My friend Matt had Dragon Trek on the Dragon, and much as I liked to make fun of him for owning such a stupid computer, Dragon Trek was a pretty good game. Based upon the Star Trek mainframe game of the 70’s, it involved warping around different sectors of the galaxy blowing up Klingons and docking with star bases.

I loved it because it allowed me to live out my William Shatner fantasies… not those sort of fantasies you filthy minded lot, but rather Kirk based captaincy fantasies. In Dragon Trek you were really and truly the commander of the Starship Enterprise. You could choose where it went, and who it shot, it even allowed you to take care of damage control. Sadly it didn’t allow you to beam down to planets and have sex with green women, but you couldn’t have everything.

It also had some really nice touches. My favourites were as follows – in no particular order. Photon Torpedoes that you could control with the analogue joysticks, with them satisfyingly blowing up anything they got in contact with; A self destruct system that needed a code, just like Star Trek 3; an escape capsule that went to the nearest star base and I think allowed you to continue in a different ship, with a different name. All of these things really made it quite exciting.

I remember me and Matt sitting in his bedroom planning our strategy together, like real Starfleet officers. The graphics weren’t up to much, but they allowed our imagination  to run wild. Dragon Trek didn’t patronize it’s player either, there was no save game feature, you either finished it in one sitting, blew up or gave up.

If there was an equivalent ZX Spectrum game (my home computer of the day) I never found it, and still fondly think of Dragon Trek of one of my favourite games from  my childhood. Later Matt changed his computer for a Commodore 64, and we never played Dragon Trek any more…. It’s like Puff the Magic Dragon all over again.

For the record I wanted to get a ‘Khaaaannnn!’ quote into this review, but then remembered I’d already done that joke in a previous Trek related write up…