Welcome to the bridge. Your mission is to travel from sector to sector, eliminating alien incursions without getting your ship and crew destroyed. Friendly starbases offer aid and allow you to make resupply stops so you can keep up the good fight - and you do have to keep a careful eye on your phaser, shield and warp power... (Atari [Sears exclusive], 1978)

Even rarer than the VCS edition of Sega's Star Trek arcade game is this Sears exclusive - and, unless you're trying to put together an insanely complete collection of 2600 cartridges, don't sweat it if the rarity of this game prevents you from ever getting your hands on it. Stellar Track sucks like a hull breach.

Whereas Sega took the original Star Trek mainframe text game concept and ramped up the graphics 10,000%, Stellar Track is that original game, reduced to text graphics and commands which are inputted by selecting from a menu with the joystick. This is the sort of game which might almost be manageable with a keyboard. Not so for the poor Atari.

On a fannish note, it's interesting to see what Sears did and didn't get away with. The game was renamed because Paramount wouldn't give permission to base it on the TV show, and yet the game clearly makes reference to Starfleet, stardates, photons and "phasors." And the shape of the ship in the minimal graphics is slightly suggestive of an overhead view of the classic Enterprise.

Sorry, rabid collectors, but I rate this game a one-way trip to the waste disposal deck.

Rating:  Ten cents - spend it on the gumball machine. You'll get more pure entertainment value for your money.

Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com editor/webmaster