The one I actually played was in all ASCII graphics, but this is identical to it in every way, just "prettier".
It's all based around sectors and quadrants and getting rid of the Mongol invasion. Pretty damned fun game once you figure it out, and pretty in depth. My dad used to play this on a teletype machine in college, it would just print out on paper each move you made.
I think the one that *I* played was originally in Basic or something.
The Star Trek game they were referring to on the podcast I honestly don't really remember playing when I was younger, though the cart looks really familiar from the Atari 2600. So I fired up MAME and found it, fuckin' loved it. The only other version of it I've played was on the 2600 with an emulator, and it's a fairly competent port of the game considering the hardware.
But yeah, THIS is (basically) the game I played when I was a kid.Have always been terrible at it too. lol
http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/download/egatrek/
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