Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative (1985)

In 1985, Star Trek was experiencing a rebirth. The previous year saw Leonard Nimoy’s Spock literally experiencing a rebirth, and the next year would have Captain Kirk and friends giving humpback whales a second chance. Simon & Schuster decided to capitalize on wave of popularity, and release a text based adventure game for home computers called Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative. I was too young to get into that crazy Star Trek action in 1985, but there’s absolutely no reason I couldn’t give it a shot in 2017.

Text-based adventure games aren’t flying off the shelves these days, so Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative obviously needs to given some leeway. Like Khan Noonien Singh, it’s a creature out of its time. But even so, I was pretty stoked as soon as I loaded it up to hear a snippet of the Star Trek theme song utilizing the limited range of that on-board PC speaker. And that intro screen seems to be making a solid effort to take advantage of all available 16 colors.

The Premise

As the name suggests, Starfleet Academy is working to come up with an alternative test to the Kobayashi Maru exam. The replacement exam will be based on a real world situation the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise experienced. The Starfleet vessel U.S.S. Heinlein has gone missing in the 145 Trianguli star system, and Captain James T. Kirk will find out what happened.

After making its way to the system, the Enterprise engages in a battle with an unnamed alien species. The ship’s warp engines are down, and they’ll need to make contact with the inhabitants of the nearby planet Orna in order to get moving again.

The Gameplay

It’s pretty traditional gameplay for a text-based adventure utilizing the basic commands you would imagine. You get to type in the typical commands you’d hear on an episode of Star Trek like “scan the planet” or “Kirk to transporter room.” The information displayed on-screen is pretty contextualized displaying information that is relevant to where you are presently located. Here is what the screen looks like when you’re on the bridge:

There are small interface changes as conditions change. That box is red because my shields are currently up, and it will switch over to orange when I lower them. When you beam down to the planet, the game conveys a description typical of text-based games such as:

To the east: the eastern mountain range To the northeast: a narrow tunnel

We’ve uploaded a few minutes of game play from The Kobayashi Alternative for you to take a look at:

The Upsides

For a simple text-based game, it is able to impressively capture the feel of Star Trek: The Original Series. That cowboys in space flying by the seat of their pants attitude is apparent right out of the gate as Starfleet Command is warning you to adhere to regulations. We all know Kirk is going to adhere to whatever rules aren’t interfering with what he was going to do anyway. The game not only captures Kirk’s attitude effectively, but also the rest of the crew. This Simon & Schuster video game production is a much more accurate representation of the Star Trek characters than many of the novels they have released.

Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative is also surprisingly forgiving with typos. I’ve tried entering orbit around far more “plants” than I would care to admit. But the game navigating my ship over to the planet without shaming me is a thing I endlessly appreciate.

The Downsides

They made some odd choices in this game. Early on in the game, you encounter a little vessel. Spock tells you that “It would seem logical to try to scan or hail it.” Seems like you have a couple of choices, but the game doesn’t recognize “hail” as an option. If another command would accomplish the same task, I was unable to work it out.

I don’t usually play text-based games, and I haven’t played any such game for quite a few years. So it’s difficult to determine which parts of my difficulties are my fault versus the result of strange design choices. But more than once, I have typed something in that yielded unexpected and sometimes tragic results. I typed in “Beam down to the planet” and instead of beaming me down to the planet like I expected, the fella manning the transporter beamed himself down instead. On multiple occasions, I found myself on a planet’s surface without grabbing a communicator, meaning I was unable to get back to the ship.

Each game I played, I died the same way. Unfortunately, it’s a way that didn’t make very much sense in each of those times.

If you are on the planet Achir, I could understand why the Klingons blowing it up would kill you. But it doesn’t make much sense to have the simulation end this way if you’re elsewhere. Also, it’s not Starfleet’s style to be angry on how much money they spent on training. They don’t use money in the 23rd Century, man. Focus on the tragedy of my death, and not on archaic global economic systems that have gone extinct.

Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative Final Thoughts

This was a pretty interesting game, but I think primarily as a window into early Star Trek computer games. If you’re looking to wind down after a stressful day at work with a compelling video game? This probably isn’t going to be the one for you. But if you want to look at a snapshot of Star Trek’s evolution just a few years before it made its way back to television, Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative is definitely something Spock would refer to as “Fascinating.”

We give Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative 3 mics on our 5 mic scale: