Stellar Track

Name:	Stellar Track
Company:	Atari
Model #:	CX-2619
Programmer:	Rob Zdybel
Year:	1980
Released?	Yes (Sears version only)
Notes:	Originally called Stella Trek and S3

Stellar Track is a port of the old text Star Trek game from 1971 by Mike Mayfield.  More specifically it's a port of the Super Star Trek version that was written by Bob Leedom which was based on Mike's original code.  In the original mainframe version you play the role of the captain of the Enterprise who must hunt down end exterminate all the Klingon ships in the galaxy.  When it was decided to port Super Star Trek to the 2600 some changes had to made due to copyright issues.  Klingons became generic aliens, the Enterprise became a generic 'Warship', and any hint of anything remotely Star Trek was expunged.  Thankfully the game doesn't actually need all these Star Trek story bits and plays exactly the same as generic space game.

So how does a complex all text space simulation make its way to a game system that has no dedicated text display?  It all began when programmer Rob Zdybel was hired into Atari to program for the Atari 8-Bit computers.  Unfortunately there were no openings in the Home Computer Division at the time so he was sent to the 2600 division to program games.  Since Rob was given no direction on what type of game to create and he had a love of old computer games he decided to port Super Star Trek to the lowly 2600.  Of course getting the 2600 to even properly display the game was going to take some major work.  To do this Rob used a interesting trick called "Venetian Blinds" that allowed the 2600 to display up to eight sprites per row (instead of the normal six) by alternating them between two sets of scanlines (four on one set of scanlines, and four on the other).  This gave Rob the characters he needed to properly display all the information in the game.  The only side effect of this technique is that the text isn't made up of solid characters but rather a series of lines with some minor flicker.

Upon starting the game the player is given a random number of aliens to destroy and a random number of Stardates to do it in.  If these numbers are not to the players liking, they can keep resetting the game until the desired amount of aliens and Stardates appears.  The player can also set the difficulty switches to tweak the difficulty level of the game.  The left switch controls the Phasor strength of the ship while the right switch controls the shield strength of the ship.  Once you've accepted your mission you will be asked to issue a command.  In Stellar Track there are seven different commands, most of which take up one of your precious turns and some energy (displaying the map and your status is always free).  The commands are as follows: Galaxy Map, Status, Photon, Phasors, Warp, SR Scan, and LR Scan.  The color of the screen will also indicate what is currently in your sector (Red=Aliens, Grey=A Starbase, and Green=Empty).

As your goal is to hunt down and destroy all the aliens, figuring out exactly where they are would be a good first step.  To do this, the player should start with a Long Range scan to figure out which quadrants of the galaxy the aliens are hiding in.  In Stellar Track the galaxy is made of up 36 quadrants (reduced from 64 in the mainframe version) each with 64 sectors each.  The Long Range Scan will show a 6x6 grid that represents the galaxy.  Your Long Range scanners will show information your current quadrant plus the surrounding quadrants as a series of two digits.  The first digit represents the number of aliens in that quadrant while the second digit lets the player know if there's a Starbase located in the quadrant (0=no, 1=yes).  The Long Range scan also shows your current location by quadrant and sector.

Now that the player knows some of the quadrants that have aliens in them, it's time to warp to one of them using the Warp command.  When the player selects Warp the game will ask for a course number from 1 to 8.  The course number represents a direction with 1 being straight up, 2 being the upper right, 3 being right, 4 being lower right, etc.  Once the player picks their direction they must also choose a warp factor.  The warp factor is made up of two numbers with the first being how many quadrants the player wants to warp and the second being how many sectors they wish to warp (for example 4,2 would mean 4 quadrants and 2 sectors).  Warping takes both time and energy so don't go joyriding around the galaxy (100 energy for each quadrant warped and 10 energy for each sector).  Jumping quadrants will take up a Stardate for each quadrant but jumping sectors will not use up any Stardates.

Ok so now the player has warped to a quadrant with hostile aliens, but we're still not quite ready to engage yet.  First the player must use the Short Range Scan to pinpoint where in the sector the aliens are.  Your Short Range Scan shows an 8x8 grid of sectors which represents the current quadrant.  The Short Range Scan will show exactly where any Aliens, Starbases, or Stars are.  The Short Range Scan doesn't use up any energy or Stardates, but any Aliens in the sector will get a free shot at you after you use it.

Now that the player has found the Aliens, how do they go about destroying them?  With Phasors and Torpedoes of course!  Your ship comes equipped with both the latest in Phasor and Photon Torpedo technology.  Phasors will deal damage based on a number of factors including how close the player is to the target and how many energy units the player puts into the Phasor blast (from 000 to 999) which in turn comes out of the ships energy pool (Aliens have 99 hit points each so plan accordingly).  If there is more than one Alien present in the sector that is being fired upon the Phasor energy will be divided up between the Aliens.  Photon Torpedoes on the other hand will instantly destroy an Alien when hit, but your ship only comes with nine torpedoes.  To replenish the ships torpedo stores the player must dock with a Starbase (more on that later).  One last thing to remember about Phasors and Photon Torpedoes is that the player must be directly within the ships line of sight and cannot be shot through a star or between quadrants.  Phasors do not require that the ship be directly lined up with the Alien to work.

Now would be a good time to bring up Starbases.  If there's a Starbase in your sector you may warp to it and receive 3,000 energy units and a new compliment of torpedoes.  There are always two Starbases in the galaxy and they are randomly placed at the start of each game.  Unlike in Star Raiders, Starbases in Stellar Track are indestructible, although you can still take damage from enemies when docked.  Speaking of damage, the player can bring up a detailed status report of the condition of the ship using the Status command.  The status report shows how many Stardates and Aliens are left, the ships energy stores, how many Photon Torpedoes are left, and the ships current location.  The status screen also shows the current status of the ships various functions such as Torpedo Launchers, Phasors, Engines, and Short and Long Range scans.  If any of these systems are damaged the status screen will show a negative number (such as -3) which indicates how many Stardates it will take until the system is repaired.   When a system is damaged that function cannot be used.  Engines are a special case.  To fix damaged engines the player must issue the Warp command for the same number of quadrants as Stardates needed to repair the damage (the ship won't actually warp when doing this).  So if the engines had a -2 next to it the player would have to issue a Warp 2,0 command to fix it.  When the engines are damaged the ship cannot leave the quadrant but can still move around the current quadrant.

The game ends when either the player runs out of energy, runs out of Stardates, destroys all the Aliens or is destroyed by the Aliens.  Unlike with Star Raiders there is no ranking given at the end of the game.  Although Stellar Track was originally planned to be released by Atari (possibly under than name Stella Trek), it ultimately given to Sear for their Tele-Games label as one of three exclusives.  This was part of the deal Sears made with Atari when it agreed to start distributing their games under it's own label.  While Stellar Track was vastly overshadowed by the flashier action games of the time, it remains one of the few true strategy games on the 2600.  Stellar Track is a little slow paced, but worth a try.  Think of it as an all text version of Star Raiders.

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