trek: The game that influenced a million others

I won’t spend too much time talking about trek. The game has been around since the practical dawn of the technology age, and if you haven’t played it yet, you’d do better to try it than listen to me yap about it.

You can get a feel for the history by reading about the different versions of the game on Wikipedia. And if you can believe that page, the earliest renditions appeared at some time in the 1960s.

First-time players might find trek a little obtuse. In most situations, you can enter a question mark and the program will list possible replies. Most helpful to the graphical generation will be the long- and short-range scans, which plot out where you are in the universe, and what’s there with you.

I won’t lie and tell you trek has managed to maintain its playability over 50 years; play it once or twice and you’ve likely seen all it can offer.

On the other hand, the importance of a program might not be felt in its own time. When you can brag of having written a program that spans over 50 years and makes its presence felt through generations of software, you can criticize. 😉

Oh, I almost forgot: Another classic from bsd-games.