Thanks Ben, good ol’ Dr. Dobb’s:)
Good spot! Here it is online at the Internet archive:
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Thanks Ed, hard to beat this ad. San Antonio. Possibly people associated with Datapoint?
Ahha! SWTPC GT-6144 + Sphere
FWIW, on Datapoint DecwarOrg Blog: San Antonio's Datapoint Corporation
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No.
Southwest Technical Products had a long history writing articles for electronics magazines and selling kits to build test equipment and audio components.
When home computing was starting, they got into the inexpensive video terminal business. This was their bit-mapped graphics product. Shortly afterward, they released a computer based on the Motorola 6800 microprocessor.
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Thanks Bill, good to know!
Excellent links, am going to explore this story further for sure.
I don’t know whether this fits in, but one noteworthy Star Trek is Star Trip on the Compucolor II. Basically the biggest game on the system.
Wikipedia says the game was called Star Trip, but I’ve only ever seen screenshots with the title “STAR TREK” - including in magazine ads. It’s also called “Star Trek” in the following video:
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Thanks Isaac, Star Trip is a fun name, have to remember that one haha!
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I had an email conversation with Mike Mayfield and Bob Leedom about 15 years ago:
The original Sigma 7 version was lost because they found out Mike had a hacked account and killed it (although I suspect it was simply a case of rotating the accounts end-of-semester). The HP version existed only because he hung out at the HP store to talk about his calculator and mentioned the program, which they asked him to port.
Basically everything that Ahl says, with the exception of spelling the name, is not true. It’s just stuff Mike made up because it sounded cool.
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Also worth noting the “script game” version became popular on the TRS-80 due to the Star Trek listing in the 1980 book “Announcing Computer Games”. It is not exactly the same but very close.
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Thanks Maury! Excellent. And note that the UCLA Sigma 7 where Star Trek was born was also the first ARPANET node - Dinosaur's Pen | UCLA’s SDS Sigma-7 computer. In 1969 this machine...
Ahha, and just fwiw, small correction here David Matuszek and Paul Reynolds took Mike’s ideas and wrote a new version in FORTRAN (BASIC is an offshoot of FORTRAN) on DEC machines called UT Super Star Trek, which they distributed via DECUS. Eric Alman (of Sendmail fame) then took the UT version and re-wrote it in C to create BSD Trek.
Dave and Paul and others (Rich Cohen) wrote their version in Fortran on the UT CDC 6600 around 1974. Interview with Dave here DecwarOrg Blog: Dave Matuszek Oral History Interview and videos of that on the Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/@decwarorg
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Are you including games that are very much like Star Trek, but don’t make specific reference for intellectual property reasons? If so, then perhaps Star Fleet 1: The War Begins should be considered. This links to the PC version, I believe it was originally published on the Apple II in 1984.
I played it on the Apple II. Loved it. (Also loved Wendell Sanders’ version.)
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Thanks Dave, good to know about that one for sure. Wonder if there’s any relation to the tabletop game, think it was called Star Fleet Battles maybe?
No relation to Star Fleet Battles.
Just one look at Star Fleet 1: The War Begins and it’s super obvious its mechanics are based on the Star Trek computer game.
In contrast, the mechanics of Star Fleet Battles are based on a naval board wargame Jutland.
Nor was the Star Trek computer game inspired by Jutland or any other board wargame. It was inspired by Space War, but with many things radically altered in order to make the game playable on a teletype. And of course adding the strategic map, stars, and starbases.
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There are a couple of reviews of Star Trek inspired games in the September 1984 edition of Creative Computing. There’s a review of Star Fleet 1 in that issue as well.
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Thanks Dave! Good to see, and happy to have a link to Creative Computing in Internet Archive now!
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