I spent a lot of time playing this game in high school (ca. 1983). The description above says it pretty well: ASCII text graphics, sound effects consist of PC speaker sounds--but for all that, it makes the most of what it had to work with. The game takes place in real time (your enemies fire at you if you just sit there). Your ship's weapons consist of phasers, photon torpedoes, and anti-matter pods ("heavy artillery", as the manual says--they take out everything in their space and one space all around them). Your enemies are:

* Klingons - Weakest, easiest to defeat.
* Romulans - Tougher, do more damage, and move around a lot.
* Tholians (misspelled "Tholean") - Rare (one per game IIRC), and always alone in a quadrant with no other ships and no starbases. The ship demands you lower your shields as a sign of peace; if you do, or if you stay in the quadrant too long, it destroys you. You can leave, of course, but it will still be there; however, destroying the Tholian isn't necessary to complete the game. The only way to take out a Tholian is with anti-matter pods; the other weapons have no effect, even at point-blank range.
* Klingon Commander - Very rare, and very powerful, only appearing on the higher levels (Admiral and maybe Captain). This guy's very dangerous and can take you out if you're not careful. It's also been known to grab your ship while you're at high warp, and bring you to its quadrant in order to attack you.

The original game files don't run in GWBASIC, for some reason: it chokes on line 40800 of tmain.bas and trekdemo.bas. I've found the game runs if I simplify that line to

40800 TIME=VAL(MID$(TIME$,4,2))

in both files. If you're not up to modifying BASIC files on your own, email me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and I can send you a copy of the modified files. I also have a user's guide I wrote for the game (I can't find a copy of the manual anywhere).