Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative

Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative was a Star Trek themed computer software game, designed for the Apple II Plus, Apple IIe, and Apple IIc. The game was also available for the Commodore 64, Macintosh and IBM PC. This text adventure was first published in 1985 by Simon & Schuster. The player assumes the role of Captain James T. Kirk. As Kirk, the player commands the actions of the Enterprise crew, as well as the Enterprise itself. The game was expansive and ambitious, but also very buggy.

The plot is based on the idea that Starfleet is replacing the Kobayashi Maru scenario with a new test based on a mission from the Enterprise logs. The player is supposedly testing this "Kobayashi Alternative Command Performance Evaluation" for a Starfleet admiral.

Reception

Computer Gaming World criticized Kobayashi for many bugs and poor documentation, while approving of the game's design and its portrayal of the crew. The magazine reported that version 1.1 for the Apple with improved documentation still had bugs, including a serious one when visiting Orna, and concluded "I cannot recommend it". In 2014 historian Jimmy Maher described Kobayshi as "a bizzarely original mutant creation, not quite like any other game I've ever seen", cited its many bugs and flawed parser, and criticized the box art as "one of the most blatant instances of false advertising of 1980s gaming". He concluded, "If ever a game justified use of the 'reach exceeded its grasp' reviewer’s cliché, it’s this one. The Kobayashi Alternative is unplayable ... the most hideously botched major adventure-game release of the 1980s, a betrayal of consumer trust worthy of a law suit".

External links

• Trek Core Gaming