I've set myself the challenge of trying to play every Star Trek game - some simply won't be possible, but I will be playing as many as I can. I've hopefully got my list sorted and will be doing so in release order. I'm covering both video games and board games. Due to the early beginnings of Star Trek games, I will be covering some unofficial and fan-made games.
I will be sharing my thoughts in this thread and hopefully people will share their own thoughts on these games.
Star Trek Game (1967)
The first Star Trek boardgame, which I have recreated in Tabletop Simulator. If it wasn’t from the box design and the name on the board, you probably wouldn’t even guess that it’s Star Trek related, as the ships are just regular pawns and the design of the fuel ship art is a very strange design. There’s a Starfleet delta on the mission cards, but that’s about it.
The game is set in a solar system that consists of Earth and six planets names after Greek letters. Your mission is to visit three planets (a card will tell you which ones and the order) then return to Earth, first one to do so wins.
Each turn you will play a fuel card and move that amount of spaces either horizontally and vertically. You start off with cards numbered 1-10 but as you refuel you can pick our of what everyone has discarded, so you need to carefully plan your route. Your target is the “Orbit entrance point”, which you need to and on exactly to start landing – once you land on a planet, you can refuel by picking three cards.
After you’ve made a movement, you roll the dice and move one of the two fuel ships that many spaces. If you manage to get it to land next to you, you can draw a fuel card. This is rare, though, as players are constantly fighting to move it closer to them. If you run our of fuel, you move one space per turn, making it very slow progress.
It’s existence of the game is interesting, but it’s ultimately quite boring to play.
Star Trek (1971, Mike Mayfield)
The first Star Trek video game, made for the Sigma 7 and then ported to the HP 2000C minicomputer. These were devices that had no screens, but were instead connected to a printer and printed the new game game as you played.
This game was ported to many different systems, under a lot of different names such as Apple Trek, Tari Trek and Dragon Trek. I have chosen a couple that I will go through with significant changes, as the vast majority run the same, just ported to different systems, with the latest major version being released in 2023.
In this game, you need to destroy a set amount of Klingons in a few days. You need to explore the area, as well as dock at stations to repair yourself. Here is one of my complete failure attempts:
This game is very difficult, as you need to hunt for Klingons, navigate around and so lots of actual calculations to work out how to navigate as well as aim torpedoes. For such an old game, there is a surprising amount of detail in it, with enemies that attack you, systems that break, scanning and even a built-in calculator for torpedoes.
Your systems breaking are completely random, though, and something like your warp drive breaking can render a playthrough unwinnable as you won’t be able to find a starbase in time. Even without any damage, navigating around is very difficult as you need to set a direction and speed, and take into account both sector and quadrant locations.
Despite all this, there’s just something that’s a lot of fun about trying to do all this with such basic input, having to figure it all out yourself. It’s a fascinating game and it’s definitely impressive for what it was originally made for.
Star Trek (1971, Bill Peterson)
A much lesser known Star Trek mainframe game, written in a form of BASIC used by the CDC 6000. Wikipedia credits Don Daglow with this. While he did revise it in 1972, the credits in the code say that it was originally made by Bill Peterson from Cal Tech.
This Star Trek game describes what it happening through dialogue with Spock, Uhura, Sulu and Chekov, with you entering commands to defeat enemies.
Each time you play, you get a slightly different story, all of them will lead to a battle against single enemy. You have to give commands (by typing numbers from a list of options) to position yourself, fire phasers/torpedoes and try to defeat the enemy.
By moving and using sensors, you’ll be given the position and bearings for both you and the enemy. It’s extremely difficult to use the coordinates to figure out where you are in relation to the enemy, as well as which direction you’re pointing and which weapons you can use.
If you sustain enough damage, Spock will mutiny and flee the area. I’ve seen this section of text a lot. The only time I won was by not fighting, but instead boarding the enemy ship.
There are a lot of ship names that are generated by the speed, I like that the seed number 47 gives you the Enterprise – a complete coincidence as the use of the number came about much later.
Star Trek (1972, For-Play)
The first commercially released Star Trek game. Not only was this not officially licensed, but it’s also a clone of another arcade game called Computer Space. The only difference is that the controls are slightly reworked to use a joystick instead of buttons. As there’s no way for me to play the Star Trek version, I played a PC port of Computer Space as it’s the same game.
