CGA Trek

[classyk]

Hello!
Does anyone remember EGA Trek from around 1990 on PC/DOS? You captain a starship and go around the galaxy (an 8x8 grid) fighting enemies and docking at bases.

I played it a lot as a kid. I never knew it was a variation of a game that had been going around since 1971 called Star Trek. I've been doing a lot of reading up on it and it's interesting! Because it was mostly a hobbyist game that spread via printed copies of the code there is no canonical version of "Trek", just dozens, if not hundreds, of versions for most computer types of the 70s and 80s.
Anyway, as kind of deep dive and homage I have made my own entry, called CGA Trek (itch.io). It's a pretty faithful recreation of the gameplay but with a few modern twists and accessibility tweaks.

How is CGA Trek different to EGA Trek? Instead of an excessive 16 colours this one uses only tasteful magenta and cyan. And instead of 640x350 wasteful pixels, CGA Trek is in glorious 320x200.

Anyway, I've included a brief history of the genre on the game page, I hope people find it interesting or it at least gets them looking at EGA Trek again! If you have any stories about EGA Trek or one of the other versions (seriously it went EVERY WHERE), I'd love to hear them!

Luke Screenshot-2025-08-13-at-10.27.45-pm_cga_battle_email.png

[CaptainKal]

 I had an Amiga at the time, and never encountered it, until I switched to PC, in 1997!! I do not think anyone ported it to Amiga!!

[classyk]

Amiga gaming is in a dimension of its own

[CaptainKal]

@classyk I may try porting it some day!! I found myself with some more free time on my hands lately (retired after 35 years of service) and picked up a book about C++!! Although I would use AMOS for Amiga games!! And no I still haven't finished Liberation!!

[Pinback]

Nice write up of the game history.  
Same as CaptainKal never played the PC version of the game but remember playing two PD games on the Amiga, one of which was an unofficial port of the ST game Star Trek Rebel Universe which may have been based on an early version of the Star Trek game.

Also remember playing a Star Trek game on the Amstrad 8 bit computer with it's Ascll graphics.

[classyk]

I'm thinking of doing a bigger version of this... adding a 2nd act after you defeat all the enemies, letting people walk around the starbases, adding civilian ships... and putting it up on Steam... it's just the free version has got, like, 8 downloads. I wish it had come out in 1985! 

[CaptainKal]

@pinback No Amiga version, but I found one for the ST range of machines: 
[url]https://electric-dreams.itch.io/super-star-trek[/url]
@classyk do you mean your version, got only 8 downloads? 

[classyk]

[quote data-userid="162" data-postid="67527"]
@pinback No Amiga version, but I found one for the ST range of machines: 
[url]https://electric-dreams.itch.io/super-star-trek[/url]
[/quote]
Ah, I never thought of going all the way back to the David Ahl book BASIC COMPUTER GAMES from 1978. Brilliant. And they did a good job by the looks it with the high res.
[quote data-userid="162" data-postid="67527"]
@classyk do you mean your version, got only 8 downloads? 
[/quote]
Yep, CGA Trek --- can't give it away!

[classyk]

I have put this up on Steam (https://store.steampowered.com/app/4118300/CGA_Trek/) if any spacesimcentral folk want a code DM me
I've added other CGA palettes other than bright magenta and I'm thinking of adding new features like shields (but I can never promise future updates). It's a streamlined version of "the Trek game" (Super Star Trek, EGA Trek, Starkill, etc) instead of the definitive version.
The more I dug into the genre the deeper the waters got - black holes and radial coordinates and supply ships, etc. Trek is deceptively simple... the main games have a lot of complexity. Mark Moxon (who dissected the Elite code) should do some software archaeology on the 1970s versions!

[paledinsur]

oh yes