Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About The Kobayashi Maru
6. Mode Of Cheating
Having taken over writing of the screenplay (uncredited), it was also Nicholas Meyer who first suggested that cadet Kirk might have cheated on the Kobayashi Maru. Harve Bennett, a dyed in the wool Trek fan, was "initially resistant to the idea that Kirk could do anything 'bad'". Meyer managed to persuade Bennett, however, that Kirk should have his failings, too. As Meyer went on to note in Star Trek: The Magazine, volume 3, issue 05:
If you look at the heroes of antiquity and myth, they all have flaws. It's something that they have to overcome; their flaws are something that they have to act in spite of. The challenge is not to defy your fate, but to endure it. That is heroic.
For Meyer, Kirk, as the Greek hero, had to go from "think[ing] he knows the answer" to finding out, via the death of Spock, that he knows nothing at all. "When you've had the sh*t kicked out of you, you're ready to start over, and with a little humility," Meyer concluded. No doubt the real point of the Kobayashi Maru is to have the grace to accept which way to lose.
Or, Kirk could have just played Star Trek: Armada and/or Star Trek: Armada II, in which cheat code 'kobayashimaru' instantly wins the current mission and moves the player onto the next.