Does anybody remember the classic “Star Trek” game from the 70’s? Or was that way before anybody’s time? 😛

I was playing around with DOSBox (more on that in a separate post) and was reminded of the game suddenly.

I recall playing a version on DOS back in 1990 (or 91) which had color graphics and more graphical controls than “Trek73” or “Super Trek”. The closest one I can find now is “EGA Trek” (see first screenshot) but I’m fairly certain that that wasn’t the one I played because the Main Viewer area in “EGA Trek” cycles through different graphics and I don’t remember that.

Also the game I played had long range and short range scanners which used up energy and that doesn’t seem to be a feature of “EGA Trek”.

Now that I’ve remembered the game, I really want to play that exact version again 😛

I’ve played “EGA Trek”, “VTrek” (second screenshot) and gone through a bunch of newer variations that people created on GitHub. But none of them have the same feel as the game I remember. If anybody knows of the game I’m talking of, please let me know?

I think part of the trouble is that back then they were all called “Star Trek” and that was it. So many variations by so many people.

In fact, I thought the one I liked might have been created in Turbo Pascal (for no reason I could think of) and almost went down another rabbit hole setting up Turbo Pascal just to re-create the game for DOS 😛

Then I realized that if I were to re-create it that I might as well do it in Swift or Flutter so that I can have it avaialbe on more platforms. Will I do it? I don’t know … I guess it depends on how badly I want to play the version I remember again 🙂

#Games #StarTrek #DOS #Memories #History
“EGA Trek” game screen showing …
“VTrek” game screen showing a b…

@virtualbri I’ve played it on an IBM System 36 (if I recall correctly) but that had monitors and didn’t print out to paper 🙂

Getting the output on paper would certainly be good way to preserve a game and since it was all turn based, I guess it wouldn’t really detract much from the gameplay ….

I saw a couple of versions which were real-time on GitHub and I hated those …. There was just so many enemy attacks before I’d even had a chance to think! I really liked the turn-based gameplay because it gave me time to think and figure out what I wanted to do 😛

@f I played the version of Star Trek I think you remember on a TRS80, probably the one your looking for, it was a remake from some earlier mainframe version.

https://youtu.be/lyaxjAoYwYs

@dantemercurio Thank you 🙂 I think this was the original “Trek73” (or a variation). I do remember this, but unfortunately, this isn’t the one I’m looking for 😞

The one I remember had color graphics and instead of using ASCII characters for the map, it had slightly more refined graphics — that might be why I think it might have been Turbo Pascal. No idea …

But on the other hand, this was over 30 years ago. So who knows? Maybe I’m just re-imagining things as my memory cells break down? 😛

@f I typed a version in on a PDP-8! Of course, it had few features, something like a grid of "How many Klingons in nearby quadrants?" And then a small grid with you, Klingons, and... Maybe mines? Planets?

@lobrien Yep 🙂 There were stars and planets and in some versions I believe you could send landing parties and visit the planets even. It seemed all magical back then to explore strange new worlds, though I’m not sure the game was advanced enough to have new civilizations 😛

I’m really tempted to try to re-create the experience in a modern context but I guess most people shy away from doing something like that because they know they’ll run into IP issues in using the Star Trek name. I guess you could always keep the game play but rename everything?

Ah, to have the time to do all this!