

(written from a Production point of view Real World article

Star Trek: Phaser Strike was a game cartridge produced for use with the Milton Bradley Microvision Handheld Game System. It was one of the first such games made for the system when it was released in 1979, the same year that Star Trek: The Motion Picture hit the theaters. It was also the first hand-held electronic game with a Star Trek theme.

The object of the game was to destroy the various Klingon "ships" (in reality, sets of block-like pixels ranging from one to four pixels in length) with your three "phaser banks", located along the bottom of the screen; one in the center (firing straight up), one in the left corner (firing diagonally up and right) and one in the right corner (firing diagonally up and left). Game settings allowed you to specify the size, speed and number of ships in each "attack" (round of play).

Apparently during the existence of the Microvision system, Milton Bradley's contract with Paramount ran out. The game cartridge continued to be produced, but was renamed simply Phaser Strike and re-released with new packaging that made no references to Star Trek. According to sources, some of the newer versions of the game were released in older boxes with the original Star Trek title. It was also released in Europe as Shooting Star, again with no references to Star Trek.