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  1. 2 points
    A new Wednesday, a new game announcement – and a pretty neat one at that! Here's a bit more of an overview from Modus Games:
  2. 2 points
    At last. The world has been crying out for more Bakugan!
  3. 2 points
    I think it allowed them to just go all out fighting without it being odd for the Federation (that said, there are games like that with Starfleet). Star Trek: 25th Anniversary Original Release: 1992 Developer: Interplay Publisher: Interplay Platform: DOS With very impressive production values, not only does this have a great visual style, but it’s also fully voiced with the full cast of The Original Series. It’s a point and click adventure game much closer to the likes of Monkey Island than previous games, which is a style that suits Star Trek extremely well 25th Anniversary comprises of 7 missions, which all feel like they could have been original episodes, with some interesting stories and some returning characters, and one is even a sort of prequel to Wrath of Khan. Although I did find that slightly odd because it starts with a Federation facility with a virus outbreak that only affected Romulans, with Spock saying it should be safe for everyone to beam over. I thought this was strange because of the link between Romulans and Vulcans and, sure enough, Spock gets ill, creating a timer for this mission (something I don’t like in games like this, I like slowly investigating everything). That said, the main parts of the mission are overall great. Throughout the game you also get involved in ship combat. These parts of the game are horrible to control and are frustrating. The game would be better off with a simpler system where you give commands to your crew. One particularly annoying one involves a cloaked ship and you just have to hope that they don’t cloak too much to recharge shields – some of these battles are overly long. Overall, 25th Anniversary is a really good Star Trek game, and it would be really nice to see a refreshed version that changes the ship combat and fixes some annoyances (like silencing repeated voice lines). Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (NES) Original Release: 1992 Developer: Interplay Publisher: Ultra Platform: DOS While this shares the same name as the MS DOS game, this is not a console port of the 25th Anniversary. This is a completely different game, with its own gameplay, levels and even story. The story is fairly simple: The Enterprise has fallen though gravitational anomaly and ended up in an unknown region of space. They have to find dilithium crystals and make their way back home. The game starts off pretty terribly. It feels like a shooter and exploring the first area you’ll be shot at by plants and probably killed by tiny worms. Once you figure out the game properly, there’s actually not that much shooting involved at all beyond the first level, instead the game is about exploring, finding items and working out how to use them. Once you finish the rather tedious first level, you’re given a lot of planets to explore. Most of these are ones you either can’t land on or are just empty worlds, but it still gives the impression of a bigger world – a lot of planets are just bits of rock, after all, only a few planets contain missions that further the game. One of these is a really fun level set on a planet of rogue traders. There’s even a time travel mission where you have to save a planet that was destroyed due to the actions of Dr. McCoy. While it has a very rough start, this surprisingly becomes quite enjoyable. Star Trek 25th Anniversary (Game Boy) Original Release: 1992 Developer: Visual Concepts Publisher: Ultra Platform: DOS Another game for the 25th Anniversary, and another one with its own story with its own version of the episode “The Doomsday Machine”. The Doomsday Machine is heading for Federation space. The Federation built a superweapon to destroy it, but the Klingons stole and split it into 12 parts on three planets. You have to find the pieces and destroy The Doomsday Machine. In the space sections of the game, you have a map of the area and you can essentially choose which obstacles you face: asteroids, Klingons, Romulans, Tholians or Space Amoebas. These take you into a 2D scrolling thing where they all function the same with minor differences. You move to the right, avoiding and blasting obstacles. The Tholians are the most difficult due to their “webs”. Repeat this for the area until you reach the planet. There are four sections like this. Once you reach a planet, you land on what looks like a randomly generated jumbled mess, but the layout is the same each time. You need to navigate these mazes, looking at your tricorder for directions, to collect four parts of the weapon. There are also enemies that are best avoided. You can shoot them, but if you run out of phaser energy you can soft-lock the game and have to die or restart the level. This is a pretty terrible game. The space sections are fine but get repetitive before you finish the first one, and the ground sections are just a horrible mess. Star Trek 25th Anniversary (LCD) Original