Star Trek (1971 video game)

Star Trek
Star Trek running in a Linux command terminal
Developer(s)	Mike Mayfield, Bob Leedom
Platform(s)	Mainframe (Sigma 7, HP 2000C, Data General Nova) PC (multiple)
Release	Original 1971 (Sigma 7) Oct 20, 1972 (HP 2000C) Super Star Trek 1974 (Data General Nova)
Genre(s)	Strategy game
Mode(s)	Single-player

Star Trek is a text-based strategy video game based on the Star Trek television series (1966–69) and originally released in 1971. In the game, the player commands the USS Enterprise on a mission to hunt down and destroy an invading fleet of Klingon warships. The player travels through the 64 quadrants of the galaxy to attack enemy ships with phasers and photon torpedoes in turn-based battles and refuel at starbases. The goal is to eliminate all enemies within a random time limit.

Mike Mayfield wrote the game in the BASIC programming language for the SDS Sigma 7 mainframe computer with the goal of creating a game like Spacewar! (1962) that could be played with a teleprinter instead of a graphical display. He then rewrote it for the HP 2000C minicomputer in 1972, and it was included in Hewlett-Packard's public domain software catalog the following year. It was picked up from there by David H. Ahl, who ported it with Mary Cole to BASIC-PLUS and published the source code in the Digital Equipment Corporation Edu newsletter. It was republished with other computer games in his best-selling 101 BASIC Computer Games book. Bob Leedom then expanded the game in 1974 into Super Star Trek.

Ahl left DEC and started Creative Computing magazine in 1974. He began porting the games from 101 to Microsoft BASIC, with the exception of Star Trek, where he ported Leedom's version rather than Mayfield's original. The result was released in 1978 under the new name BASIC Computer Games, just as the first microcomputers able to run the game were coming to market. BASIC Computer Games went on to become the first million-selling computer book, and versions of the game were available for almost all personal computers of the era. Additionally, dozens of variants and expansions were made for a variety of other systems, based either on Leedom's or the original Mayfield versions.