Star Trek (arcade game)


Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator is a space combat simulation arcade game based on the original ' television program and movie series, and released by Sega in 1983. It is a vector game, with both a two-dimensional display and a three-dimensional first-person perspective. The player controls the Starship Enterprise and must defend sectors from invading Klingon ships.
The game was presented in two styles of cabinets: an upright standup, and a sit-down/semi-enclosed deluxe cabinet with the player's chair modeled after the 's bridge chairs with controls integrated into the chair's arms.
Star Trek was ported to the Commodore 64, TI-99/4A, Atari 8-bit family, Atari 5200, Atari 2600, VIC-20, ColecoVision, and Apple II.

Gameplay

The game makes use of painstakingly synthesized speech, since memory costs at the time made the use of sampled audio almost prohibitive.
Unlike most arcade games of the time, the player is presented with multiple views of the play field. Throughout the game, survival depends on the player's ability to effectively use and manage shield energy, photon torpedoes, and warp energy. These are replenished by docking with starbases, which sometimes must be saved from destruction at the hands of the Klingons.
The control system for Star Trek employed the use of a weighted spinner for ship heading control, while a series of buttons allowed the player to activate the impulse engines, warp engines, phasers, and photon torpedoes. The phaser button was simply marked "fire." The warp button was deliberately placed farther away from the rest of the buttons, in order to force the player to reach for them in heated battle. The sit-down version of the game had convenient location of the warp button at the right hand thumb.

Reception

Electronic Games stated in August 1983 that "Star Trek is sure to be a top-grosser in the arcades this year. If you can squeeze through the crowd around the machine, you may never want to leave."
ANALOG Computing wrote in January 1984 that the Atari 8-bit version "sounds a lot like Star Raiders. Purists will shake their heads and say 'The first is always the best,' and in this case I must agree with them", adding that the arcade version was superior. The magazine concluded that "This incarnation of Star Trek probably won't impress a hard-core Atari computer gamer".
About 500 of these machines were given away as part of a promotion for Halfsies cereal in 1982/1983.