Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About The Kobayashi Maru
4. Beta Tests
Numerous beta canon works have depicted the no-win scenario. Julia Ecklar's 1989 novel The Kobayashi Maru in particular goes into great detail as to just how one famous set of youngsters fared on the test. Pre-empting the now clichéd of 1999, the novel also revealed that cadets weren't meant to talk about Kobayashi Maru, so that the next victim… candidate couldn't plan ahead.
Captains and senior officers could talk about it all they liked. Stranded in a shuttle in Ecklar's novel, with rescue looking unlikely, Chekov, Scotty, Sulu, and Kirk start to tell their stories of the simulator room to pass the time. Kirk cheated, but only on his third attempt. Cadet Scott tried to engineer his way around with the deflector shields. Sulu refused to enter the Neutral Zone. Chekov went all in and self-destructed his ship. McCoy and Spock never took it.
In addition to the cheat code previously mentioned, the Kobayashi Maru also featured in the 1997 video game Star Trek: Starfleet Academy and got a nod in 2001's Star Trek: Away Team. The 2007 Star Trek Strange New Worlds VI short story Best Tools Available then told us of one of the few cadets to have beaten the scenario without cheating — Nog. In the most gloriously Ferengi manner possible, he simply asked the attacking Romulan commander — times had changed — to 'name her price' in gold-pressed latinum.