The game works exactly the same as the later and much more popular game Asteroids. Spin the ship around, use thrust to move and shoot. The aim is to destroy the two enemy ships more times than they destroy you. The game only lasts a couple of minutes.
Super Star Trek
Super Star Trek is the first major enhancement of the 1971 Star Trek game. This makes the game much easier to decipher, with some information given via dialogue from the crew, and generally making everything much easier to visualise and making actions easier to perform. Permission was even supposedly given by Paramount to use the name Star Trek.
The regions are given names, and the icons for the Enterprise and Klingons use letters to help distinguish them better. That said, the game is still difficult, losing access to some functions is still a major hazard – I even lost access to damage control in one playthrough.
Super Star Trek is a really nice version of the original Star Trek game.
I will be sharing my thoughts in this thread and hopefully people will share their own thoughts on these games.
Star Trek Game (1967)
- Original Release: 1967
- Developer: Julie Cooper
- Publisher: Ideal Toys
- Platform: Board Game
The first Star Trek boardgame, which I have recreated in Tabletop Simulator. If it wasn’t from the box design and the name on the board, you probably wouldn’t even guess that it’s Star Trek related, as the ships are just regular pawns and the design of the fuel ship art is a very strange design. There’s a Starfleet delta on the mission cards, but that’s about it.
The game is set in a solar system that consists of Earth and six planets names after Greek letters. Your mission is to visit three planets (a card will tell you which ones and the order) then return to Earth, first one to do so wins.
Each turn you will play a fuel card and move that amount of spaces either horizontally and vertically. You start off with cards numbered 1-10 but as you refuel you can pick our of what everyone has discarded, so you need to carefully plan your route. Your target is the “Orbit entrance point”, which you need to and on exactly to start landing – once you land on a planet, you can refuel by picking three cards.
After you’ve made a movement, you roll the dice and move one of the two fuel ships that many spaces. If you manage to get it to land next to you, you can draw a fuel card. This is rare, though, as players are constantly fighting to move it closer to them. If you run our of fuel, you move one space per turn, making it very slow progress.
It’s existence of the game is interesting, but it’s ultimately quite boring to play.
Star Trek (1971, Mike Mayfield)
- Original Release: 1971
- Developer: Mike Mayfield
- Publisher: Self-Published
- Platform: HP Basic
- Version Played: Direct C# Port by Michael Birken (No enhancements)
The first Star Trek video game, made for the Sigma 7 and then ported to the HP 2000C minicomputer. These were devices that had no screens, but were instead connected to a printer and printed the new game game as you played.
This game was ported to many different systems, under a lot of different names such as Apple Trek, Tari Trek and Dragon Trek. I have chosen a couple that I will go through with significant changes, as the vast majority run the same, just ported to different systems, with the latest major version being released in 2023.
In this game, you need to destroy a set amount of Klingons in a few days. You need to explore the area, as well as dock at stations to repair yourself. Here is one of my complete failure attempts:
Code:
ENTER SEED NUMBER 12
INITIALIZING...
YOU MUST DESTROY 19 KINGONS IN 30 STARDATES WITH 6 STARBASES
COMBAT AREA CONDITION RED
SHIELDS DANGEROUSLY LOW
-=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=-
<*>
+++ STARDATE 2900
CONDITION RED
QUADRANT 4,2
SECTOR 5,1
* ENERGY 3000
SHIELDS 0
PHOTON TORPEDOES 10
-=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=-
COMMAND 2
LONG RANGE SENSOR SCAN FOR QUADRANT 4,2
-------------------
| 008 | 001 | 003 |
-------------------
| 007 | 101 | 008 |
-------------------
| 114 | 003 | 008 |
-------------------
COMMAND 0
COURSE (1-9) 8
WARP FACTOR (0-8) 5
118 UNIT HIT ON ENTERPRISE FROM SECTOR 2,2
(0 LEFT)
THE ENTERPRISE HAS BEEN DESTROYED. THE FEDERATION WILL BE CONQUERED
THERE ARE STILL 19 KLINGON BATTLE CRUISERS
YOU MUST DESTROY 13 KINGONS IN 30 STARDATES WITH 5 STARBASES
COMBAT AREA CONDITION RED
SHIELDS DANGEROUSLY LOW
-=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=-
* STARDATE 3200
* +++ CONDITION RED
<*> QUADRANT 4,4
* SECTOR 6,4
* ENERGY 3000
SHIELDS 0
* * PHOTON TORPEDOES 10
-=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=-
COMMAND 2
LONG RANGE SENSOR SCAN FOR QUADRANT 4,4
-------------------
| 006 | 001 | 007 |
-------------------
| 008 | 106 | 002 |
-------------------
| 002 | 016 | 007 |
-------------------
COMMAND 0
COURSE (1-9) 5
WARP FACTOR (0-8) 3
273 UNIT HIT ON ENTERPRISE FROM SECTOR 5,3
(0 LEFT)
THE ENTERPRISE HAS BEEN DESTROYED. THE FEDERATION WILL BE CONQUERED
THERE ARE STILL 13 KLINGON BATTLE CRUISERSThis game is very difficult, as you need to hunt for Klingons, navigate around and so lots of actual calculations to work out how to navigate as well as aim torpedoes. For such an old game, there is a surprising amount of detail in it, with enemies that attack you, systems that break, scanning and even a built-in calculator for torpedoes.