Release: 1991 Developer: Konami Publisher: Konami Original Platform: Electronic Handheld Not played: Too expensive to get second hand. An electronic handheld game to celebrate the 25th anniversary. The goal of this one is to rescue people from a Klingon Bird of Prey. The game has two parts. In the first, you rotate a single slither of shield around the Enterprise as you build up energy to fire a torpedo, then you align with the gap in the BoP’s shield to beam people up. The Enterprise gets damage so you need to keep an eye out for Spock popping up in the corner to help you repair the ship. Pair Match Original Release: 1985 (Used as a game in Star Trek in 1992) Developer: Bandai Publisher: Bandai Original Platform: Electronic Handheld While this game was originally released in 1985, it originally had nothing to do with Star Trek. It’s a very cool-looking electronic handheld game. The game itself is quite simple: it’s a version of the card game pairs, but each block plays a sound that matches with another. It’s much, much harder to remember location compared to standard playing cards. The device was originally used as a “call waiter” prop in Ten Forward on the Enterprise D, however in the 1992 episode “Ethics”, Troi and Alexander use the device to play a game, thus turning Pair Match into a Star Trek game. Star Trek: The Game Original Release: 1992 Developer: Classic Games Publisher: Classic Games Original Platform: Board Game With a fancy looking game board, I expected a lot more from this game. The goal is simply to visit four planets and return to the starbase (the two close planets count as one). You roll the dice and move that many spaces. At the end of the turn another player draws a card (based on how far through the game you are) and asks you a question. If you get it right, you take another turn – if your knowledge of Star Trek (TOS and the movies) is exceptional, you can just keep taking turns until you win the game. Some spaces will make you move in certain ways or send you to specific spaces and others that slow you down. Some spaces will make you lose functions like warp and phasers. Phasers don’t do anything, but if you lose all engines you have to rely on another player to drag you back to starbase. They get tokens that can be used to repair their own ship functions. The rules also make a big deal that some questions can make you lose functions, but it relates to just two questions out of over 1000. The game would be more enjoyable if you ditch the board and asked each other questions. Star Trek: The Final Frontier (Board Game) Original Release: 1992 Developer: Toys & Games Limited Publisher: Toys & Games Limited Original Platform: Board Game A very basic and very random roll and move game. You get given four random planets that you have to travel to before returning to Earth. As a result, some players will need to travel longer distances than others. Each turn you roll the dice and move that many spaces. If you land on a starfleet icon, you draw a card for a random action like have another turn, move X spaces or miss two turns. Star Trek: The Next Generation (Brand Makers) Original Release: 1992 Developer: Brand Makers International Publisher: Brand Makers International Original Platform: Board Game A roll and write game where you have to go around the board to reach “docking ports”. Once there, you draw a character from a stack of cards. If it’s someone you already have, you put them back. If you land on another player, you can take one of their cards. Your goal is to collect the five main characters of The Next Generation: Picard, Beardless Riker, Worf, and Tasha Yar. Keep in mind that this game was produced during season 5 of The Next Generation, and Tasha doesn’t even appear in the promotional images used for the board and box – plus Riker has a beard in those. This game is also a carbon copy of a Robin Hood game made by the same people, right down to the board layout. This is easily the laziest Star Trek game. Terrace Original Release: 1992 Developer: Anton Dresden, Buzz Siler Publisher: Herbko Original Platform: Board Game An abstract board game that was popular on the USS Enterprise D. This came out in 1992 and was first seen in “Hero Worship”. The box for Terrace even got updated mentioning that it appears in The Next Generation, along with a Windows 3.1 video game that also mentions TNG. Terrace is a multi-level board game. Pieces can move as much as they want on the same level, can move up one space straight or diagonal but can only move down in a straight line. You take your own pieces by moving downwards onto an opponents piece, but your piece must be the same size or larger. The aim of the game is to either take your opponents “T” piece or to get yours to the opposite side of the board. There’s a lot of strategy to this.
  4. 1 point
    Definitely great for the SNES. There's another version of it that looks even better (although on more advanced but cobbled together hardware that nobody bought). The Starfleet Academy and Future's Past games on SNES both seem like precursors to PC games - elements of their plots and ideas were re-used in much bigger games.
