David Ahl translated Mike Mayfield's code to DEC BASIC and then with Mary Cole, to BASIC-PLUS for RSTS-11 in 1973. The program was published in the first edition of 101 BASIC Computer Games under the name SPACWR (Space War) and various people translated that, in turn, to other versions for other DEC machines and operating systems. Bob Leedom upgraded this version, adding things like the damage and status reports, galactic quadrant names, and a more powerful library computer, while he was porting it to Data General's NOVA. Ahl called this extended version "Super Star Trek", and published it in the "Microcomputer Edition" of BASIC Computer Games, published by Creative Computing in 1978. It was converted to MicroSoft 8K BASIC (notice the capital 'S' in MicroSoft in those days) by John Borders; the version below under the name "startrek.txt" is almost identical.
Recently I had some email from Aron Insinga, who'd found this page, and he was able to give me some interesting information about his version. Although it's contemporary with David Ahl's, it's derived directly from the HP version, and he didn't see Ahl's version until later:
Back in the 1970s there was a computer center in Delaware that was used by the high schools in the state and was staffed by students. We had the 2nd RSTS-11 system that DEC sold. Kids were using the Project DELTA Teletype and DataPhone at their school to make long distance calls to a time-sharing system at the HP facility in Avondale, PA. They were using the system for hours to play this Star Trek game and the phone bill was a big problem. I was told that it would help a lot if I could get it to run on our RSTS-11 (PDP-11/20) system at Project DELTA.
Aron described how he modified the program to fit in 8K (it would normally need about 24K), and some of the other things he worked on as a high-school student. His version of Star Trek was RSTS-11-20, only the 20th program published by DEC for the RSTS operating system. Later he went to work for DEC.
There's a good writeup of the early history of this line of Star Treks and how the "Super" came to be added to "Star Trek" at Maury Markowitz's webpage.
Lynn Cochran adapted a member of this family in February 1976. It was published in SCCS INTERFACE in June '76, and was the version most MITS Altair 8800 users knew. It had fewer commands - lacking a damage report and shield control - but with MITS 8K BASIC, it would run in 12K bytes of memory. This SCCS INTERFACE listing was in turn slightly modified by Dr. Li Chen Wang to create a slightly smaller version (published in the Peoples Computer Company journal, July 1976) for his Palo Alto TINY BASIC (published in Dr Dobbs Journal, May 1976). This used words (well, letters) instead of numbers for commands, and achieves the impressive feat of fitting both the interpreter (1.77K bytes) and the program (just over 6K) into a machine with only 8K memory! A different, even smaller, version for use with Bruce Sherry's version of TINY BASIC manages the same feat.
Another adaptation of Mike Mayfield's program appeared as STTR2 on the Univac 1100, and was then ported by Ralph Hopkins to Processor Technology's Sol-20 microcomputer using BASIC/5,. In 1978, this evolved into GALAXY with more ships, more enemies, and a 10 x 10 grid, and then around 1982 into COMBAT with still more sophistication (no more grids), both for Sol-20 Extended Cassette BASIC.
Processor Technology's own TREK80, dated 1977, was coded in 8080 assembly language. It's particularly notable because it includes sound effects, obtained by placing an AM radio near the computer, to pick up the electronic "noise" from the machine.
Meanwhile, of course, other people had made other modifications, or started with different sources - Mike Mayfield wasn't the only or even the first person to write a Star Trek program. Bob Bishop, who later wrote APPLEVISION, the first ever Apple HiRes graphic game (Rocket Pilot), and several others, had heard of Star Trek games but never played any when he wrote APPLE STAR TREK for the original Apple computer (which we now often call the "Apple-1") in late 1976. It was published in Interface Age (commercial successor to SCCS INTERFACE) in May 1977, just a couple of months before the Apple ][ became available.
One notable lineage originated with William Char and friends at City College of San Francisco and passed into circulation as TREK73 from Lawrence Hall of Science, UC Berkeley. You can find later versions of this around the 'net, written in C, but the original was in BASIC; in fact, the same HP 2000C BASIC used by Mike Mayfield. 30 years later, almost to the day, I've re-typed TREK73 from a 45-page listing, kindly donated by Kermit Murray.
TREK73 begat a C version (for UNIX), which begat an MS-DOS port around 1985. Those, and other programs, almost certainly influenced the development of the multi-user TREK83; somewhere along the line we got Xtrek and Netrek, but I was never so interested in those.
Star Trek games appeared in many languages, and have remained popular to this day. For example, John Thingstad faithfully copied David Ahl's version from BASIC Computer Games, but in LISP. Other modern versions exist in the form of Java applets, Z-code, programs for the Cybiko, Palm Pilot, Sharp Zaurus, and many others.
