Star Trek (text game)

Star Trek
Developer(s)	Mike Mayfield
Designer(s)	Mike Mayfield
Platform(s)	SDS Sigma 7, HP 2000, Data General Nova
Release	1971
Genre(s)	Strategy game

Star Trek is a text-based computer game that puts the player in command of the USS Enterprise on a mission to hunt down and destroy an invading fleet of Klingon warships.

Written in BASIC, it was widely distributed and ported for many minicomputer and mainframe systems. This was aided with the publication of 101 BASIC Computer Games, which included the most widely played version, Super Star Trek. This version was relatively easy to port to Microsoft BASIC, and appeared on many of the early microcomputers throughout the 1970s. This version was included in BASIC Computer Games, propelling it to become the first million-selling computer book. Due to availability of the source code this version was ported to practically every minicomputer and later home computer system of the era.

In addition to being tied to the Star Trek subculture, popular with computer experts and programmers, Star Trek is itself a piece of hacker lore. In recent years it has been ported to different languages, platforms, and seen the replacement of the text-based display with a variety of graphical versions.

The game was non-graphical and was played out visually by printing each successive screen following each player command. On early machines this was printed to a printer, which resulted in a lot of paper being used. Smart terminals began to become widespread by the late 1970s, and the game was generally designed to refresh the screen with every command.

The game starts with a short text description of the mission, which required the Enterprise to fly through the galaxy and hunt down a number of Klingon ships within a certain time. Each game starts with a different number of Klingons, friendly starbases and stars, spread throughout the galaxy.

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