  5. 1 point
    Star Trek: The Next Generation: Future’s Past Original Release: 1994 Developer: Spectrum HoloByte Publisher: Spectrum HoloByte Platform: SNES This one took a bit of getting used to due to some fiddly buttons and confusing menus. The Enterprise is monitoring Romulan Activity in the Neutral Zone and ends up in an epic quest to be chosen to be given an extremely powerful weapon – one that the Romulans and a new race called the Chodak. The game starts off with a view of the Enterprise D bridge. Here you look around at the various stations. Some (like the Computer and Sensors) give you additional information, the Briefing Room has Picard explain the current objective to the crew (a really nice touch) and the main one – the conn lets you set a course. There are a lot of places to choose from, although there’s not much reason to visit most, not to mention that the game bugs you if you’re not doing the current objective. While at warp, you may randomly encounter enemy ships. The focus on ship combat is a top-down view and is very basic and quite annoying. You’re also supposed to keep an eye out for a little notification that the enemy ship is surrendering (although there’s no penalty for blowing them up). When you get damaged, your ship’s systems will go down and you’ll have to assign resources to each one. You can go to a starbase to completely repair (which also creates a password to save the game), but I found that as most of the game it was navigation or engines that were down, you just had to leave the game for a few minutes and let the admiral yell at you for not doing the current objective. When you go on an away mission, you get to pick your away team (in most cases). You’ll want to take Data on every possible mission as he has the best stats and can see in the dark, which is the only ability that makes a difference (and only on one mission). Some crew completely lack phasers (like Dr. Crusher). I found myself using Data, La Forge, Worf and a random ensign on most missions. These missions involve a lot of shooting, some puzzle solving and a lot of aimlessly walking around the maze-like levels. There’s some interesting ideas here, as you can swap between the away team and take them separate routes or command them to follow one person. I feel like a sequel for this could have had the potential to fix the issues with this game. There’s some good ideas, but ultimately isn’t executed very well. Star Trek: The Next Generation: Echoes from the Past Original Release: 1994 Developer: Spectrum HoloByte Publisher: Spectrum HoloByte Platform: Mega Drive This is a game heavily based on Future’s Past, but considering they both came out only a few months apart, there are a surprising amount of differences. The game starts off with a lovely pixelated recreation of the opening of The Next Generation, which makes it feel even more like an episode of the show. There’s also a lot more dialogue in this game as the characters you meet have conversations with Picard instead of just a single paragraph at the end. Missions are mostly the game, but with slightly different layouts that make things look slightly more like actual locations, although they’re still difficult mazes. Using items is more fiddly due to the lack of shoulder buttons. The combat is mostly the same, but ships seem to move a lot faster. This causes the sensor grid to zoom in an out a lot, which I found to be extremely nauseating. If you can put up with that, I do recommend this version due to the improved dialogue – with the exception of one change where the mission is something given to Picard and not the crew (the objective recaps now take place in the ready room instead of the briefing room). Star Trek Generations: Beyond the Nexus Original Release: 1994 Developer: : Absolute Entertainment Publisher: Absolute Entertainment Platform: Game Gear A game loosely based on Star Trek Generations. It uses the Advanced Holodeck Tutorial as a basis and adds more modes (although more minigames) to kind of tell the story. It starts off on the Enterprise B on it’s maiden voyage when it suddenly gets attacked by Tholians. The ship combat is a very simplified version of the previous game. There’s no commands to give anyone, just turn and shoot. It’s also much easier as you rarely get hit, but combat still drags on. After this, you need to track a distress call by playing a minigame similar to Mastermind where you enter symbols and the game tells you how many are the correct symbol and how many are in the right place. The third minigame has you flying through squares, with another involving you laying down pipes. After doing a few of these a few times, the game cuts forward