To boldly go where no man has gone before – crammed into 8k BASIC program. There have been many Star Trek games on mainframes before the advent of the home computer. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first Star Trek game written as a text adventure for home computer systems. Trek Adventure was written by Bob Retelle and published by Aardvark. The game was developed for the Ohio Scientific computer (OSI) as well as the TRS-80, 16k TRS-80 Color, Timex/Sinclair, VIC-20 13k, PET and Commodore 64 too. I played the Commodore 64 version.
Two word commands are recognized and dealing with the parser was a bit of a wrestling match. I am a huge Star Trek fan so I was very excited to finally sit down and play this game. I have to say that I found a large divergence with this game. On the one hand, if it stands by itself, it’s actually a very good game with a great plot. You have to remember most text adventures in this time period followed a classic text adventure trope: find and collect the treasures scattered throughout the game and store them in a particular area. This game provides you with a good problem surrounded by a good story outline and there are specific things you have to do in order to win the game. A far cry from the usual treasure hunt. However on the other hand, this felt like a Star Trek game by title only. There were some colorful window dressings scattered about the ship such as the Saurian brandy and tricorder as two examples. Even Spock’s position on the bridge was detailed yet you couldn’t interact with Spock in any way. So to make myself clear; you’re not going to find or interact with any Star Trek personalities in this game nor take the role of a major character. You’re merely an officer on the ship. You’re better off judging this game by it’s own merits rather than as a part of the venerable Star Trek franchise. I can appreciate the nod to the series here though.
When you play the tape on the bridge you discover the ship has been badly damaged from a freak ion storm and the computer wants the crew to abandon ship by way of the shuttlecraft.
The map is rather small but a great representative layout of the typical Enterprise. You’ll eventually find a Transporter Room as well as Engineering. What makes this game very difficult is your inventory management. There are many red herrings to be found in this game that merely act as window dressing. Through much trial and error you’ll discover that you only need a very small sample of all the items you’ll find. The other difficulty is the parser itself. Remember they had to pack this entire game into 8k. So much of the time I had a good grasp of what I needed or wanted to do but I had to play “parser wrestlemania” quite a bit until I found what worked.
You move about the three levels of the ship by way of the turbolift. The uppermost level is the bridge while the middle level is where you’re going to do most of your mapping and exploring. The lowest level is where the shuttle bays can be found and they are your access out into space to repair the ship.
Once you find the auxillary control room on the middle level your problem is outlined for you.
You apparently need to repair or replace the magnatomic valve. Luckily you’ll find a spare in the Supply Room just off Engineering. This brings us to our first big puzzle of the game.
You will discover that in order to get into the Supply Room or the Armory that you will need an ID Badge. I initially did not find any kind of ID Badge until I typed in LOOK UNIFORMS while in the Gym area. Once you look at the uniforms you’ll discover that they have pockets. If you then type in LOOK POCKETS you’ll find an ID Badge. However using the ID Badge is where I started to really wrestle with the parser. In order to get into the Supply Room for example, you need to PRESENT BADGE and then the door will open and you can go into the room. Inside this room is a spare valve that you will need in order to repair the ship. When you enter the room; the door closes behind you. Once you have procured the valve, you’ll discover that you can’t open the door and that your ID Badge is now missing. I thought at first that I must need multiple ID Badges and set about searching the ship to no avail. Then I realized that this is an error or parser issue. When you type in PRESENT BADGE it is also synonymous with dropping the badge. So each time you have to PRESENT BADGE in the game you have to turn around and pick it up again. I was really beating my head against the wall with this issue for quite awhile.
A second issue which arose involving the parser was near the end game. There are actually two different spacesuits that you’ll find. One spacesuit has limited oxygen and therefore you have a limited number of moves with it. You have to use your limited oxygen suit to get to a locker and acquire a second suit that has no oxygen limitations as well as magnetic boots for walking on the hull. You need to get those items and get back to the airlock so you can switch suits. There is a very specific sequence you’ll have to master or you’ll die each time. I had no save game feature either and so I died many times until I got it just right. I had to start the game all the over again each time too which required the patience of a Saint.
Once I had both suits in my possession the game/parser had a terrible time distinguishing between the suit I wanted to drop and the new suit I wanted to put on. It was infuriating and this led to two more deaths. I finally figured out that I needed to go into the turbolift and remove the first suit then come back out and don the second suit so the game didn’t confuse the two. I thought the entire situation a bit unnecessary. I was eventually able to REPLACE the broken valve and then I made my way back to the Auxiliary Control room.
I pressed the engine firing button and received the following message up above.
I liked that this game did not fall into the classic text adventure trope of finding and collecting treasures. It had an interesting plot and a specific problem of having to repair the ship. The game’s difficulty was in the inventory management as there were a lot of items that you came across that were not necessary to complete the game however you could only carry just a few items. I appreciated the attempt to tie the game to the Star Trek universe however I thought the ties very tenuous. The game is good enough to stand on it’s own and I would have had more enjoyment with it if it were not for a couple of the parser issues.
If you want to play the game and experience it for yourself you can do so HERE.
For my next foray I’m heading to the fog shrouded woods of Transylvania to explore an old castle in the game; Vampire Castle. Hmm….I wonder what I might find in such a castle?