page_title: Star Trek (1971 video game)
section_title: Star Trek
hierarchical_section_title: Star Trek (1971 video game) / Development / Star Trek
caption_attribution_description: English: Teletype Corporation ASR-33 on display at the w:Computer History Museum.
context_page_description: Star Trek is a text-based strategy video game based on the Star Trek television series 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 in order to eliminate all enemies before running out of time.
  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! 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.
context_section_description: In 1971, Mike Mayfield, then a senior in high school, frequented a computer lab at the University of California, Irvine while teaching himself how to program. The lab operated both a SDS Sigma 7 and a DEC PDP-10 mainframe computer. The PDP-10 hosted a copy of Spacewar!, a multiplayer space combat video game developed in 1962 in the early history of video games. Mayfield had gained illicit access to the Sigma 7 at the lab and wanted to create his own version of the game for the system. Spacewar! required a vector graphics display, however, and the Sigma 7 only had access to a non-graphical Teletype Model 33 ASR teleprinter.
  Mayfield decided to create a game in the vein of Spacewar! that could be played on a teleprinter and brainstormed several ideas with his friends. As none of the group had much experience with computers, most of the ideas were unfeasible, but one concept he liked and thought was possible was a game based on Star Trek, then in syndication on television. The concept included the game printing a map of the galaxy and a map of the local star system, and phaser weapons whose attack power declined over distance. Mayfield began to program the game, creating a punched tape of the game at the end of each programming session and loading it back into the computer the next day. He worked on the game through the rest of the school year and into the summer after graduating.
  Later that summer, Mayfield purchased an HP-35 calculator and often visited the local Hewlett-Packard sales office. The staff there offered to let him use the HP 2000C minicomputer at the office if he would create a version of his Star Trek game for it; as the version of the BASIC programming language on the computer was different from the Sigma 7, he elected to abandon the Sigma 7 version and rewrite the program from scratch. He completed it on October 20, 1972, and the game was added to the HP public domain Contributed Program library of software as STTR1 in February 1973, with Mayfield attributing the game to Centerline Engineering, a company he was considering starting. It was also published in the People's Computer Company newsletter, and republished in their collection book, What to Do After You Hit Return (1975).
  David H. Ahl was an employee in the education department of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), and he also collected BASIC games and distributed them in the company's Edu newsletter. He and fellow employee Mary Cole ported STTR1 to DEC's BASIC-PLUS in the summer of 1973, with some additions, and he published this version in the newsletter. Ahl attributed the game to "Mike Mayfield of Centerline Engineering and/or Custom Data". In late 1973, he released the book 101 BASIC Computer Games, containing descriptions and the source code for early mainframe games and computer games written in BASIC. 101 BASIC Computer Games was a landmark title in computer games programming, and was a best-selling title with more than 10,000 copies sold—more sales than computers in existence at the time. As such, the BASIC ports of mainframe computer games included in the book were often more long-lived than their original versions or other mainframe computer games. He included Star Trek in the book as SPACWR, i.e. Space War.
caption: ASR-33 teleprinter computer terminal
exif: {"Image Make": "Apple", "Image Model": "iPhone 4S", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "6.1.3", "Image DateTime": "2014:02:02 12:35:44", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "204", "GPS GPSLatitudeRef": "N", "GPS GPSLatitude": "[37, 621/25, 0]", "GPS GPSLongitudeRef": "W", "GPS GPSLongitude": "[122, 93/20, 0]", "GPS GPSAltitudeRef": "0", "GPS GPSAltitude": "9435/2387", "GPS GPSTimeStamp": "[20, 35, 44]", "GPS GPSImgDirectionRef": "T", "GPS GPSImgDirection": "41746/4519", "Image GPSInfo": "594", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "890", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9209", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/24", "EXIF FNumber": "12/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "50", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2014:02:02 12:35:44", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2014:02:02 12:35:44", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "3237/706", "EXIF ApertureValue": "4845/1918", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "1768/513", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "107/25", "EXIF SubjectArea": "[1631, 1223, 881, 881]", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3264", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2448", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "35", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}