Interview with Stephen V. Cole (Starfleet Battles, Task Force Games, Amarillo Design Bureau)

The Rural Gamer has a great interview of Steve Cole - the original designer of Starfleet Battles back in 1979. I never played the pocket game version of it, but I did play the first boxed version that got released a year later. I would continue to play that game all through the rest of high school and college. What a great game.

The cover art of the pocket game version, shown here, and the art of the first box and some of the first expansion packs was all done by Alvin Belflower (he would sign Belflowerdidit). I love his look of the energy weapons "splashing" when they hit a target ship's hull.

This is a picture of the contents of the first version I owned (the Designer's Edition) also released in 1979, although I did not get a copy until 1980. My copy also came with two heavy duty plastic document holders and two grease pencils for marking damage on the SSDs. I had a HUGE amount of fun playing that game.

Cool news - Mongoose is going to do a classic Trek treatment with their starship combat rules, and they are also going to do a Traveller RPG treatment of classic Trek. Groovy.

Tags: Star Trek, , science fiction games, boardgames