What I find amazing about these is that so many of these clones actually used the name "Star Trek" with impunity.
Fairly sure I only ever played two of these - the DK'Tronics one and Startrek Adventure. Can't remember which I played first, but I know I went into the second thinking "hopefully this one will be a bit more impressive..." but, no...
I'm still sad about the cancelled Spectrum version of Rebel Universe...
Only one I've played is the Mikro-Gen one, though I never knew it was originally from MG as I bought the budget re-release on Atlantis - one of my most-played games back in the 80s and one I still return to regularly now.
Tan Coul wrote: ↑Sun Aug 27, 2023 11:46 am
Only one I've played is the Mikro-Gen one, though I never knew it was originally from MG as I bought the budget re-release on Atlantis - one of my most-played games back in the 80s and one I still return to regularly now.
And until today I never realised it wasn't an original release from Atlantis - interesting that they not only changed the name and title screen, but also the author - now I realise it was actually written by the estimable Derek Brewster, its quality makes much more sense than it did all these years as a £1.99 release on a lower-grade budget label.
You know, this is starting to intrigue me - it is obviously the same game with just the title screen and alien name changed*, yet the Crash review in Issue 9 treats it as an original and credits John Green as the author, at a time when Derek Brewster himself was on their staff... the other magazine reviews also take it at face value as an original release as well.
*Trying to play the Mikro-gen version I've noticed a couple more changes; the control commands have been changed, and - and this is quite important - the commands for the Atlantis version are listed in the inlay, which does not appear to be the case for the Mikro-gen version. Between them, this makes the Mikro-gen version unplayable until the commands are deciphered and so far I've not got beyond WA for Warp. Despite this, the introductory screen, sounds and the movement for that one command are enough to 100% confirm that the actual game and gameplay are unchanged beyond these peripherals.
First version of this game i played was on a 4k PET around 1979 or so. Never played a version on the Speccy, but most of them look faithful enough.
I don't have anything cool to put here, so i'll just be off now to see a priest with yeast stuck between his teeth and his friend called Keith who's a hairpiece thief...
I'll admit I'm not really a Trekkie and the only one I've played is the version by UTS, which gets my vote by default, although I do realise that I'm probably doing the other ones a disservice by voting for a game that I only came across via the Cassette 50 compilation.
I've also noticed from the screenshot of the Mikro Gen version that the enemies look suspiciously like Tie-Fighters, so that's two copyright infringements for the price of one.
I don't have anything cool to put here, so i'll just be off now to see a priest with yeast stuck between his teeth and his friend called Keith who's a hairpiece thief...
