version too. I've added many many refinements and sympathetic enhancements. I'm still working on it and finding new ways to polish the charts and other data outputs, still with ZERO cursor control codes, just like the original terminal versions. https://electrongreg.itch.io/super-star-trek

Mr. Kevbo - 6 April 2024, 7:22 pm In 1978-80, a couple friends and I spent WAY too many hours after school playing this game on teletype...dial-up with an acoustic coupler. It may have been at 300 baud...maybe slower. Short range scans took maybe 30 seconds or so to print. Not that we had an option, but the teletype actually had an advantage over a video terminal: We would tear off the short range sensor scan, and one person would use a sort of homemade protractor (sharpy on an overhead transparency) to read off torpedo courses to the guy at the keyboard. Saved having to waste a turn getting more than one sensor scan per quadrant, or asking computer....actually I don't recall using the computer command ever...maybe it wasn't in the version we were playing. As for what computer it was running on, I honestly have no idea, but based on the time frame and the fact that it served several high schools, I suspect it was some PDP-11 variant.

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