Star Trader

Star Trader is a 1974 video game and an early example of the space trading genre. The game involves a single player moving from star to star on a map of the galaxy, buying and selling quantities of six types of merchandise in order to make money. The game was developed by Dave Kaufman for computers in 1973, and its BASIC source code was printed in the January 1974 issue of the People's Computer Company Newsletter. It was reprinted in the 1977 book What to Do After You Hit Return. The game was the inspiration for the multiplayer Trade Wars series, beginning in 1984, and is through that series the antecedent to much of the space trading genre.