steve sparks

Arcade · 1978 classic

Super Star Trek

The 1978 BASIC game, rebuilt with a modern bridge. Hunt down every Klingon warship in the galaxy before the stardates run out, using the same rules, the same 8×8 galaxy and the same commands.

Captain
Stardate
–
Time left
–
Condition
–
Quadrant
–
Sector
–
Torpedoes
–
Energy
–
Shields
–
Klingons
–
–Tap a Klingon to aim · an empty sector to move

How to play
  • Destroy every Klingon warship before the time runs out. Crossing into another quadrant always costs a full stardate, however short the hop, so plan your route on the galaxy chart.
  • Aim: tap a Klingon to see the torpedo's path before you fire. A star in the way stops a torpedo.
  • Phasers split their energy across every Klingon in the quadrant and weaken with distance. The preview shows the damage range on each ship.
  • Move: tap an empty sector to move inside the quadrant, or a quadrant on the chart to warp there. The preview shows the energy and stardates it will cost.
  • Shields absorb Klingon fire. They take their energy from the main supply, so set them before a fight. Docking next to a Starbase refuels you, restocks torpedoes and lets the base crew repair damage.
  • Keys: arrow keys move a cursor on the focused sector view or galaxy chart, and Enter picks that square; T torpedo, P phasers, W warp, S shields, L long-range scan, D damage report, Enter confirm, Esc cancel. Prefer typing? Switch to Classic and use NAV, SRS, LRS, PHA, TOR, SHE, DAM, COM and XXX.
  • Your mission saves after every order. Come back any time to continue.
History

By his own account, Mike Mayfield wrote a Star Trek game in BASIC in 1971, as a high-school senior,1 and he finished an HP version in 1972 that spread through HP's program library.2 Bob Leedom expanded Ahl's version in 1974 into the game published as Super Star Trek, adding the three-letter commands and the named quadrants.324 David Ahl published it in BASIC Computer Games in 1978, and that listing is the one this game follows. See the timeline →

Sources

  1. 1Mike Mayfield (email to Maury Markowitz), “Star Trek,” Games of Fame, December 3, 2000, https://gamesoffame.wordpress.com/star-trek/ (accessed October 26, 2026).
  2. 2David H. Ahl, ed., BASIC Computer Games: Microcomputer Edition (Morristown, NJ: Creative Computing; trade edition New York: Workman Publishing, 1978). Cited at pages 157, 157–158.
  3. 3Mike Mayfield, Bob Leedom, and John Gorders, “SUPER STARTREK (BASIC listing, REM header lines 10–210),” BASIC Computer Games: Microcomputer Edition, ed. David H. Ahl, May 16, 1978, https://github.com/coding-horror/basic-computer-games/tree/main/84_Super_Star_Trek (accessed October 26, 2026).
  4. 4David H. Ahl, ed., 101 BASIC Computer Games (Maynard, MA: Digital Equipment Corporation, 1973). Cited at pages 200–201.
About this version

This follows the rules of Super Star Trek as published in BASIC Computer Games (Creative Computing, 1978), line for line: the same galaxy, courses, warp costs, phaser and torpedo formulas, Klingon fire, docking and repairs. A few bugs in the listing are fixed, such as the time limit going unchecked after some moves. Each rule and fix is documented against the original line numbers.

Before release it was played 2,000 times at each level by an autopilot, with no crashes and no games left without a way out. The autopilot wins about 90% of its games as a Cadet, 74% as a Captain and 47% as a Commodore.

A free, non-commercial tribute to the 1978 public-domain game. Star Trek and related names are trademarks of Paramount; this site is not affiliated with or endorsed by Paramount. All artwork here is original.