to the Enterprise D, skipping Kirk’s apparent death. The Enterprise D section follows the same minigames, and adds some basic top-down on foot-sections where you shoot enemies as you run to Soren. You do a few at Amargosa Station, track the Klingon Bird of Prey, do a few more, blow up the Bird of Prey and get a message saying that the Enterprise had to crash on the planet but everyone is saved. Considering the game is called “Beyond the Nexus”, there’s nothing actually involving the Nexus. However, you do get a screen saying that there’s a hidden final level, but can only access if you can name the ship that rescued the crew at the end of the film. This last mission is just another code breaking minigame followed by a final still of Picard and the description of “The Body of James T Kirk is laid to rest”, even though he’s not been mentioned since he fixed something on the Enterprise B. Beyond the Nexus is a very easy minigame collection that poorly tells the story of Star Trek Generations. The most disappointing thing is that the Generations theme music isn’t even in the game. There’s also a Game Boy version which is the exact same game but with fewer colours (it supports colour for the Super Game Boy, but still not as advanced as the Game Gear version). Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Starship Bridge Simulator Original Release: 1994 Developer: Interplay Publisher: Interplay Platform: SNES I was quite impressed by this game. It’s a series of 20 simulations (plus some bonus ones) where you command a team of Starfleet Academy students. The main buttons are used for flying (thankfully you can turn off inverted controls) and weapons, with the L and R buttons being used to spin the ship, which is more control than previous games. Press the select button and the viewscreen will bring up a menu where you can give commands to your crew – sensors, red alert, hailing and things like that. The missions start off with little focus on combat, one has you moving a radioactive asteroid from the planet, the most interesting one has you investigate a protostar which ends up with contact with a new species, others have you investigate missing/destroyed ships. A few of them let you complete your objective and leave an area without defeating the enemies there. Each mission concludes with the lesson it was built to teach, and will also give you a score based on your performance, telling you anything you did wrong (I kept forgetting to cancel red alert when going back to starbase). If you fail and get a score of zero, you’re supposed to carry on finishing the current set of 5 missions and redoing all of them if you don’t reach 75% (or just use the passwords to reload the mission – which makes it strange that it isn’t just an option). After you complete the 20 missions you get your final mission: deliver some supplies. When you start, you get hailed by a ship called the Kobayashi Maru, which is losing power but has stranded into the neutral zone. I was surprised that you aren’t forced into combat and I was able to choose the option of getting higher ups to ask the Klingons to help, as I don’t think the mission is worth starting a war over. You can also enter codes in the character creation (it’s just male/female and some pre-set names) to unlock names. If you play as James T. Kirk, you get to play an alternate version of the test. While the later mission are mores combat focused, which still feels a bit clunky as you can only fire directly forwards, I found it to be a mostly enjoyable game. It also has some very early 3D, and they’ve done well with the limited resources of the SNES. Star Trek: The Next Generation Interactive Technical Manual Original Release: 1994 Developer: Imergy Publisher: Simon & Schuster Platform: PC An interactive tour of the USS Enterprise D, featuring the voices of Majel Barrett Roddenberry and Johnathan Frakes. There’s not a lot of “game” here, but it provides some nice views of all the main rooms of the Enterprise D, each room having multiple 360 degrees viewpoints to look at. There’s a lot of technical information to read and a couple of panels you can activate. One thing I quite like is that when you change location, you get a video of walking to the corridor and into a turbolift. Makes everything feel more connected and like you’re on an actual tour of the ship. Star Trek: The Next Generation: Blinded by the Light Original Release: 1994 Developer: Joe Edkin, Kim Yale Publisher: Tiger Platform: 2-XL Robot The 2-XL Robot is an educational game that uses audio cassettes for “chose your own adventure” audio novels. Blinded by the Light is about a secret mission that Geordi La Forge is sent