Your systems breaking are completely random, though, and something like your warp drive breaking can render a playthrough unwinnable as you won’t be able to find a starbase in time. Even without any damage, navigating around is very difficult as you need to set a direction and speed, and take into account both sector and quadrant locations.
Despite all this, there’s just something that’s a lot of fun about trying to do all this with such basic input, having to figure it all out yourself. It’s a fascinating game and it’s definitely impressive for what it was originally made for.
Star Trek (1971, Bill Peterson)
- Original Release: 1971
- Developer: Bill Peterson
- Publisher: Self-Published
- Version Played: Version 32-9, modified by Don Daglow & James Underwood
A much lesser known Star Trek mainframe game, written in a form of BASIC used by the CDC 6000. Wikipedia credits Don Daglow with this. While he did revise it in 1972, the credits in the code say that it was originally made by Bill Peterson from Cal Tech.
This Star Trek game describes what it happening through dialogue with Spock, Uhura, Sulu and Chekov, with you entering commands to defeat enemies.
Each time you play, you get a slightly different story, all of them will lead to a battle against single enemy. You have to give commands (by typing numbers from a list of options) to position yourself, fire phasers/torpedoes and try to defeat the enemy.
By moving and using sensors, you’ll be given the position and bearings for both you and the enemy. It’s extremely difficult to use the coordinates to figure out where you are in relation to the enemy, as well as which direction you’re pointing and which weapons you can use.
If you sustain enough damage, Spock will mutiny and flee the area. I’ve seen this section of text a lot. The only time I won was by not fighting, but instead boarding the enemy ship.
There are a lot of ship names that are generated by the speed, I like that the seed number 47 gives you the Enterprise – a complete coincidence as the use of the number came about much later.
Star Trek (1972, For-Play)
- Original Release: 1972
- Developer: For-Play
- Publisher: For-Play
- Platform: Arcade
- Version Played: PC port of Computer Space
The first commercially released Star Trek game. Not only was this not officially licensed, but it’s also a clone of another arcade game called Computer Space. The only difference is that the controls are slightly reworked to use a joystick instead of buttons. As there’s no way for me to play the Star Trek version, I played a PC port of Computer Space as it’s the same game.
The game works exactly the same as the later and much more popular game Asteroids. Spin the ship around, use thrust to move and shoot. The aim is to destroy the two enemy ships more times than they destroy you. The game only lasts a couple of minutes.
Super Star Trek
- Original Release: 1973-1975
- Developer: Mary Cole, David Ahl, Bob Leedom
- Publisher: Self-Published
- Platform: Basic-Plus
- Version Played: Direct LUA port by Emanuele Bolognesi
Super Star Trek is the first major enhancement of the 1971 Star Trek game. This makes the game much easier to decipher, with some information given via dialogue from the crew, and generally making everything much easier to visualise and making actions easier to perform. Permission was even supposedly given by Paramount to use the name Star Trek.
The regions are given names, and the icons for the Enterprise and Klingons use letters to help distinguish them better. That said, the game is still difficult, losing access to some functions is still a major hazard – I even lost access to damage control in one playthrough.
Super Star Trek is a really nice version of the original Star Trek game.
