Trekking Through Games: Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator

Star Trek has received at least one title on many video game consoles for last 40 years now. It’s a testament to the shows enduring legacy, as well as its fan base. These are fans who let the shows originality stir their imaginations and made them carry “The Final Frontier” into the world of video gaming only a few years after the show ended. Some of the earliest versions of Star Trek games appeared as text adventures shared on the early internet in BBS’s, or in the form of short games meant to showcase graphics rather than any kind of actual gameplay. Eventually though game designers and publishers knew a true game would have to be made.

In 1979 Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released thanks in part to Star Wars: A New Hope’s success two years earlier and the constant push by Star Trek fans to bring the show back.  Star Trek: The Motion Picture, although in retrospect hardly the best of the Star Trek movies, was groundbreaking in itself, and set new territory for both special effects and for Star Trek movies. You can click on the links to read my previous Trekking Through Games article about the movie.  Despite that it would take another three years before any kind of video game based on the movie was made. Star Trek: The Motion Picture would appear on the Vectrex in 1982, although arguably it had little to do with the actual film and more to do with facing off against show adversaries like the Klingons, and Romulans. Owning a Vectrex I can tell you both Star Trek: The Motion Picture and the sequel game Star Trek II  on the Vectrex are fun and even addictive games, that ramp up the challenge quickly, but again have very little to do with either Star Trek movie.

In 1982 Sega would release an arcade cabinet in both an upright and environmental form for a game called Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator. In its arcade form the game screen was broken into three split screens, the top left was dedicated to ships systems such as shield strength, photon torpedo count, and warp engines. The upper right was a map of the sector showing the nearest starbase, enemy units, and any asteroids that may appear. The third and biggest section was the entire bottom of the screen which gave a first person view from the Enterprise’s bridge viewscreen as you encountered starbases, enemies, and the like. Despite being a vector based game, there is a lot going on with the game's single monitor. The ship controls themselves are a lot like that of Asteroids with a button to thrust forward, but with a dial for side to side movement. Other buttons fired phasers, photon torpedoes, and raised the shields for brief periods. Although it wasn't exactly the kind of game one masters in the first sitting, it is a highly entertaining game that is easy to pick up with a little practice. Sadly though, not many of the arcade cabs of this game survived and the environmental version known as the “Captain's Chair” is even rarer than the upright. Luckily, the game received many home ports almost immediately and despite lacking the vector graphics most of these ports are fairly close to the arcade version.

If you know anything about what consoles and computers were on the market in 1983, than no doubt you can guess the systems Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator was released on almost like naming off a list of usual suspects. The Atari 800, 2600, and 5200, C64, Ti-99, ColecoVision, Vic-20 and the Apple II all saw ports of this game. In my collection I have four of these ports including all the Atari versions, and the Ti-99 version, and moving from system to system I have to say they are all pretty close to each other in gameplay.

The Atari 2600 port featured an odd overlay for the standard joystick

Basically, the game revolves around protecting your starbases from Klingon attackers, by eliminating all their ships in each sector. Of course in real Star Trek terms such battles would be highly involved, but here each Klingon ship is a one hit kill with phasers, and you can take a few at a time out with a photon torpedo. As you take damage yourself, and I mean multiple hits, you can dock with starbases for repairs and more photon torpedos. After a few levels of fending off Klingons you eventually encounter a minefield being laid by the infamous STO villain NOMAD, who you must defeat to move on the the next sector. Of course on the arcade and home ports these sector boss battles are anything but clear. On the Atari 2600 version as you will see in my video, there is a sector in between in which you encounter an asteroid and meteor field that you can maneuver around to dock with starbases for needed repairs, like a helpful bonus level of sorts. Both the arcade version and Atari 2600 versions also have “anti-matter saucers” (yeah, because that was in the show) in the arcade version they stick to you like a magnetic mine, as to where with the 2600 version they just kind of float around. You’ll note in the video a purple diamond that briefly sticks to my ship in the arcade version, and my reference to a Space Invaders like flying saucer in the Atari 2600 version.  As you progress from sector to sector the game presents you with an ever increasing amount of Klingons, and NOMAD moves a little faster in laying its mines, but if you're looking for an end to this game I honestly don’t think there is one which is pretty typical for that era.

So what about all the different versions, and which is the best? Well of all of them, the only vector based one is the arcade which is also the most difficult in my opinion because well...it was meant to eat quarters. Vector based games do look pretty good graphically, and it's always easy to tell what the 3D objects represent. Also being an arcade machine with a big board and lots of processing power for the era we also get some awesome music and sound effects. All other ports are raster based, but some look a little bit better than others. The Atari 800 and 5200 ports look like an improved version of the Atari 2600 port and the ships and other objects appearing on the bottom “viewscreen” do look a little more like what they are supposed to. The TI-99 is roughly the same, but the ships and whatnot have a bright color pallet to them that makes them feel a bit cartoony.  Then comes the Apple II version which is simultaneously both better and worse than the other versions, but I would suggest you look for yourself to see what I mean. The C64 version has some really nice looking graphics too, but by far I think the Colecovision version features some of the best graphics overall, as well as the best sound, and music. Of course that surprised me since I thought the C64 or Apple II would have it hands down over any console but the Colecovision holds its own on this game. As you can tell though no matter what the version, the game pretty much stays the same with only some minor creative and technical differences between them.

Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator may not be the very first Star Trek game, but it was the first to really have notice taken of it and be universally accepted, especially in the arcades as well as the many home ports. Sadly, the game never really gained any longevity, since it was white noise amongst many of the other space games of the era. Luckily for us as Star Trek fans we got many other games after, and the franchise would continue on to some truly awesome titles that would take what SOS started to a different level like the Starfleet Command and Armada games. Although Strategic Operations Simulator may seem basic and simple compared to games such as those I just mentioned, if you're a Star Trek fan they’re something you have to really check out since they still have that connection to the first Star trek movies and the original series from an era when that's all there was.

Truth is Stranger Than Movie Fiction - The Manhattan Project

Could truth get any stranger than a fictional tale about a homemade A-bomb?

The weekend before last, trying to keep on the theme of watching at least one 80’s movie per weekend this summer, I decided to watch The Manhattan Project on Netflix. If you’ve never heard of it before, than let me first tell you it’s not a historical drama about the development of the atomic bomb, that was left to 1989’s Fatman and Littleboy. Rather, this is an interesting little flick about a teenager who creates his own atomic bomb for a science fair, using plutonium he stole from a local laboratory.

The film itself is somewhat obscure, and really wasn't a huge box office success either. No doubt part of the reason was that releasing a heavy drama in the summer of 1986, amongst such classics as Top Gun, Short Circuit, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off (the latter opened the same weekend) probably wasn't the best timing on the studios part. The other issue was the general theme of the movie, which was hitting rather close to home in 1986 as fears of rogue nations such as Libya developing atomic bombs hit the news.

A quick synapses of the movie is that a physicist John Mathewson (John Lithgow) with a new way of refining plutonium moves to Ithaca, NY. Well, trying to find a place to live John meets a local realtor Elizabeth Stephens (Jill Eikenberry), and her son Paul (Christopher Collet). In attempting to get a date with Elizabeth, John offers to give Paul a tour of his facility outside of town, due to Paul’s interest in lasers. Of course Paul, being a bit of a genius and science geek, quickly figures out that the facility isn’t just refining harmless Magnesium, but something highly radioactive due to some mutations he notices in plant life nearby. Paul, with the help of his girlfriend Jenny Anderman (Cynthia Nixon), quickly hatches a plan to raid the facility and steal a sample of the material in order to expose the dangers of the facility nearby his home. Upon getting the sample Paul decides rather than take it to the press, that he would instead build an atomic bomb and enter it into the National Science Fair in New York City. Of course his plan is eventually discovered, and trouble comes to find him.

Overall it’s a pretty good flick, and has some excellent acting especially out of Christopher Collet, and John Lithgow. It’s also a pretty compelling story that keeps you going all the way to the end and at times makes you think a happy ending isn’t going to happen. Admittedly, it does have a lot of plot holes and implausibilities though, like two private security guards being the only ones on the night-shift at a facility producing weapons grade plutonium, or the fact that there just seems to be too much story to properly fit into the time frame of this movie. With that said there is a clear theme of a young man trying to do right by his town and point out an environmental danger, but getting too overzealous in doing so.

As crazy as the concepts of this movie may seem though, there have been a few cases of life imitating art that have happened since the movie came out. One of which, would go on to be the basis for its own movie, and the other would produce a truly strange story most people don’t even know about.

The Story of David Hahn - The Atomic Scout

It’s been almost a year since David Hahn died in Michigan due to complications related to alcoholism. He was only 39, but had lived and interesting life of both notoriety and trouble. You see Hanh had gained himself the moniker of “The Atomic Scout”, something he would live in the shadow of the rest of his life. At the age of 17, Hahn who had a lifelong interest in nuclear energy, decided to build his own nuclear reactor after earning his Nuclear Energy merit badge as an Eagle Scout candidate. Hahn collected bits and pieces of radioactive material from such normal household items as alarm clocks, smoke detectors, and camping lanterns and with his limited know how managed to create a simple breeder reactor. Breeder reactors, unlike standard reactors don’t need a lot of water in their processes, so Hahn was able to build one in a shed. Of course merely by dumb luck the authorities eventually caught on to what Hahn was up to, and although what he was doing wasn’t illegal, it did require the intervention of the FBI and EPA in cleaning up the radiation contamination of the Hahn’s property and surrounding area. The story itself would remain no more than a newspaper blurb, until 1998 when the story would be rehashed by Harpers Bizarre, and received a follow up book titled The Radioactive Boy Scout.  

