Trek73 | PC (1973) Gameplay

TREK73 is a computer game based on the original Star Trek television series. It was created in 1973 by William K. Char, Perry Lee, and Dan Gee for the Hewlett-Packard 2000 minicomputer in HP Time-Shared BASIC. The game was played via teletype. Trek73 is so big that it needs the CHAIN feature of HP2000 BASIC.

Unlike many other Trek-themed games of the era, Trek73 is not derived from the well known Star Trek by Mike Mayfield. Trek73 simulates multi-ship starship combat in a smaller play area and does not include the more strategic elements of the original, like starbases and the galactic map layout.

Like most BASIC programs from the 1970s, there are dozens of minor variations on the original. Dave Korns adapted the code to support smart terminals, using the cursor control characters on the Hazeltine 2000 to produce an in-place updating display. In the mid-1980s, Dave Pare and Chris Williams translated the original BASIC version into C and Jeff Okamoto, Peter Yee, and others corrected and enhanced the source code. These versions are widely available for Unix-like and DOS operating systems.