Star Trek: the Kobayashi alternative

If text adventures are your thing, Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative (1985, DOS) will either delight or destroy you. You type commands to guide Kirk and crew through a no-win scenario that tests your logic, patience, and tolerance for 1980s parsers. It’s ambitious — perhaps too ambitious — with a sprawling map and a vocabulary that often refuses to understand you. But there’s real charm here: the game tries to simulate command decisions, not just puzzles. It’s frustrating, fascinating, and undeniably Trek. You won’t beat it easily, but hey — that’s the point of a “no-win scenario.”