The two formed Automated Simulations around Thanksgiving 1978 to market the game, and released it in December as "Starfleet Orion". Examining contemporary magazines ("Byte" and "Creative Computing") suggests this is the first commercial space-themed wargame for a personal computer. As the game was written in BASIC, it was easy to port to other home computers of the era, starting with the TRS-80 and then the Apple II, the latter featuring rudimentary graphics. They followed this game with 1979's "Invasion Orion", which included a computer opponent so as not to require two human players.