"Star Trek", especially the "Super Star Trek" version, was immensely popular for the era. By 1975 it had spread to mainframes across the United States, and Ahl stated in 1978 in "BASIC Computer Games" that it was difficult to find a computer installation that did not contain a version of "Star Trek". By 1980, "Star Trek" was described by Mark Herro in "The Dragon" magazine as "one of the most popular (if not the most popular) computer games around", with "literally scores of different versions of this game floating around". At least one published work of fiction that year mentioned the game, the short story "Another Game of Spacewar", published in an anthology by "Creative Computing". A 2013 overview of the game and its myriad versions in "The Register" by Tony Smith concluded that "like most games of the period it was fun to play once or twice, but it lacked staying power." Regardless, for the players of the time period when it was released, it was "a shiny new gateway to 'strange new worlds'".