Stellar Track (Star Trek): Atari Archive Episode 50

[@jezhy]

Happy Anniversary! For a Star Trek fan, what a journey it was!

[@BobLeedom]

IDIC, indeed! Incredibly wide-ranging research is on display here. This video took me back to the time of People's Computer Company (of Menlo Park, CA) and of Dave Ahl's "101 BASIC Games"--one could safely say that that was The Olden Days of personalized computing. (I remember reading a prediction in PCC's newspaper that someday you'd be able to walk into a computer store (!) and buy software for your home computer(! ). Preposterous thoughts at the time.) I had no idea the tendrils of Super Star Trek had gone so deep, and into so many other platforms and game variations. Also, I must admit a bit of pride in discovering that a few of my ideas/additions to Mayfield's program 45 years ago survived to become embedded into the workings of Stellar Track. It was a pleasure talking with you, Kevin, and I'm sure the community joins me in thanking you for preserving this history.

[@IsaacKuo]

"Board game version of Star Raiders" ... ah, the irony. BTW, I think the art at 26:26 was previously used as box art for Star Raiders (1979, original Atari 400/800 release). Okay, not a VCS game, but still ... it was kinda a more noteworthy Atari title. I'm not sure, but I think the influence of Star Raiders goes further than people think. The basic real time map and first person view paradigm would be the standard for flight sim type games. Admittedly the flight sim is less well known today, but it was really huge in the 1980s and 1990s.

[@jimbozitron]

I cannot give this series rnough credit. So much love and care is put into these videos and I learn so many cool things about a system I admire greatly.

[@MediaDog1]

Thanks for bringing back some great memories of both Star Trek (the game) and Stellar Track. I still have a paper tape roll printout of the source code of the Star Trek game for the PDP 11/70 RSTS system that I printed out while teaching myself Basic and working part time in the computer department at Humboldt State University back in 1975/76. Four years later I was working for Atari in Sunnyvale as a software product manager and later the product manager for the Atari 600XL and 800XL computers.

[@revjim123]

I used to play a Sega Star Trek arcade cabinet at my local arcade in the mid 80s, it was the same game in the vein of Star Raiders, but it had all the elements of the earlier Trek games. It was really good

[@Phediuk]

Holy shit this is thorough. Great work.

[@AtariArchive]

Star Trek deserves it!

[@beedwarf]

I just realized that the 'Stellar Track' player in this video earned the rank of Admiral; this is no easy feat; I once almost completed a perfect game, if not, for one little mistake... switching between commands cost me a turn; which the opponent took advantage of; knocking out one of my ship's systems, causing me to time out. Arrgh! >:( Took me several hours, only to lose everything in a single action. It was at this time, I knew this game was something special.

[@AtariArchive]

I got a very good seed!

[@beedwarf]

@@AtariArchive Oh, OK! :) You're the 'Stellar Track' player in this game! Congratulations! :)

[@mistertentpole]

You do such great research, original interviews, I love your entire series. Longtime sub.

[@The_Wandering_Nerd]

31:07 Aw yeah, EGA Trek was my introduction to the Star Trek game genre; I played that so much on my parents' 286 in the early 1990s. Imho that's one of the very best versions of the game, although it doesn't have the added appeal of making a system designed to play Tank and Pong do things it was never designed to do, like display entire pages of text

[@reagandow850]

Wow. I find your videos incredibly interesting. Thanks for putting so much work into these amazing videos.

[@sanguine111]

i loved this game when i was really young

[@absolutezeronow7928]

Very nice 50th episode. As a Trekkie, I loved this video and learning about the fan games of the 1970s and 1980s. And yes, IDIC is worth striving for.

[@CaptainRufus]

An utterly fantastic video.

[@SoulforSale]

deep

[@JVeg199X]

The fact that concepts and game mechanics used in Star Fox 2, X-Wing, Star Raiders, and many others can be traced back to a single game is absolutely amazing!

