Captain’s Log, Stardate 3800.1
We have received orders from Admiral Turner at Starfleet Command, Priority One. A massive Klingon incursion into Federation space, led by General Gorrel, threatens Federation headquarters. We are breaking off our survey mission in quadrant Procyon IV to counter this invasion.
Captain’s Log, Stardate 3804.6
We have been fortunate that the Klingon incursion thus far has been within close range of our original position in quadrant Procyon IV. Within four days of the commencement of hostilities we have intercepted and destroyed six of the Klingon raiders, and we are about to engage a seventh in quadrant Betelgeuse I. Enterprise is at high alert, and I remain impressed at my crew’s ability to weather this tense situation. If we survive this, it is entirely due to their skill and professionalism, and every last member of my crew will deserve Starfleet’s highest honors.
Captain’s Log, Stardate 3817.2
The urgency of the situation has taken a toll on both the crew and the ship; morale suffered, supplies dwindled, energy reserves had fallen, torpedo stores were spent. The starbase in quadrant Antares II was fortunate in every regard, providing both a respite for my crew and supplies for my ship in the final leg of our desperate mission to stop the Klingons. May fortune ever be in our favor, for long range sensors indicate a Klingon flotilla of 3 ships in quadrant Vega II.
Captain’s Log, Stardate 3820.4
With less than five days remaining before the Klingon fleet arrives at Starfleet Headquarters, we faced our most difficult battle yet in quadrant Capella IV. Starfleet Intelligence indicated that only three ships remain of General Gorrel’s invasion fleet, and here we found two Klingon ships. We were able to dispatch the closer of the two Klingon ships with some fine work by Ensign Chekov and our torpedo control room, but the Klingon disruptor fire disabled our torpedo tubes. We returned phaser fire and destroyed the remaining Klingon ship, but the damage was done–Mister Scott estimates that repairs to the photon torpedo tubes will require at least 3 days. Fortunately, only one ship remains, and I am preparing to order Mr. Sulu to lay in a course.
Captain’s Log, Stardate 3821.7
Some fine work by Mr. Sulu at helm dropped us out of warp literally on top of the Klingon vessel, and a phaser blast dispatched the final Klingon ship menacing Federation space. Commendations to my entire crew for their sterling work during this galactic crisis. Now we will put into a starbase for repairs, if only to end Mr. Scott’s complaints, and, of course, much needed shore leave for my crew. And after that, a welcome return to our mission of galactic survey, boldly going where no man has gone before.
After looking at classic Star Trek games for the TRS-80 Color Computer, I did one of my periodic dives through source code and such online for the vintage Star Trek games. And so I began playing with J.K. Boyce’s Python port of the 1978 Super Star Trek game. The Emanuele Bolognesi Interplay-ed port is cool as hell and I recommend it, but there’s just something delightfully retro about playing the text-based game in a terminal window, and it plays through, start to finish, in less than ten minutes.
It is hard as hell. Sometimes there are ridiculous amounts of Klingons to destroy, sometimes there are too few Starbases for resupply, sometimes your warp engines conk out. There is nothing worse than losing your warp engines for 5 stardates and being barely able to move. But sometimes you get a starting scenario that’s just beatable enough, if everything goes right.
And the height, of coolness, of course, is playing Super Star Trek in an LCARS environment.
The BASIC code for the 1979 Super Star Trek is online — it’s in Boyce’s GitHub repository — and I tried loading it in the CoCo 3 emulator. The David H. Ahl/Bob Leedom code takes out as many spaces as possible — computers didn’t have a lot of RAM in 1978! — but the CoCo’s Extended Color BASIC can’t handle such packed code, and it kicks out syntax errors as a result. And when I fixed a few, just to see what would happen, it generated this insane scenario…
192 Klingons! 66 Starbases! Let’s work the math here. The game has 64 quadrants. (Yes, I know that is totally mangling the meaning of the word “quadrant,” but it’s what the game uses.) So that is an average of 3 Klingons per quadrant, and an average of at least 1 Starbase per quadrant. My guess it that whatever BASIC Ahl and Leedom used in 1978 parsed the RND() function in a different fashion than Extended Color BASIC did in 1986.
If I did get it to run, that would be a wild, wild game. Probably not unlike late stages of SEGA’s Star Trek Strategic Combat Simulator arcade game. (I never did beat that game. I could get up to level 6 regularly and into level 7 if everything went right, but there were just too many damn Klingons at those higher levels. I can’t imagine that anyone ever beat it.) Klingons everywhere, lots of chaos!
I probably won’t fix Super Star Trek for the CoCo…
Second star on the right, and straight on til morning. At least until I open a terminal and a fleet of Klingons invades the galaxy again, that is!