Hahn would go onto a short but successful military career, but would began dealing with psychological issues later on that would lead to an honorable discharge, and plague him till his death. Doctors have said that Hahns psychological issues may have been a result of his radiation exposure, as well as prolonged lead poisoning, and believe that had Hahn not declined a proper medical evaluation after his 1994 reactor incident, and later while in the Navy, that some of the problems may have been caught and treated before serious issues occurred. Later, Hahn would have trouble with the law after being caught taking the smoke detectors in his apartment building for the radioactive material inside, Police believed the sores on his body, and shown in his mugshot, show that Hahn had been in contact with radioactive materials again.  

Again this is one of those “stranger than fiction”, stories that made me think of The Manhattan Project. Although Hahn didn’t try to build a bomb, we are still talking about a teenage boy dealing with something radioactive and extremely dangerous, enough to require the FBI, EPA, and Nuclear Energy Commission to get involved. Hahn’s story also shows us some very real life ramifications of what it would have been at risk had the movie character of Paul actually constructed an atomic bomb in the real world. The movie briefly goes into Paul having caused radiation contamination to the room he was working in at his school, but never hits home the true cost of that or, of the radiation poisoning he himself would have suffered.

Erin Brockovich - Undisclosed Toxins

Another aspect to The Manhattan Project is the character of Paul crusading to make it known that the supposed medical laboratory in his town was actually a government facility for processing weapons grade plutonium. Although it’s only briefly referred to, there is also an element of environmentalism to this as well since Paul mentions the rare mutation of a five leaf Clover, which is growing everywhere around the facility. Sadly, in real life such toxin producing facilities that damage the surrounding area aren’t fictional. It’s also true that like the facility in The Manhattan Project that the U.S. Government has had “in plain sight” weapons and research facilities placed under unassuming names very near residential areas before, and that they have gone on to create environmental and health issues for the surrounding areas. Eventually, laws were passed requiring both government and private facilities to “disclose” the use of radioactive or toxic materials used on premises, but some argue, like in the case of the Lemont, Illinois Argonne National Laboratory, that the truth perhaps still isn’t being fully disclosed.

With that said though there was a real life incident that went beyond rumor and speculation to become a major headline in the early 90’s and that made it onto the big screen in 2000. In pop culture it has become known as the Erin Brockovich case due to the movie, and named after the larger than life legal aid who helped make the case. In actuality the case involved the citizens of Hinkley, CA versus Pacific Gas & Electric.

In this case PG&E, began using hexavalent chromium in order to fight costly corrosion in their natural gas pipeline and cooling towers. However, in an effort to economize, PG&E corporate cut corners and never provided proper containment for the wastewater used in the process. The issue of course is that hexavalent chromium is extremely toxic, and even a small amount of exposure could impact one's health. The water was released into retention ponds that weren’t properly lined and lead to the toxin seeping into the local water supply over time. Although the last time the toxin would be used in the process was 1966, the eight years of the toxins use before that had built up in the ground and water near the ponds, causing issues for years to come. PG&E would eventually disclose the non-toxic anti-corrosive they were currently using hoping to satisfy federal and state regulations on disclosure by using that as a general blanket, but at the same time began to quietly buy up property surrounding the plant. It was this latter action that eventually lead to Masry & Vititoe and Brockovich getting involved and looking into things a little deeper, and everything is well known history from there.

Although the actual events surrounding the release of the toxic chemicals in Hinkley, CA would occur 20 years before The Manhattan Project was made, there is still a bit of reality set into the crusading actions of the movies quasi-hero Paul. In Paul's case he knew the facility was causing contamination to the surrounding area, and believed that the citizens of his home town of Ithaca, should be informed. Of course as I stated earlier Paul's methodology for doing this may have been a bit over the top, but with that said though the parallels exist between the fictional reasons of Paul’s bomb building in The Manhattan Project, and Erin Brockovich’s very real crusade to receive justice for the long suffering citizens of Hickley, CA. The reality is that there was a facility, like that in The Manhattan Project, releasing toxins into the surrounding area while the people living nearby went completely uninformed, and believing it was all harmless.  

Of course the movie has several other frightening real life parallels, like the ease of making nuclear weapons in our modern day and age, as we see with North Korea. Not to mention considering the movie was made before the breakup of the Soviet Union, we now see the sudden availability of weapons grade material on the black market, and of those with the technical know-how on weapons building now for hire. These latter issues have of course made it into movies of their own, but in reality international policing has kept pretty close tabs on such things, even though it’s obvious they haven’t always been successful.

In a way The Manhattan Project has a disturbing level of timelessness to it making it a bit more than an 80’s movie, as it sets out a scenario that has had some unrelated but strange realities parallel it since 1986. The movie is worth watching, and as I said it can be found on Netflix, but it’s probably online through Amazon as well. I’ll give a shout out to the guys at The Retro Rewind Podcast, by using their Memory Mind-meld Synopsis and saying that before seeing The Manhattan Project I did mentally intermix The Manhattan Project’s plot with the plot of Real Genius a comedy with a similar premise from 1985. So it was good to watch The Manhattan Project and separate

the film into its actual elements.

If you have any Manhattan Project stranger than fiction stories please feel free to comment below, since I’d love to hear them.