Here are listings of two dozen versions, written in BASIC:
| STTR1 | Mike Mayfield's original HP BASIC (extracted from HP tape image), 1972 |
| spacwr.bas | converted to DEC BASIC (with MAT statements) by David Ahl, 1973 |
| strtr1.bas | DEC BASIC-PLUS, probably from David Ahl, Part 1 (instructions) |
| strtrk.bas | DEC BASIC-PLUS, probably from David Ahl, Part 2 (the game) |
| spacwr.ba | OS-8 BASIC conversion for PDP-8, by Kay Fisher, about 1973/4 |
| spacwr.in | text file: instructions for spacwr.ba |
| TREK.BAS | adapted for RSTS-11 BASIC, by Aron Insinga, Project Delta, 20-JUL-73 |
| TREK.DOC | text file: Instructions for TREK.BAS |
| UT-trek.basic | Hicks & Korp extended version for TAURUS, from UTexas, 5 April 1973 |
| BIGMES.orig | HP 2000 version (paper tape punched by Doug Quebbeman, 1976) |
| startrek.bas | Lynn Cochran's version, common on Altairs, 1976 |
| instr | text file: instructions for Lynn Cochran's version above |
| STARTREK.BAS | A particularly small version (6K) for Palo Alto TINY BASIC, 1976 |
| STARTREK.DOC | text file: instructions for the TINY BASIC version above |
| startrek.asc | An even smaller version (under 6K) for PATB 3.1, 1976 |
| tiny.doc | text file: Information to go with TINY BASIC 3.1 |
| trek15 | One of the "Super Star Trek"s, this one for Intellec MDS, 1976 |
| newgame4.bas | 3-dimensional version for a CDC 6000, V.1.1 April 06 1976 |
| newgame4.basic | As above but translated to PR1ME BASIC/VM |
| startrek.txt | BASIC-80 for CP/M (Microsoft BASIC), from Creative Computing, 1978 |
| sttr.bs5 | Ralph Hopkin's Sol-20 BASIC/5 version, late 1970s |
| COMBT.ECB | Ralph Hopkin's COMBAT for Sol-20 Extended Cassette BASIC, February 1982 |
| CMDS.ECB | Instructions for COMBAT |
| AppleStarTrek | Bob Bishop's Apple Star-Trek for Apple INTEGER BASIC, 1976 |
| AppleStarTrek.txt | text file: rules for Apple Star-Trek; retyped from a scanned copy |
| APPLETREK | INTEGER BASIC version for Apple ][, by W SANDER 1/11/78
(Has some machine code on the end) |
| Star Trek 3.3 | APPLESOFT version for Apple ][, author/date unknown |
| trek.bas | From Ensign Software, possibly for a Tandy Color Computer, 1982 |
| strek | BBC BASIC, an enhanced version for the BBC Microcomputer, about 1983 |
| GALAXY | A thinly-disguised AcornSoft version of Star Trek for the BBC Micro, 1982 |
| STREK | Exidy Sorcerer version, adapted from Practical Computing around 1980 |
| TREK73 | William K. Char's original HP 2000 BASIC version, 26-NOV-1973 |
Here are a few in other languages:
| startrek.c | Chris Nystrom's 'C' port of Mayfield-style StarTrek, 1995 |
| startrek.doc | text file: Instructions for Chris Nystrom's version |
| trek.tar.gz | gzipped tar file: Eric Allman's C version for Unix, 1993 (originally 1976) |
| trekdocs.tar.gz | gzipped tar file: documentation to Eric Allman's C version, as nroff source |
| spacwr.for | Mike Mayfield's version, DEC FORTRAN-IV, by Kay Fisher, 1974 |
| sttr.ftn | Mike Mayfield's version, CDC FORTRAN (author/date unknown) |
| startrek.exe | MS-DOS TREKWAR ver. 5.7, compiled Microsoft BASIC, by Stan Warman |
| TREK.PAS | VAX/VMS Pascal, from Don Kooker, 1988 |
| ctrek.cob | wow, a COBOL version! By Kurt Wilhelm, 1979 |
| trk80 | Processor Technology's TREK80. A binary file, but the Intel HEX is here. |
| trk80.pdf | PDF file: instructions for Processor Technology's TREK80 |
| startrek.lisp | John Thingstad's LISP version of David Ahl's Super Star Trek |
| startrek.files | Help, map, and pic(ture) files which accompany startrek.lisp |
| startrek | is like a simplified TREK73, written in IMP, an Algol-like language used at The University of Edinburgh (and elsewhere). Probably written by Dave Briggs circa 1974; rescued from oblivion by Graham Toal. |
| Palm Trek | for the Palm Pilot (with CBASPAD 0.84 or higher) by Michael Baker |
| ztrek.z5 | ZTrek, a Super Star Trek executable written in Z-code by John Menichelli |
| ztrek.inf | the ZTrek Inform source, ported from Chris Nystrom's C version |
| st.html | Super Star Trek as a Java applet, by Jim Bat, December 2003
Similar to TREK15, based on Star Trek 77 in FORTRAN |
| st.jar | Java Archive for Jim Bat's applet |
| StarTrek.doc.html | HTML document: instructions to go with Jim Bat's Java applet |
| sst | a Super Star Trek executable for the Sharp Zaurus, by Mark Hart |
| sst.doc | text file: instructions for Zaurus Super Star Trek
(actually Tom Almy's instructions for his Super Star Trek) |
Since I would hate to be accused of interstellar racism, I'm pleased to be able to provide at least one view from the other side of the Neutral Zone:
| romulan.bas | Command the RSS VINDICTAE. Author/date unknown. |
I have several other versions "somewhere":
It's amazing how many people wrote their own versions of Star Trek. To get an idea, take a look at the People's Computer Company Alumni Site, especially the page for the Games Archive.
Other places to find Star Trek listings and information include Maury Markowitz's Star Trek page, Chris Nystrom's Classic Computer Game: Star Trek page, the AI Attic, Kermit Murray's page which has links to other versions, and any number of sites you'll find if you search for "classic basic games", or any of the authors' names you see above.
Of course, there are loads of other games in BASIC for microcomputers, especially from the late 1970s and early 1980s, because that's when home micros were really taking off. I keep a small number online, not really a representative sample, but a somewhat random collection of games that I've been asked for, or which have interested me for one reason or another.