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Visual Star Trek


From Wikipedia

Wikipedia:

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 copied to most home computers in the late 1970s when the Super Star Trek version was included in BASIC Computer Games, propelling its sales to become the first million-selling computer book. Versions for a wide variety of BASICs were available, as well as ports to different languages, platforms, and more recently, the replacement of the text-based display with a variety of graphical versions.

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.


Commodore's Commentary



 

Visual Star Trek

Visual Star Trek is, in my experienced opinion, the best Star Trek game ever made.

Yes, there are games with far greater complexity, the most recent probably being Star Trek Online.  However in terms of being a game about blowing up Klingons, no other version -- before or since -- has matched the sheer utility of Visual Star Trek.

My earliest experience with the Star Trek game was playing Super Star Trek on the University of Nebraska's mainframe via a double-wide teletype connected via acoustic modem.  It's not an exaggeration to say that this game is partly responsible for my lifelong interest in information technology.

Visual Star Trek:  all the features of the classic game combined with a useful EGA graphics interface.

Modern programmers take note:  this is the interface you should be copying.  I've played many GUI versions of this game, but this is the best by far.

Oddly enough, even in this day and age and with my Google-Fu, the author of this masterpiece remains unknown.

Running the Program

  • Unless for some bizarre reason you're still on DOS, you'll need DOSBox.  There are versions for virtually every platform.  Once installed, you can run vtrek.exe inside it.

  • If you're running Linux, don't use Wine:  that's severe over-kill.  It's faster and less complex inside DOSBox.

  • If you're running Android, it will run under aDosBox.  It's not pretty or even particularly functional:  but it runs.

Downloads

    ċ
    vtrek.zip
    (108k)
    William Stone,
    Sep 28, 2015, 10:31 PM
    v.1