Star Trek Video Games
In the video game Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, one of the missions assigned to the player is the Kobayashi Maru scenario. The player — who controls the character of Cadet David Forrester — has a choice to make prior to the test. The player can have Forrester face the unaltered version of the test, or have Forrester reprogram the computer as Captain Kirk did, altering the scenario in one of three ways. He can reprogram the Klingon AI, making them fight dumber (they do not fire at all), reprogram the strength of the Klingon ships by making them easier to beat (in addition, their weapons cause no damage), or make the Klingon captains fear and respect him personally (Kirk's solution from the novel).
If the player cheats by altering the battle itself, he is treated to two larger waves of Klingon D7 cruisers after destroying the initial wave of three. After destroying those waves, the simulator computer crashes with a Guru Meditation error, and in debriefing the commandant remarks that he would be impressed were it not for the impossibility of such a feat.
If the player cheats by instilling fear and respect into the Klingon captains, he is able to hail the Klingons during the scenario. The Klingon captain extolls Forrester's prowess, and agrees to help him rescue the freighter instead. This allows the scenario to complete successfully, and the commandant seems truly impressed in debriefing. No matter how the player cheats, if he chooses this option the cheating is detected by Academy staff, and Forrester is offered a chance to avoid punishment by helping the authorities with an ongoing criminal investigation.
If the player decides to face the unaltered version, the ship is swiftly destroyed by the first wave of D7 cruisers, or if they opt to not rescue the ship, they are forced to listen to the crew of the Kobayashi Maru die. It is possible to defeat the Klingons in the unaltered version; however before the player can rescue the crew of the Kobayashi Maru, the game bugs out and the player's ship blows up anyway even though there are no Klingons left.
In the video game Star Trek: Starfleet Command III, one of the campaign missions is titled "Klingon Maru". However, the player can rescue the ship and not fight a battle.
In another video game, Star Trek: Bridge Commander, a very large mod was created for the game, tentatively titled Kobayashi Maru, which added many new starship classes to the already existing roster of ships within the game.
There was also a Kobayashi Alternative video game published by Simon & Schuster in 1985. The game was a text adventure written by Diane Duane depicting the "Kobayashi Alternative Command Performance Evaluation", a test being proposed to replace the Kobayashi Maru scenario, and was available for the Apple II, Commodore 64, MS-DOS PC-compatible, and Macintosh platforms. The first mission of the first-person shooter, Star Trek: Voyager: Elite Force, developed by Raven Software and published by Activision in 2000, is considered Ensign Munro's (the player character's) Kobayashi Maru by Commander Tuvok.
In Star Trek DAC for XBLA and PSN, there is an achievement / trophy called Kobayashi Maru that is only achievable by entering a cheat code. Paramount, the publisher of the game, leaked the cheat code in a press release.
Read more about this topic: Kobayashi Maru
Famous quotes containing the words video games, video and/or games:
“It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childhood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play . . . today’s children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games.”
—Marie Winn (20th century)
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—Marie Winn (20th century)
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