Star Trek III Atari Game

[Coleco Gemini]

So, I was looking around at cancelled Atari Games, does anyone know more about this one?:

 

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Star_Trek_III:_The_Search_for_Spock_%28Atari%29

 

Is there literature? or any footage?

[Rom Hunter]

Nope.

 

That's it.

 

[AtariLeaf]

Star Trek 2: In Search of Spock? Man, that's a confusing, mashup title.

[Zwackery]

Both Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (2600; Sega; 1983) and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (2600; Sega; 1983) were mentioned in the August/September 1983 issues of Video Games Player magazine but never were developed AFAIK. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Video Game Watch (HAND; Collins) was licensed from Paramount for a retitling of Space Attacker by Nelsonic and Cosmic Wars by Majestron.

[+Psionic]

On 11/30/2011 at 8:47 AM, Zwackery said:

Both Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (2600; Sega; 1983) and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (2600; Sega; 1983) were mentioned in the August/September 1983 issues of Video Games Player magazine but never were developed AFAIK. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Video Game Watch (HAND; Collins) was licensed from Paramount for a retitling of Space Attacker by Nelsonic and Cosmic Wars by Majestron.

"Khan" was started initially, at least in the form of a basic game design.  It was actually the first title that Sega started working on after they reverse-engineered the 2600 and figured out how to develop games for it.  It never really went anywhere because the programmer who was working on it left Sega to join Atari and it doesn't seem that any further work was done by anyone else.

Regarding "Spock", I recently contacted a woman who worked for a marketing research agency back in the early 80's after I noticed this cartridge which turned up recently.  This woman told me that they had done focus group testing on several titles for Sega, including "Search for Spock", although I tend to think it was probably just Star Trek: SOS under a different title.  My guess would be that Sega's marketing department jettisoned plans for two separate movie games and decided to simply release a port of the arcade game instead.  It seems that only a few of the many movie-based games they announced were ever started in any capacity and none of them made it very far into development.

[Raiu]

Theory: it was originally "Star Trek 2" despite being based on the third movie because it's the second Star Trek game (after the Arcade Game).

 

But "In Search Of Spock" seems like a joke (considering that Nimoy was the host of "In Search Of...").

[Shaggy the Atarian]

I have a hunch that this was just confusion over Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator. That was pretty much Star Trek II

 

There was a laserdisc Star Trek III arcade game in development over at Midway, but other than there was a working project of it at one point, nothing else is known about it:

 

http://system16.com/hardware.php?id=592&page=1#1756

[+Psionic]

1 hour ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

I have a hunch that this was just confusion over Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator. That was pretty much Star Trek II

Yeah, it was probably just a mix-up on the part of marketing or the artist who was doing the mock-ups.  Who knows.  I think part of the problem is that they were working on so much stuff that even they got confused.
 

1 hour ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

There was a laserdisc Star Trek III arcade game in development over at Midway, but other than there was a working project of it at one point, nothing else is known about it:

 

http://system16.com/hardware.php?id=592&page=1#1756

Midway had purchased an interest in Sega and they co-produced a few laserdisc coin-ops including Astron Belt and Galaxy Ranger.  One of the artists from Sega that I spoke with was doing the art for the Star Trek one but I don't know how far along the game was.

Sega worked on a ton of stuff during this period that never made it out the door.  It was a total mess there, especially after they closed up shop in San Diego and moved everything to Paramount Studios in L.A.  They supposedly worked on not one but two Masters of the Universe coin-ops that were never released.  They also had a Congo Bongo sequel in development that never went anywhere because the management couldn't agree on a game design.  Several original games also got canned including Turbo Tag, which was designed at Sega in Los Angeles but programmed at Marvin Glass & Associates in Chicago.

[Zwackery]

This is interesting info.

 

I'm actually working on a chapter for a Routledge book (to be released in 2020) that is essentially all about Star Trek, and my contribution is all about Star Trek board games and video games.  Big topic!  I love little tidbits like this.