Do you remember the strategy game Super Star Trek? No? No wonder – after all, the game dates back to 1978 and is therefore already 45 years old. Very few of you were probably already sitting in front of the PC or even born back then.
A fan has now given the game an elaborate remake that you can play in your browser for free. And if you should still know the original, you will definitely not recognize it.
This is how Super Star Trek has changed after 45 years
What was Super Star Trek anyway? The game from 1978 is a relatively simple strategy game. You steer the Enterprise through different sectors, between which you can move freely via warp.
In the sectors you scan with the long-range scanner to locate ships of a Klingon invasion fleet. They all want to be destroyed before time runs out and the Klingons can reach their goal.
During battles, you can raise your shields, fire on your enemies with proton torpedoes and phasers, and always have to keep an eye on your energy reserves.
Actually, that sounds like pure Star Trek feeling – if it weren’t for the graphics. There isn’t, because Super Star Trek is a purely text-based game, as you can see in the following screenshot:
Programmer Emanuele Bolognesi’s remake is much prettier: He took the fleet screen from the 1992 adventure Star Trek 25th Anniversary and merged it with the ancient strategy game.
Navigation across the map is always in ASCII look, but you can now trigger most actions by clicking on the appropriate crew members, for example.
You talk to Sulu for warp speed and you give Spock the appropriate command for a scan – and the whole thing is even set to music because Bolognesi included short audio snippets from the TV series with William Shattner and Leonard Nimoy.
If you want to play it yourself – open Itch.io you can do this completely free of charge directly in the browser. But there is also a free download.
If you want to discover even more Star Trek games: just a few weeks ago we published our big ranking of the best games in the popular sci-fi universe. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s adventure, strategy or a first-person shooter – real Trekkies are guaranteed to find the right game for a few nostalgic hours with the crews of Enterprise, Voyager, Deep Space Nine and Co. in this list.