on, featuring the voice of LeVar Burton. Romulans have created a personal cloak and are testing it on a Federation place near where La Forge used to live, so he is chosen to try and stop it. At points in the story, you get to choose what happens – the first one is if Georgi’s shuttle gets hit by a solar flare or a meteor storm. There are two main paths through this, both telling you that you failed to do something significant and to try again, so it’s a bit of a buzzkill at the end. Star Trek: Generations (LCD) Original Release: 1994 Developer: Toy Options Publisher: Toy Options Original Platform: Electronic Handheld Not played: Too expensive to get second hand. A British-made LCD game, there isn’t a lot of information on the LCD games this company made, but I found a couple of other ones, including ones based on Scalextric and Micro Machines. The images of both of those games look exactly the same, so I think this company designed some very generic games and hoped to get licensing to slap a different sticker and give it a different name. This explains why the screenshot of this is just some spacemen and shuttles. It’s likely that this was designed as their generic “space game” for any future space-related licenses they got, although it doesn’t look like they ever got more after this one. The game is very basic. Spacemen are dropped from the top of the screen, you control the bottom shuttle and have to collect them. Star Trek Customizable Card Game Original Release: 1994 Developer: Decipher Publisher: Decipher Original Platform: Board Game I nearly skipped this game. I loaded it up in Tabletop Simulator and was greeted with thousands of cards and an extremely complicated rulebook that was over 110 pages long. It was extremely daunting. I received some encouragement that it wasn’t as scary as it sounds and managed to find a different version on Tabletop Simulator that came with pre-built decks and a simplified ruleset based on those starter decks – the 110 page rules covered many years of additions. At the start of the match, you build the “board” out of mission cards, which represent locations. In more advanced games, these can form separate quadrant and some cards need to be next to each other. You then take turns adding dilemmas to these missions, these represent challenges that the crews will face. Each turn you play one card, slowly building up your ships and their crews, along with other actions you can perform. You can then move your ship between locations (as long as they’re in range) and attempt missions, ending your turn by drawing one card. On missions, cards will cause you to lose crew (temporary or permanently). If you manage to get through them all and then have enough crew to meet the requirements of the mission, you’ll score the points for the mission, the first to 100 wins. When you add more complicated cards, extra factions, alternate realities and all sorts of other stuff, then the game can get very complicated. When collectable card games are typically combat based, I really enjoy how this feels to play, and that the missions aren’t just combat based, it’s about having the right people for the job. I don’t like collectable games, but if this game had released in playable packs with pre-made decks, then I would have loved it. Star Trek: The Next Generation – Romulan Challenge Original Release: 1994 Developer: J. C. Game Design Publisher: MMG Ltd. Original Platform: Board Game Yet another roll and move Star Trek board game. In this one, one planet is the “target” planet, drawn from a stack of cards. The movement mechanics are somewhat interesting: roll two dice (both D10s) and your movement is the difference between the two (so if you roll a 9 and a 1, you move 8). If you roll a double, you add the numbers together instead. Once you move, you then use the numbers on the dice to consult the co-ordinates board to find out if you get nothing, a resource card (required to reach planets) or a command cards, which gives you a random order (move extra spaces, move to certain spaces, miss a turn, get resource cards). Some of these have trivia questions you have to solve in order to get the reward.
  6. 1 point
    It is indeed a true story https://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2014/apr/07/video-gaming-jann-mardenborough-motor-racing The trailer does come across as a bit of a cringey Playstation advert, but it's a cool concept for a movie nonetheless. The Tetris movie ended up being pretty dang good, so the concept can certainly translate well to cinema.
  7. 1 point
    If others are curious and/or oblivious: He's a composer at Nintendo and has worked on Mario, Mario Kart and 2D Legend of Zelda.