[@MattMcIrvin]

It's so puzzling that this one even existed in the way it did, and, I guess, a sign that they were really capable of thinking outside the box, for good or ill. I never actually played it or saw a physical cartridge back in the day, but I remember seeing it in the Sears catalog and wondering why anyone would even try to port the text-based Star Trek game to an Atari 2600, a platform obviously intended for an entirely different type of game (and why I'd never heard of an Atari release of it). It was after Star Raiders existed on the 8-bit computers and had become a favorite game of mine, so I knew where the genre was going. (That illustration with the TIE-esque ships in the Stellar Track manual was just the box art for 400/800 Star Raiders.)

[@TheRbushey1]

Love your page great info thank u for the hard work

[@PhilipHarwell]

Great episode! You’ve gained another subscriber.

[@mattstroebel4106]

This is far and away the best Atari series on KZbin.

[@beedwarf]

Finally! :) You make a good point about 'Stellar Track' resurfacing in a Atari compilation w/out any of the licensing issues that other Atari titles face; titles such as 'Superman', 'ET', 'Space Invaders' and 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' will never appear in such a compilation unless the owner has access to the original 2600 and the original game cartridge. That's the one advantage to NOT having a licensing deal. :) Great work, Mr. Bunch. :)

[@nate567987]

The 2600+ runs them as well

[@allenhuffman]

Two CoCo appearances in this one, and neither was a version I was aware of. Thanks!

[@pizzabagel3840]

Yet another wonderful video. Thank you for all of the hard work that you do.

[@mightymattd8822]

I'm always so impressed with these videos. Great job as always, so much background on this game I was unaware of.

[@Aeoringas]

Excellent video, thanks for making it. I played Star Trail, the Sinclair ZX81 port of the original when I was very young back in the early 1980's and it has stuck with me ever since. I had no idea they made a port of it on the Atari 2600, an amazing achievement.

[@smiskimins]

Wow thanks for this really well researched video! Despite how widespread and influential this game is, I had never heard of it! This is also a really good primer on early computer gaming, the methods of distributing games through books and allowing anyone to adapt and port it is so unlike what came after, it's super interesting to learn about! I really think there is a dearth of coverage on early computer gaming in the retro game space - it's rare enough to find stuff on 80s computer games, not to mention mainframe and teletype stuff, so I really appreciate you helping to fill this void!

[@donnierussellii4659]

Thanks for the history of the early Trek games. Somehow I never played the VCS port before. Some of the challenges of porting Star Trek bring back memories of working on a very basic homebrew port to Gameboy Advance, particularly dealing with limited number of buttons. Implementing it in some novel language is a good exercise for novice programmers.

[@AtariArchive]

Is that online anywhere? I’d love to see it!

[@donnierussellii4659]

@@AtariArchive Posting the link doesn't seem to work for me. You can just google agb_trek.

[@SameNameDifferentGame]

Fantastic work, as ever, Kevin!

[@jpbishi]

I never played this as a child. I would have been hooked as I played a lot of similar games on my c64.

[@MattPritchardOfficial]

The number of versions will never be fully counted. I added at least 2 versions of Star Trek for the TRS-80 myself. That may explain why I make computer games for a living today.

[@RT55J]

I love seeing the history of these sorts of pseudo-folkloric video game ideas. Absolutely incredible work.

[@mdoerty13]

Curious as to how/why this game (and the two others - Steeple Chase and Sub Commander) were Sears exclusives.

[@AtariArchive]

I do get into this on the Steeplechase video somewhat - according to Ron Stringari, who was VP of marketing at Atari, Sears always wanted exclusive merchandise and negotiated a few games out of Atari for it (plus Super Breakout as a timed exclusive). He did not remember why those specific games.

[@dpgreene]

Your videos are an academic work.

[@nate567987]

Fyi msx was not A computer but rather a spec for computers that could be linsend