- T R E K 7 3 -

TREK73 is one of the earliest computer games ever written. Originally programmed in HP 2000 BASIC by William K. Char and Associates at Wilson EDP in San Francisco, the game first appeared on November 26, 1973 — just four years after the original Star Trek television series ended its run.

The game was designed for HP timesharing systems and played on teletype terminals printing at 110 baud — roughly 10 characters per second. Players would sit at a clacking ASR-33 teletype, watching the paper slowly reveal the results of each tactical decision as the printhead hammered out text character by character.

Unlike the simpler "Star Trek" sector-grid games that were widely copied throughout the 1970s, TREK73 was a sophisticated real-time battle simulation. It featured directional shields, phaser tracking arcs, antimatter torpedo physics, probe weapons, multiple enemy AI strategies, and a full suite of diplomatic options including bluffs, surrenders, and ruses. The game ran across six chained BASIC programs (TREK73, TREK0 through TREK4) that shared state through COMMON blocks.

The program spread through the HP 2000 user community on paper tape and printed listings, eventually reaching universities and research labs worldwide. It was listed as "FOR AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY" — a tongue-in-cheek nod to its addictive nature among the programmers who discovered it.

This PHP conversion faithfully recreates the original gameplay while adapting it for modern web browsers. The teletype-style display, character-by-character text output, and command structure remain true to the 1973 experience.