  8. 1 point
    Star Trek: Judgement Rites Original Release: 1993 Developer: Interplay Publisher: Interplay Platform: DOS The sequel to the 25th Anniversary doesn’t get as much attention as the original, which is a shame as this is an improvement in every way. Judgement Rites features an arching storyline trying most of the plots of each “episode” together, which I think works well for a video game. Each episode still feels like a complete story with its own individual plot, mysteries and setting. The away team also varies, so it’s nice that the rest of the crew (other than Spock and McCoy) get to do more in this game. This game was also the last completed project that had all of the main cast in it. Combat returns, but now has an easier setting or can be disabled completely, although some dialogue is cut if you choose this. That said, some of the battles do just seem to be there for the sake of having a battle in each story, so it’s still good that you can turn off its weakest element. The point and click portions are great, and there are no timers to worry about each time so you can solve them at your own pace. I did find a few times that some elements you need can be difficult to notice, for one story I was wondering around for ages because I didn’t realise that one computer panel was actually two (you needed to interact with both) and sometimes you won’t realise that the bottom of the screen is a path, but for the most part it’s solvable without really obscure solutions and sometimes there are even a couple of ways to do something. Judgement Rites is a great game, and I highly recommend it. Star Trek: The Next Generation (NES) Original Release: 1993 Developer: Imagineering Publisher: Absolute Entertainment Platform: NES By far the most impressive thing about this game is how they’ve managed to fit so much stuff on just a D-pad, A, B, Select and Start. The controls aren’t good by any stretch, it’s just impressive that they could do so much with so few buttons. In this, you command the crew of the Enterprise D. Well, four of them at least. Worf will turn on/off shields and weapons. Data will set courses for systems and orbit planets. La Forge will boost power to some systems and sort out repairs. O’ Brian is the most involved with controlling the transporter. Riker tells you the time. You use the D-pad to select who you want to give a command to and A to confirm. Pressing the select button will put you in a mode where you fly the ship and shoot phasers/torpedoes. However, to change speed you have to go back to the command mode and press forward/back. The game itself is random missions that generally involve flying somewhere, shooting stuff and then transporting. It’s a fairly dull combat simulator and not much more. When you beam stuff up (cargo or hostages), you get a nice little minigame, but that’s all there is. Star Trek: The Next Generation (Game Boy) Original Release: 1993 Developer: Imagineering Publisher: Absolute Entertainment Platform: NES While it’s quite often the case that the Game Boy got completely different versions of the games than the NES (25th Anniversary being one example), this is the exact same game as on the NES, just in black an white. There’s not much more to cover with this version, other than it being really good for a Game Boy conversion of a game – it’s just a shame that the game isn’t a good one. Star Trek: The Next Generation (Tiger) Original Release: 1993 Developer: Tiger Publisher: Tiger Original Platform: Electronic Handheld Not played: Too expensive to get second hand. A very basic LCD game. You have to avoid asteroids while shooting at Romulans. These games are very rarely any good, and are almost impossible to see when playing. Star Trek: The Next Generation: A Klingon Challenge Original Release: 1994 Developer: Decipher Publisher: Decipher Original Platform: Board Game On the surface, this is another roll and move board game. The Enterprise has been taken over by a Klingon called Kavok. As the ship was undergoing upgrades, only a few unnamed crew are on board. It’s up to them to get access to the Enterprise computer and stop Kavok from starting a war between the Federation and the Klingons. Do do this, they need to collect 5 isolinear chips and a phaser and get to the bridge. To do this, you need to collect computer access card by landing on spaces and hopefully drawing a card that mentions a specific room (or, if you’re lucky, any room) – however, some of these cards are just bonuses. Once you get to the mentioned room, you earn your next chip. If the game was just rolling moving and doing what it says, it would be boring. But this is a VCR board game, which makes the experience a lot more fun (albeit a bit silly). While playing, you watch the footage and Kavok (played by Robert O’Reilly, known for playing Gowron) will pop up every now and then. He’ll address a player (usually the one currently moving, sometimes based on rank) who has to respond with “Yes Captain Kavok!” and then gets told what to do, which is usually getting trapped in a stasis field (so they can’t move), spinning the Klingon Dagger for a random chance or to EXPERIANCE BIJ! While Kavok gets more and more excited to say the words, it just means drawing a Bij card and doing what it says. This will usually be something negative. Sometimes a “Low Level Malfunction” will pop up on screen when you EXPERIANCE BIJ which means you get a reward instead. It’s a silly game, but fun. It’s easy to lose track of things, but the rules even expect this and say to quickly pick a random person and carry on playing because you’re against the clock. If time runs out, you’ll have to watch the Enterprise get destroyed. Star Trek: The Next Generation (Classic Games) Original Release: 1993 Developer: Classic Games Publisher: Classic Games Original Platform: Board Game This is similar to the previous board game from the same publisher: a board game where answering trivia questions gives you another clue. While the game is simple, there’s lots of different things that can happen so the host be referring to the rulebook a lot. One player is Starfleet Command and keeps track of what is going on, as well as reading questions for players to answer. The aim of the game sounds simple: There are planets hidden in the sector, find and scan them and report to Starfleet Command. I tried a scenario with one sector and two planets and it took forever for someone to find one planet (we agreed that they won the game at that point). The sensor range of ships is quite small so they have to get quite close to the planets to discover them. On top of that, each of the three other players have their routes hidden from each other, so could all be exploring similar areas. I can’t imagine trying to play this game with all four sectors. On a player’s turn, they pick a direction and speed and move in that direction. Starfleet Command then reads a question – the faster the ship is travelling, the more difficult the question it. Each question has consequences (damaging systems or getting teleported elsewhere by Q) and bonuses (mainly just taking another turn). It’s a shame because all the grids and drawing implements give the impression of a much more interesting game – once again it will just be better to ask each other the trivia questions. Star Trek: The Next Generation Game of the Galaxies Original Release: 1992 Developer: Cardinal Publisher: Cardinal Original Platform: Board Game Yet another roll and move Star Trek game, although at least this one has a nice board. The object of the game is to play as a character from The Next Generation (the game supports 6 players but there are 10 characters to choose from) to visit planets to collect treaties (you just land on the planet to get it). Landing on blue spaces will give you cards that will move you around, make you lose or gain treaties or make you lose a turn. you start off with a Photon Torpedo card which lets you take a shortcut through an asteroid field. Dabo Original Release: Seen on-screen in 1993 Developer: Cryptic Publisher: Perfect World Original Platform: Board Game Dabo! This is playable in Star Trek Online, so I was able to use that version for the purposes of this. There’s not really a lot to talk about, it’s just a large slot machine/roulette wheel combo. You pick a position on the outside of the board, then the three rings spin. When the stop, the three symbols that line up with the positions you bet on determine your reward (or lack of reward). Tongo Original Release: Seen on-screen in 1993 Developer: luminous1, Dean Jones Publisher: Self-Published Original Platform: Board Game I manged to find some rules form Tongo that someone made based on all mentions of the game in the script of Deep Space Nine. It’s a Poker-like game with lots of random stuff happening with round cards, square cards, dice and betting. The rules I found used standard cards, while I found some imagery of Tongo cards and edited them to create numbered cards in four ranks. The round cards are your personal hand, these are visible to only you. The square cards are placed on the floor (the spinner), mostly face down. Every single card is part of the game, and have have to move and manipulate them. However, they can only be moved when face down so you have to try and memorise where they are. On top of that, the board is then spun so people have to keep focused so they don’t lose track of which section the cards they need are on. The vertical cards are called the “floor” and are used in determining hand ranking while the horizontal ones are used for exchanging. Finally, the dice can be rolled if they are on the segment facing you. Everyone can use the dice, which count as any rank, but they can only be used to increase a hand and nor form one (for example, a dice can’t be used for a pair, but it can turn a pair into a three-of-a-kind). Instead of betting, you pay for actions into the pot. Frist you can alter the buy/sell/exchange values, then pay to buy (flip face up), sell (flip face down) or exchange (swap with a card in the vertical row on the same or other section of the board). There are two ways of challenging other players: confront or acquire. Confront means all players can use the cards in any of the floors, it doesn’t matter who they are facing. Acquire means everyone is forced to use the cards in the section in front of them. You score your hand based on the round cards you have, the card in the flop and the three dice. Tongo is a very complicated poker, with individual rounds taking a long time – with potentially only a single round in the game. There’s a lot of card manipulation and trying to keep track of what is going on. Unfortunately, the version I’ve made in Tabletop Simulator isn’t fully functional, but I’m trying to figure out the scripting to make it work. Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Advanced Holodeck Tutorial Original Release: 1994 Developer: Imagineering Publisher: Absolute Entertainment Platform: Game Gear When I first saw the name, I though it was a strange way of downplaying a game to make it sound not so good. But after playing the NES and Game Boy versions of this game (which didn’t have the subtitle), it’s actually a pretty fair description for the game. The Game Gear version of this features a little splash screen explaining that it’s training missions on a holodeck at Starfleet Academy (that information was only in the manuals for the other versions), as well as some nice shots of the Enterprise D going to warp, with better use of colour throughout the game. While the game still isn’t good, the Game Gear version is definitely the version of it.
  9. 1 point
    Argh! There's even more from the little cocktease here! Yarr!
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